VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Adam Verner]

Hey all – I was wondering if someone can help me with some mastering in Adobe Audition 1.5.

I’m recording some tracks for a new audiobook demo on my ghetto home set-up. I’ll be taking it to APAC in May (by the way, any Chicago VO peeps headed there drop me a line!) I sent the raw voice to an engineer friend who ran them through the following in SoundForge:

[Tom Greenlee]

I just looked up wave hammer on the net....found a good explanation of what it does compared to peak normalizing. Here is what I found:

Peak normalizing will simply analyse your track and boost the loudest peak to 0dB. In reality this makes almost no difference to how loud your track actually sounds, assuming it's fairly well mixed to begin with.

The WaveHammer uses a 2 stage process. The 1st stage is the compressor which allows you to compress and flatten the biggest peaks in your track and create a more average volume level. The 2nd stage is there to maximise and raise the volume of the now flattened track.

Using the WaveHammer will allow you to make your tracks audibly LOUDER and gives you greater control than simply using Peak Normalization.

Using this explanation, maybe you can lightly compress your lousest peaks to a more average level and then maximize the signal to raise the whole thing up to your desired level.
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TG2

"Communication without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communication is irrelevant."

Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
Former Commandant of the Marine Corps

[Bill Campbell]

Adam:

I took your file and using the Hard Limiter:
Peak at -3db
Boost by 3db

Voila - same as your friends, but a little cleaner.

The Hard Limit in AA is a great tool, used correctly. Experiment with it,
and use your ears.
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www.asapaudio.com

[Frank F]

First let's get a couple of things straight. The information regarding "normalization" is incorrect.

Audio normalization is the process of increasing (or decreasing) the amplitude of an entire audio signal so that the resulting highest peak amplitude matches a desired target. Typically, normalization increases the amplitude of the audio waveform to the maximum level set by the user and does not introduce any new distortion other than that of re-quantization.

Audio Compressor's reduces the dynamic range of a signal. Compression is used extensively in audio recording, production work, noise reduction, and live performance applications, but compression needs to be used with care. It is commonly said that compressors make loud sounds quieter, and the quiet sounds louder. A compressor is basically a variable gain device, where the amount of gain used depends on the level of the input.

A limiter is a type of compressor designed for a specific purpose — to limit the level of a signal to a certain threshold. Whereas a compressor will begin smoothly reducing the gain above the threshold, a limiter will almost completely prevent any additional gain above the threshold. A limiter is like a compressor set to a very high compression ratio (at least 10:1, more commonly 20:1 or more).

Now the vernacular has been explained there is a little caveat of which audio folks need be aware: "Too much compression may cause clipping and is fatiguing for listeners"!!!

Further, audiobooks are a special genre and dynamics are very important. Add compression - lose dynamics.

As I listened to your friends file I noticed he had run a "noise gate" and over-compressed without limiting. I chose to download the files and take a look at the waveforms presented. File 2 revealed "clipping" and peaks above 100% or 0 db. In the digital audio world, one should try to NEVER have peaks above 100% or clipping will result. * Edited to add: I normally keep my files at 85% peak.

The original file (file 1) had average peaks between -12 db and -9 db. File 1 indicated some phasing problems which were indicated by the waveform being dominant on the bottom of the view. (* Edited to add: All three files had the phasing problem - due to the original situation), oftentimes corrected with DC offset settings)

File 3 is less offensive as to the compression and peaked around -3 db.

I chose to work with File 1. I processed a noise gate to remove the noise floor, lowered the larger peaks by 3 db, normalized to 85%, removed clicks and pops, used Wave Hammer with some proprietary settings - * Edited to add: twice (I would almost never do this twice in real life but I wanted to closely match the volume of File 2), and normalized again to 85%. This process leaves the dynamics in place yet helps with volume.

Then, using File 2, I normalized this audio to 85% for an "apples-to-apples" comparison, placed the two side-by-side, and added a tone to separate the audio for this comparison:

Listen Hear!

I believe listeners will prefer one or the other, can you tell them apart? Which part of the audio file is less "fatiguing", the first or second half?

I hope this helps.

Toodles

F2
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Be thankful for the bad things in life. They opened your eyes to the good things you weren't paying attention to before. email: thevoice@usa.com

[jrkaiser]

Frank, this is an interesting test in listening. I'm sitting in the house listening on a Lenovo S10 netbook. This has a very small set of speakers that aren't very good.

I prefer cut 1. It seems a bit smoother. My lovely wife prefers cut 2. I felt cut 2 sounded a bit overmodulated. I'll take a listen later when I get out to the studio, but on these small laptop speakers that's what I hear.

[Adam Verner]

Thanks for the responses everyone! Frank, especially yours; thanks for the extremely detailed examination. Like all good explanations, I think it left me with more questions than answers

That's a real tough call for me on your example. I'm sure my "audio ears" just aren't well developed enough, but they sound very similar. The second one sounds a tinge more "crackly," but I like it better because it doesn't cut off so abruptly after sentences...you can hear my slight inhalation after the first sentence, for example.

I'm sure this is the topic for a whole other post, but how would I go about fixing that phase problem you mentioned? (what the heck are DC offset settings?)

And, of course, what settings should I use in Audition to achieve the best result for a demo?
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Adam
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[Rob Ellis]

I used to use Compander quite a bit.

Lately, I have gotten away from using any compression at all.

It really started to sound like overkill and began hurting my ears and became hard to listen to.

Guess I'm getting old?