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Audiobook Production

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Anyone serious about doing their own audiobooks… Izotopes RX Pro is just amazing with mouth pops and general quality control. And you can now pay a monthly package, hammer out the final edits on a book in that time, and cancel. Rinse and repeat. Whispers of Ghosts will be a superior product and RX will save me 100+ hours in edit. Gods only know how long it would take me to actually do what RX does, but I know I’d be insane by the end, heh heh. Less time, superior final product… Eeyeah. Damn. I blew a lot of hours doing manual corrections that for some reason Adobe Audition nor anything else I found couldn’t handle well, but at least now I know.
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
Doing an audio book is a totally different skillset than writing. I also hate the sound of my voice so having to hear my voice so often to edit it would be literal torture.

I have a pal who does audiobooks for a living so....I'd just pay them to do it. I get wanting to do everything yourself to have all the creative control and to save money, but are you really saving money if you're buying equipment and spending your precious hours on doing something you're not that great at instead of at the thing you are good at (writing)?
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Yup, I’ll do it myself, LOL. One part control freak, I suspect, and part of why I really didn’t go heavy after trad publishing. I can only write and record so many hours per day, and honestly, I didn’t spend much on equipment, mainly because I had a “safe” room built in my basement, so I had a good space to start with, LOL. It’s a free-time thing, and I can control the release schedule once I am caught up, whereas with hiring anyone good, I’m at the mercy of their schedules. Plus, I already experienced Price Creep with a narrator, and my intent is a long series, so the only way to guarantee future books have the same narrator is to do it myself. In fact, I kind of enjoy it, so there’s the final nail in the coffin of paying some bugger to narrate my books, unless of course a publisher swoops me up with a deal I can’t refuse, then they can pick the narrator, heh heh.

It turns out, that despite having hated my voice with cheap recording setups, once with a better rig I my voice was just fine, and I even understood why some folks told me a had radio voice back when younger. It’s even better since I can clean it up more than a great many paid narrators bother to with.

Doing an audio book is a totally different skillset than writing. I also hate the sound of my voice so having to hear my voice so often to edit it would be literal torture.

I have a pal who does audiobooks for a living so....I'd just pay them to do it. I get wanting to do everything yourself to have all the creative control and to save money, but are you really saving money if you're buying equipment and spending your precious hours on doing something you're not that great at instead of at the thing you are good at (writing)?
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
Yup, I’ll do it myself, LOL. One part control freak, I suspect, and part of why I really didn’t go heavy after trad publishing. I can only write and record so many hours per day, and honestly, I didn’t spend much on equipment, mainly because I had a “safe” room built in my basement, so I had a good space to start with, LOL. It’s a free-time thing, and I can control the release schedule once I am caught up, whereas with hiring anyone good, I’m at the mercy of their schedules. Plus, I already experienced Price Creep with a narrator, and my intent is a long series, so the only way to guarantee future books have the same narrator is to do it myself.


How long does it take you to record, say 10,000 words? Once you've recorded yourself, is there much work editing? I've been thinking of doing this with a 9,000+ word novelette I've written.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Hmm, never really broken things down like that, I’ve chapters 5k, and I finish one of those in a day when my voice is functioning… that is, with the Izotope RX software, because I am picky about sibilant S’s and mouth clicks, which drive me crazy listening to someone narrate on headphones.

The general guideline from ACX is you spend about 4x the time in reading and editing as as the final product. So, 1 hour of final product is 4 hours of work… However, I think this is over-the-top once you know what the hell you’re doing. There is a learning curve, if one isn’t in that world of audio… like me!

With Izotope RX and Adobe Audition’s built in gear, I probably spend about 2-2.5hours in production time for every hour of finished product, compared to 4-5 before RX. Using Audition to get rid of mouth clicks was TEDIOUS! even if it was one click (and that feature is amazing), you still had to find and highlight every annoying spot without getting too much, and when one sentence might have 4-5 clicks… Yikes.

One major time sink that is hard to avoid, unless you are a perfect reader, is going through and setting the timing between sentences and paragraphs. Not hard at all, but tedious.

If you do it and use Audition and/or Izotope’s RX, you can feel free to ask me about how to approach various issues and I’ll save you many hours of searching the net and trial and error. A quiet space is the one thing I can’t help with, but Audition is real good at getting rid of constant background noises.

EDIT: That time estimation doesn’t include just going through and giving a good listen to the whole thing to check for little pronunciation errors and other oddities.


How long does it take you to record, say 10,000 words? Once you've recorded yourself, is there much work editing? I've been thinking of doing this with a 9,000+ word novelette I've written.
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Actually, the process itself might make for an interesting post for Mythic Scribes if enough people are interested. Show the basic process of reading and cleanup using those two applications.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
Actually, the process itself might make for an interesting post for Mythic Scribes if enough people are interested. Show the basic process of reading and cleanup using those two applications.
I'd be interested. Also in the choice of software. Did you ever try using other software? Would this be possible just using the preloaded software on my Mac (Garageband or iMovie)?
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Eeeeyes, it is possible. Let me see: I tried Garageband, Avid’s Pro Tools, Audacity, and at least a couple of others. Believe me, I tried NOT to go with Audition and I could’ve gone without, but at a certain cost to ease of use and quality. That said, with Izotope’s RX in hand I might have found my way to a cheaper option than Audition… probably Protools. But, since I also use Photoshop and InDesign at times, I end up biting the bullet for months at a time and taking on the Adobe package, LOL. To be blunt, I’d recommend doing a month of Audition to lay your tracks, then a month of RX to help clean them up, if you want high end product, unless you have a perfect narrator’s voice and a high end sound room. That would change things, LOL. But if going with a home studio and if your voice does little annoying things? Yeah.

For instance, outside of mouth clicks which plague me, in part I think because my jaw will click from breaking it many years ago, I’ll get a crackle to my voice in odd spots for no apparent reason and I don’t even notice until playback. Highlight it in Audition, hit the autoheal, and bam! The shit is gone. I can’t explain how, it just does. The same thing works on mouth clicks, but it’s waaaay slower than RX. None of the other applications do what Audition does. Same goes for RX.

Another tidbit… with Audition (or other higher end app) I think it will be much easier to manipulate your recordings to fit into the ACX/Audible standards of volume ranges, etc. I never got that far with garageband. However, you could also send someone like me a track and I could set it up to ACX standards in about 30 seconds and send it back, LOL. So, it all depends on what you want and have access to.
 
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