Adventures In Audio Recording VIII

CAN YOUR HEAR ME NOW?

Everyone knows that typing in all caps means the person is yelling/screaming at you over the internet. Naturally, most folks will tell the user to please lower their volume/tone as no one likes being screamed at. This is even more true when it comes to a person listening to an audiobook. If the narrator telling the tale is too loud or too soft it can really take the listener out of the story and annoy them to no end. And don't expect good reviews on Audible either. I've seen reviews that praise the story but tear into the performance with a vengeance. This in turn can ruin your chances to be hired to do audios of other peoples' books. 

So today we're going to get into volume and consistency in our recordings. Now if you're renting studio space and have someone else doing your editing, you're probably going to be okay. But if you're like me and doing your recording in the comfort of your own home/studio, as well as taking care of the editing afterwards, you have your work cut out for you.

Recently I was burning some CD's (using CD-R discs and Windows Media Player) for my mom who is not a computer user, thus she cannot go the Audible route. But she does love her CD's, so being the dutiful son I went to work burning her a copy of Helen's solo novel "Forever's Too Long" (Available at Amazon at this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RSGKTDF). Now this audio is not yet available in Audible because it is still going through Audible's "Review Process" (a topic for another entry in the "Adventures in Audio Recording Series").

After making sure all the files were in MP3 format (an Audible Submission Requirement), I burnt (copied) them onto CDs and then began running the discs through my CD player to make sure they were working. To my delight they worked beautifully, to my horror the volume levels between chapters was...

Yeah, the volume levels from one chapter to the next was shall we say NOT exactly even. Mind you I'm not saying they were off the scales or anything. Mind you I wasn't blowing anyone's hair back or anything like that.

But the volume was varying enough that at times a listener would need to adjust the volume up or down to hear properly. And let me tell you, if I were the listener I'd be getting damned annoyed if I kept getting caught up in the story and then pulled out to adjust the volume every so often. 

So here was a new problem I hadn't counted on. While technically each chapter met Audible's technical requirements, this varying volume level from one chapter to the next was definitely going to be a problem. A problem that could easily get the book rejected by Audible. So there was only one thing to do, I had to fix this problem. But how? I'm still quite the newbie when it comes to recording audiobooks. The answer was simple, it was time to hit YouTube once again for advice on how to adjust the volume on each individual chapter so they lined up just right.

TO BE CONTINUED....