New here, first attempt at formatting a file...

[David Major]

Hi folks, this mentoring process sounds like a good idea. Here's a first attempt at a file. It's a few minutes of 'Ten Acres is Enough", a book that I've published a print version of, and am thinking of going the audio/pod way with it and some others. I haven't looked at the tags yet, I'll get to that in the next file I post, when I work at correcting the things that will doubtless need fixing with this one. I've saved it as joint stereo, constant bit rate, 128...

[Nathan Lowell]

Not a bad first pass at all.

[Craig Robertson]

Welcome to the Forum. For all of us there are technical issues, and what I think of as performance issues. I'm not one of the techkies, but it sounds OK from that stand point. In terms of performance, you may have too much sibilance, or overly strong ending "S"'s. Please look at the discussion chain for "Whistling, of Sept 3rd. I hear a lot of echo, and discussed tgis in "Updating..." from oct 13. Sometimes it's not echo, but technical, filters etc, and I don't know much about these. Overall, the only other thing I'd coach is to let loose a little, umph up the cadence and let us all know your having fun. craig

[David Major]

Thanks Nathan and Craig. Craig, you're right about the sibilance, I had noticed it myself. I'm using a good quality condenser mic, and I was sitting way too close to it. With the attached new version of the file, I've moved well back from the mic. The echo you heard was no doubt the reverb that I added. I've left it out this time around, there's no need for it. As for the performance, yes, you're right again, I think a lot of that is just due to the fact that I'm new to this whole idea. Cadence will come in time, I'm sure :-) A question -- when people here talk about "the levellator" -- are they meaning a basic compressor, in which case can I use any compression plugin in my recording software (which is Ardour, on Linux)?

[Nathan Lowell]

http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator/

it has an odd effect when there is noticeable background levels of noise. Some people swear by it. Some people hate it. the general advice is "unless you have a good reason not to use it..." (meaning you tried it and found that it did something unpleasant to your audio) "...use it."

[David Major]

One of my 'issues' here is that I've got three sound cards to choose from, four good mics, a huge collection of plugins, and an assortment of audio software. This is all as a result of recording music for years. But simple is good, and I've put together a very straightfoward setup for this exercise.

I've attached another file. This one is using a different mic, which I think is a bit kinder when comes to essing.

I've also run it through the Levelator, which sure does what it says on the tin. Much easier than mucking around with compression plugins. If this file is sounding ok, I'll go ahead to the next step, which is, I gather, submitting a file to QA?

[David Major]

File didn't attach, I'll try again:

[Craig Robertson]

I like this quite well. I would retry with a bit more pep; I'm a big one on pep, don't you know.....craig

[Bryan Lincoln]

I like this second microphone much better. The only comment I would make is that the background noise comes in and out between moments of speaking and silence. It's better to have the noise always there than the way it is now. Of course, the best solution is to remove the niose altogether by removing it in your recording setup or by attacking the specific frequencies that contain the noise, but this depends a lot on your hardware/software.

[David Major]

I've been trying yet another mic, this time a valve one, and have also changed the EQ a lot in the attached file. My concern is that there's a bit too much going on around 5kHz, so there might be too much of a wet sound. Of course I also need to watch how I enunciate my c's, etc...