Oolite Bulletins

Ranthe wrote:

No problem, this is my first serious playing about with Audacity so I'm still getting to grips with getting the levels right and so forth. This recording stuff is harder than it looks to get right

Heh.. yes, it certainly is..

Mind if I offer a couple of tips?

I don't know what microphone you're using, but I'm guessing it's a headset or one built into a laptop. If you're able to get your hands on a better quality one (even just to borrow), do it.

If using a hand-held mic, don't put it right up by your mouth.. most people get too close. About 20cm away is fine. Don't speak directly into the mic... speak across it. This will help with sibilant sounds ("s" and sometimes "c") and popping caused by "p", "t", etc. If you listen closely to your first recording, you'll notice a lot of sibilants.. the "s" sounds are over-emphasised/louder compared to the rest. This is often a sign of a cheap electret type microphone (a characteristic of electrets is that they boost those frequencies), hence my guess. Do what you can to reduce it, (consciously toning those sounds down a little, or even pulling back a little more from the mic) but if necessary I can tone down the sibilants afterwards.

Getting the levels right during recording always beats fixing them later.. if you have some kind of level indicator you can see during recording, you should aim to get nice strong signals without clipping (distortion). This is the line about 3/4 of the way up the scale.. some indicators will flash red if you get any clipping.


Thanks for the new recordings.. I'll check them out!

Diziet Sma wrote:

Mind if I offer a couple of tips?

I don't know what microphone you're using, but I'm guessing it's a headset or one built into a laptop. If you're able to get your hands on a better quality one (even just to borrow), do it.

The microphone is a fairly old Zoltrix "mic on a stick on an adjustable base" that I got several PCs back, which is currently sitting on my desk behind the keyboard.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Getting the levels right during recording always beats fixing them later.. if you have some kind of level indicator you can see during recording, you should aim to get nice strong signals without clipping (distortion). This is the line about 3/4 of the way up the scale.. some indicators will flash red if you get any clipping.

I've been playing about with the soundcard driver, mic position and Audacity settings, and I think I've got a reasonably clean audio pickup now. I'll see what I can come up with for another voice test.

Stopping my lurking for a quick remark: Somebody should look at "YOUR AD HERE" and record a few jingles (prefarably someone with a little less german accent, else I could do it myself...).

And I'm feeling a little dirty to advocate radiostation commercial jingles even if they are totally fictious and funny...

Rorschachhamster wrote:

(prefarably someone with a little less german accent, else I could do it myself...).

There's nothing wrong with having a range of accents represented.. diversity in the Ooniverse is a good thing!

In fact, I'd go further and say that some ought to be in languages other than English.. it sounds cool, even for those who don't understand it..

Diziet Sma wrote:

...languages other than English...

Klingon, anyone?

Diziet Sma wrote:

Don't speak directly into the mic... speak across it.

Yep... speak to the audience beyond the mic.

Rorschachhamster wrote:

Stopping my lurking for a quick remark: Somebody should look at "YOUR AD HERE" and record a few jingles (prefarably someone with a little less german accent, else I could do it myself...).

And I'm feeling a little dirty to advocate radiostation commercial jingles even if they are totally fictious and funny...

How about these?
(Still having trouble getting rid of background hum...)

Ranthe wrote:

(Still having trouble getting rid of background hum...)

You must be doing a good job cleaning it up.. there's no sign of hum in anything you've linked to.. See if you can reduce your mic gain a little and boost the signal later in the process. Audacity's 'amplify' effect can help here.. but use with care..

Be thankful your setup is too simple to worry about accidentally creating ground loops. In a recording studio situation, with dozens of items of equipment, instruments, amps, effects-racks, mics, mixers and so-on, all interconnected (sometimes in weird and wonderful ways) with dozens of cables, it can be a real b***h to sort out a ground loop hum..

Even eliminating it from a typical home AV system can be a pain..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS-6jBk9YPM

A question for you, Ranthe.. what platform are you running Audacity on.. Windows, Mac or Linux?

Diziet Sma wrote:

A question for you, Ranthe.. what platform are you running Audacity on.. Windows, Mac or Linux?

Windows Vista.

Ok.. if you haven't already done so, go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugins and install the 90+ LADSPA plugins for Windows there.. that will give you a lot more effects, some of which may be helpful to you.

I've been playing around with various de-essing tools and equalisers, trying to do something about the very strong sibilance that comes through with a lot of your 's' sounds. (not your fault.. it's a microphone characteristic)

The de-essers tend to either be ineffective, or make you sound like you have a slight lisp that you're not quite managing to hide.

I've had more luck with the multi-band equalisers. Doing some frequency spectrum analysis on the hissing 's' sounds shows that most of the sibilance is in the 3500Hz - 10,000Hz range (which is a surprisingly wide band for something that usually occurs in a reasonably narrow band of frequencies). Most of the 10,000Hz - 20,000Hz range is sibilance too, but at levels so low they don't play a major part in the problem.

The best tool I've found for dealing with it is a multi-band equaliser that's part of the plugin pack I linked to above.. the main reason it helps so much is that it can apply a whopping -70dB of attenuation.. whereas most equalisers can only manage about -30dB at best, which in this case is just not enough.

In the effects menu, it will be listed as "Multiband EQ". I got the best results when I set the 3500Hz gain to -25dB, and the 5000Hz, 10,000Hz and 20,000Hz sliders to -70db.



You can hear the difference in this clip.. the first 15 seconds is untreated, then it repeats with the EQ applied. Yes, it alters the timbre of your voice somewhat, but not too badly, I think, and it totally kills the powerful hisses that break through with many of the esses..

See what you think.. I suggest you listen at reasonably high volume so as to emphasise the hisses.
https://app.box.com/s/fwn8rq5rf5enouvc9mm7

Ranthe wrote:

(Still having trouble getting rid of background hum...)

I finally did what I should have been doing all along, (I must be getting old! ) and dug out my old studio headphones instead of relying on my computer's speakers.. And now I see what you mean about the background hum.

Fortunately, Audacity can get rid of that very easily, and very effectively.

Firstly, find a section in your recording that is just silence, apart from the hum. A few seconds works best, but Audacity can work with smaller noise samples as well. If necessary, when recording, let it roll on for a few seconds after you're done speaking. That will give you a good sample of hum that you can edit out later on.

Select the section of the track with the hum. Using the View>Zoom to Selection menu can help you fine-tune the selection if you're working with a small sample.

Once you're happy with the sample, go to the Effects menu and select the Noise Removal effect.



Click the Get Noise Profile button. Depending on the length of the sample, it may be instantaneous, or take a few seconds, but as soon as the Noise Removal effect window vanishes, it's ready to go to work. Unzoom the view if you zoomed in before (View>Fit in Window) and click in the empty space of the track description area to the left of the track, so as to select the entire track. Now open the Noise Removal effect again. At this point, it still remembers the noise sample from before, so all you need to do is is use the preview button (if you wish) and/or click the OK button.

The preset 24dB reduction is probably fine, but you can increase it up to as much as 48dB if you like.. certainly it won't hurt to do so. The default settings for sensitivity, smoothing and attack/decay are fine as is.

Once you click the OK button, it will take a few seconds to process the entire track. When it's done, hit the Play button and listen to the difference!

Ok, here are all the samples submitted so far.. I've cleaned up the noise (so far as possible), de-essed, boosted or reduced levels as necessary, and otherwise tweaked them to fix any minor anomalies they contained. Then I split them into individual clips and bundled them all together in a zip. See what you think, folks..

https://app.box.com/s/vlth7xai0ppivbrv07wq

Diziet Sma wrote:

Rorschachhamster wrote:

(prefarably someone with a little less german accent, else I could do it myself...).

There's nothing wrong with having a range of accents represented.. diversity in the Ooniverse is a good thing!

In fact, I'd go further and say that some ought to be in languages other than English.. it sounds cool, even for those who don't understand it..

Ok, I'm considering it. Just have a webcam microphone, so we'll see how that turns out...

Oh, and maybe there could be linked messages to the system info you normally get by linking into a buoy - like a galcomp message if there are thargoids or pirate activities reported. Just a thought...

Rorschachhamster wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

Rorschachhamster wrote:

(prefarably someone with a little less german accent, else I could do it myself...).

There's nothing wrong with having a range of accents represented.. diversity in the Ooniverse is a good thing!

In fact, I'd go further and say that some ought to be in languages other than English.. it sounds cool, even for those who don't understand it..

Ok, I'm considering it. Just have a webcam microphone, so we'll see how that turns out...

The more the better.. I'd love if we can get at least half a dozen folks making recordings for this!

Rorschachhamster wrote:

Oh, and maybe there could be linked messages to the system info you normally get by linking into a buoy - like a galcomp message if there are thargoids or pirate activities reported. Just a thought...

I've been thinking the exact same thing.. maybe even have the YAH billboards broadcast audio versions of their ads when targeted.