The Talk - VAC13

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The Talk - VAC13

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Author Comments

Grand pa give "the talk"' to young boy to prepare him to become a man and survive in the scary outside world.

This my submission for the Vac 13 contest. Give feed back on voices & script.

You may want to turn the volume up & use head phone. Audio always seems to be low for some reason.

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Peregrinus

2020-10-31 18:37:17

The script was well written, and the characters were distinct. The social worker seemed pompous.

I'm going to build on what LuckyDee mentioned. It sounds like you were adjusting off the raw microphone input. With low power microphones, it helps to Normalize the audio track (in Audacity, under the Effect tab), which raises the volume of the selection.

The double edge of normalizing is that it boosts everything, so it increases the ambient background noise as well. If your computer is anything like mine and sounds like an entire air force breaking the sound barrier, that can be a challenge. More on that in the VO Home Studio link on the VAC rules post if you're interested.

Nice to see you submit again after a four year break, I hope you stick around :)

grimview responds:

Thanks.
My reoccurring problem seem to be static, volume & consistency. For this I used an Olympus hand recorder inside foam box & then edited in Audacity. I also have a Blue Yeti but when I plug it in the results are not consistent. Like you said using Audacity to "normalize" does increase static and volume. Using the equalizer ( filter curve) as LuckyDee suggested removed static & increase volume some. I did try normalizing after equalizing but that added static. The new version of Audacity seems to have replaced noise removal with noise reduction.

Most of my animations, I record my own voice for and reviewers do raise issues with understanding the audio, but unlike this contest I don't usually get specifics to the issue or how to fix.

LuckyDee

2020-10-25 15:16:50

It's very difficult to make out the words, regardless of the overall volume. Try feeding your recording through an equalizer and (probably) cutting around 500Hz and maybe boosting somewhere between 3k and 6kHz. A lot of energy in the 500Hz area give sound a nasal, boxy quality, while the intelligibility of speech falls somewhere between 3k and 6k. If you can turn the scales on those frequency ranges, you'll clean up just about any vocal recording in giant leaps.

grimview responds:

Thanks for the review. I've tried using "filter curve" on Audacity to equalize the audio based on your recommended setting. The social work is a bit nasally so went less then 500 Hz. Let me know if this sounds better.