User:Samanem

For New Members at Librivox

Introduction

This page is dedicated to helping new users begin their journey at Librivox. We will mainly be concerned with how to get up to speed with recording for Librivox, and making it as easy as possible. We will discuss microphone selection and placement, as well as the use of pop screens and other methods for cleaning up the capture of your voice into your microphone. We'll talk about the input volume levels of your recordings and how to increase them, which is a common problem among new readers. We'll help you understand noise and why it appears on your recordings, where it comes from, and how to minimize it so that your voice is maximized relative to the noise. We'll touch on recognizing some different types of noise, such as fans vs. electrical hums and some easy ways to avoid recording them.

We'll also go through Audacity and some of the common Effects that are used, such as:

• Noise Removal
• Normalization
• Compression
• Amplification

I'll explain what the settings mean and what to set them on in typical situations, and try to give a rough guide to when to use each of them, and when its probably best not to use them. Keep in mind many of these Effects are done to the ear of the listener, and therefore are subjective - i.e. my ear may not agree with your ear.

Once we've gone through these things, we've have you ready to record and submit your 1-Minute Test. I'll show you how to do it, where to upload it, what username and password to use, and where and how to post the url to get comments. When you've gotten your 1-Minute Test OK'd, you'll be ready to enter the Public Domain, and I'll show you where to go to get started with recording - where to go to find things to record, and what your options are for choosing works in the Public Domain.

Once you're done with these steps, you will be Grade A Certified and 100% Qualified as a Librivox reader, and should be able to produce quality recordings that will endure in the Digital Cloud forever and bring pleasure and happiness to many listeners around the world!

Microphone Selection

The microphone is sometimes an obstacle. Without mandating a certain type of microphone, it can reasonably be stated that the better the microphone, the better you are going to sound, and the easier it will be to sound good.

Input Volume

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Noise

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Optimizing Your Environment

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Other Types of Noise

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Using Audacity

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Normalization

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Compression

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Noise Removal

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Amplification

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The 1-Minute Test

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