December 8, 2009 at 7:20 pm (Baha'i, audiobooks)
Tags: audiobook publishing, Baha'i audiobooks, Baha'i Faith, CD replication, home recording, home recording studio, home studio, recording studio
My neck is stiff, my butt is numb, and my eyes are crossed from staring at the screen so long.
Today was all about investigating the ins and outs of CD replication.
There are two big players in this field, per my musician friend Annie: DiscMakers and Oasis. If you have a large order, they’re the way to go. But the minimum cost-effective order is 1000 units. Can I sell 1000 units of Advent? I hope so, eventually, but we don’t want to hang onto that level of inventory until we do! But just for grins, what if we could move 1000 units? What would that size order set me back initially?
Both companies came in fairly close to each other. From $3.80-4.60. Of course, that’s PER UNIT, so total outlay would be $3,800 – $4,600. OUCH! Or as my husband said, “Yeah, right!”
So I started doing some hard-core research on what it would take to produce professional quality CD’s myself. To make a long story short, here’s the tentative plan:
- Inkjet printable CD’s. There are automated CD burn/print systems starting at $1500. MUCH less than the $4k quoted above, but still way more than we want to pay right now. Next option, use the burner on my computer, and find a one-at-a-time CD inkjet printer. I found a sweet all-in-one that only cost $200, but then I stumbled onto something TRULY genius. I have an almost new Canon Pro9000 printer. I thought, “Maybe it can print on CD’s!” But no, none of the Canon printers in the US can print on CDs. HOWEVER, it turns out that the same model Canon printers sold in Europe CAN, and SO CAN THE PRINTERS SOLD IN THE USA! For whatever reason (patent infringement?) Canon disabled the function, but it’s still there. All we need to do is order a CD tray (for $26 bucks!), do some kind of rain dance with the buttons on the printer, and viola! Let’s recap: I went from $4k to $1500 to $200 to $26. Please join me as I bask in my internet researching prowess!
- Bulk packaging materials bought on the internet. I think I’ve settled on a 4-disc DVD case. Still not sure though, I could still decide on a jewel case. The problem is I need to include a small insert with the track numbers referenced back to the book.
- Cover design: I’m hoping that my awesome artist brother will be helping me out here, if he can only find the time to fit me in.
- The final touch: shrink-wrap! You can get a total CD shrink-wrap system for $250, but I think I can get by with bags, a heat gun and a cutter/sealer doohicky for $70. (I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s called, but I might be mistaken.) I could go even cheaper by trimming/sealing with a soldering gun and shrinking it in a toaster oven like I saw on YouTube, but there’s a limit to even my cheapness.
- Bar code: I’ll probably go with a bar code reseller (and get a single bar code for about $25), since getting my own company specific bar codes will cost more than $700.
That’s about it.
Not counting raw material costs, total equipment costs will be about $120 to get me started. Not bad, eh?
Yup. Now, let us bask!
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December 7, 2009 at 6:18 am (Baha'i, Recording, Verdanta, audiobooks)
Tags: voiceover, vocal strain, vocal pain
I managed to get an appointment with a speech pathologist on Friday.
It was… an unusual experience to say the least. But the first visit to any therapist often is, so I’m okay with that.
After a fairly extensive question and answer period, she had me take a deep breath, then exhale making an ssssssssss sound for as soon as I could without straining. I repeated this three times. Then I did the same thing making a zzzzzzzzzzzzz sound, then an ahhhhhh sound.
Next came reading a couple of paragraphs out loud.
Apparently just that was enough to help her draw some conclusions. I’m a thoracic breather. I breathe from my chest, instead of from my diaphragm. That doesn’t really surprise me, but what does surprise me is that this seems to be the primary cause of my problems.
She also told me that I speak at an appropriate pitch for my voice, not too high or too low. I’m very happy to hear that, because that sounds like something that would be really hard to change. Changing my breathing is going to be difficult enough!
The other thing she told me was that I have “lovely pitch.” I don’t know exactly what that means, but it sounds nice, and made me feel good, so I’ll go with it.
Now for the “what now?”
- No shouting. Ever. That’s going to be tough at the kids soccer games!
- Hydrate today like we’re going to run out of water tomorrow! At least 2.5L of water every day. That’s a lot of potty stops!
- Use a humidifier in my bedroom. Luckily I still have a good humidifier from when the kids were babies, when putting a humidifier in their room made us feel like we had done something to help our poor widdle kiddies feel better.
- Diaphragmatic breathing. You’d think this would be easy. It’s the way we all started out in life, from that very first scream after exiting the womb, but for some reason it no longer feels natural.
- 20/20/20 breaths. Breathe in for a count of 20, hold for 20, and exhale for 20. She flat-out told me I wouldn’t be able to do this, and she was right. But it gives her a way to measure my progress, assuming I’ll improve over time.
- Limit conversation. No long phone calls, no recording (for the time being), as little talking as possible. (A neat trick for any mother.)
I think that’s more or less it.
The good news is that she said if I follow her instructions, I should be feeling better by next week, at least terms of the pain. I’ll keep you posted.
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December 1, 2009 at 7:45 pm (Baha'i, audiobooks)
Tags: recording studio, audiobook publishing, home recording, home studio, home recording studio, Baha'i Blogs, Baha'i Faith, Baha'i writings, Baha'i audiobooks, voiceover, Audio mastering
As I noted in my previous post, I finished my file last week. I took the holiday weekend off, just because I really needed to. But now I’m ready to get back at it!
The question is, back at what? I’ve been recording/editing/recording/editing for so long, I really had to stop and think about what comes next.
I started by calling my sound engineer and figuring out what format he wants the book in. Final verdict: ~5 minute tracks, wav format, 16 bit, 44.1kHz. Five minutes so that you can skip chapter through it, rather than having to rely solely on fast forward or rewind, as you would for an old audio cassette tape.
You know what? It takes a very long time to cut up a file like that. It’s not as simple as chop it every five minutes; you have to search through and find “natural” break points. In my case, Advent doesn’t have chapters or sections, so I had to look for the beginning of paragraphs. Then you have to export each mini-file or track one at a time, keeping track of disc and track numbers. It’s not hard, just a bit tedious.
But at least that part is finally done.
And now I’ve sent the whole thing off to the Baha’i Review Office, so hopefully I’ll hear back soon.
I also need to give the whole tracked book one more listen to make sure I didn’t screw anything up while I was doing all this. There’s lots of little steps, and if you enter one number wrong, you could mess up a track, by a little or a lot.
After that, I’m not completely sure. We’ll all have to just wait and see!
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November 24, 2009 at 7:35 am (Baha'i, audiobooks)
I’m done! I’m done I’m done I’m DONE!
Well, I’m done editing, but that’s pretty darn HUGE!
The final track is 3 hrs, 50 minutes. About 2.5 minutes per page, which is about right.
I’ve already sent it off to the Review Board, so we’ll see what happens next.
I also have to contact my recording engineer to see if he can help me master it.
I can’t believe I’m finally done editing! I know if I listen to it again, I’ll just find more little things to fix, but I think all the big stuff is done.
I feel like celebrating, but it’s 12:30 in the morning, and everyone’s asleep. I guess that’s where I should be, so I’ll leave it there for now.
Did I mention I’m done?
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September 21, 2009 at 7:05 am (Baha'i, Verdanta, audiobooks, business)
Good news! I’ve finished recording and editing the last ten pages of Advent of Divine Justice!
Unfortunately, I’m no longer happy with much of the rest of the book, so I’ve already started over.
Fortunately, it’s going MUCH faster than before.
If all goes according to my intentions, (notice I didn’t say, “according to my plan?”) I should finish recording and editing in about three weeks.
Of course after that, there’s mastering, getting a website online to sell it (Hans is working on it!), potentially getting hardcopy CD’s made to sell through conventional outlets, and who knows what else.
Can you believe it? I’m getting close to having a tangible product! One which was born “potentially” during a walk I took two years ago!
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September 3, 2009 at 6:12 am (Audio equipment, Baha'i, Home studio, Recording, audiobooks)
I hired an audio engineer – Steve from The Audio Suite – to come to my house, examine my setup, and help me figure out what – if anything – I could do to improve things.
One of the pieces of advice he gave me (among many) was to import several audiobooks into my editing software (Cubase), and listen to them through my monitors and headphones. Although I listen to audiobooks all the time (much to my kids’ annoyance!) I had never thought to listen to them through my recording/editing equipment. It turns out, it’s very different. About half of the audiobooks left in all the mouth pops, breaths and “stickiness” that I had been working so hard to take out.
What Steve told me, and which I didn’t really believe until I listened to them through my equipment, is that the ideal to strive for is not perfection, but ”naturalness”. And all conversations naturally contain mouth pops, breaths and “stickiness.” We hear them all the time, and ignore them with no problem.
It was true, when I listened through my monitors, I heard all of the things which I had very slowly and painstakingly been editing out of my own files. I had achieved a level of perfection in the recording that couldn’t possibly exist in real life, even if I had the most well-lubricated mouth on earth, simply because I do have to breathe. And here were all these award winning audiobooks, getting great reviews, and yet including pops and clicks that sounded gigantic on my monitors, but which I had never once noticed while listening on my iPod.
While this may seem like a small, relatively insignificant thing, it is in fact, huge.
I’ve been spending something like an hour editing every single minute of my recording. With a 60:1 ratio, I’m not going to finish anytime this century!
Now that I have officially received permission from a professional set of ears, I’m going to force myself to relax my standards. I know it’s not going to be easy, but I simply have to do it.
Wish me luck!
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May 14, 2009 at 4:27 am (Baha'i, Home studio, Recording, Verdanta, audiobooks)
I’ve made several changes to the way I record. Other than the headphones, everything is the same, I’ve just changed some of the settings.
1. Before: I had dropped the mic down below mouth level to try to eliminate plosives (hard B’s, P’s and T sounds). It had reduced the plosives, but hadn’t completely eliminated them. After: I raised the mic back up to mouth level but shifted it to the side, at a 45 degree angle. The plosives are still there (so Hans tells me) but to my ear, are much better.
2. Before: I didn’t know what those little switches on my microphone were for, so I simply didn’t use them. After: I looked up the specs on my Sterling Audio ST66 microphone and discovered that I had a 10dB attenuation pad and a Switchable 75Hz, 12dB/octave high-pass filter. Did that make any more sense to you than it did to me? I did a little digging, and figured out what those two terms meant. It turns out, an attenuation pad means I can put the mic in front of a REALLY loud sound source, like a drum, and it will be able to record the sound without distorting it. As a lowly little voiceover, this was NOT something I needed use, so I left it turned off. The other switch is called a high-pass filter, because it’s a filter that lets everything higher than it’s threshold pass, while everything below it gets rejected. In this case, anything below 75 Hz (somewhat lower than my voice can go) gets rejected. That sounded good to me! I switched that baby on, and on it’s going to stay!
3. Before: I tried to use the compression and eq on my audio interface. After: I realized that I really didn’t know what I was doing and decided it might be better not to mess with the recording up front, but rather to wait and do all my audio processing after the fact where it’s reversible, using software plugins. (Obviously, I also had to learn how to use software plugins, but that’s a discussion for another night.)
These three changes have made a big difference on the noise floor of my recording, as well as on it’s overall quality.
Now my big dilemma: although better is good when it comes to short projects, better means different, and different is terrible for long audio narration. This probably mens I’ll be re-recording the beginning of Advent.
Ah well, that’s how it goes, doesn’t it? Three steps forward, two steps back. But in the end, all forward movement is a good thing, and I’ll just have to be satisfied with that.
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May 9, 2009 at 3:55 am (Baha'i, Verdanta, audiobooks, business)
I was kind of feeling sorry for myself this afternoon. I had asked to be relieved of some (but not all) of my responsibilities in the teaching field so I could concentrate on Verdanta. But since then, I’ve received NO calls or emails regarding the target neighborhood I used to be the Neighborhood Coordinator of. Nothing. Nada. I was thinking “Gosh, I didn’t mean that I didn’t want anyone to call me ever again.” But then I realized it was probably just as well, since I have been putting so much time into Verdanta. (30+ hrs/week, on top of my full time Mommy gig!)
That’s when it hit me. Hans showed up about the same time as I handed over the Neighborhood Coordinator responsibilities to my replacement.
Do you remember when I blogged about feeling like the tortoise? When I prayed for guidance and my answer was “Be patient… It will become clear”?
Well, it just did.
Apparently, it’s time for the tortoise to take a break so the hare can get busy! The difference is that this time, I know what I need to be doing!
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May 7, 2009 at 3:33 am (Baha'i, Verdanta, audiobooks, business)
I have a new cohort in crime!
It turns out, someone - in Budapest, Hungary of all places! - has simultaneously been doing what I’ve been blogging about for the past eight months. Who knew?
I was a little nervous when I first found out about him, as he was when he found out about me. Oh no! Competition! But I think it’s going to be all right. It was hard feeling like I was the only one in the world doing this, a sentiment that he shared as well. Having a partner of sorts feels… comforting. Especially when you consider that there’s a third partner in all this – the one who gave us the same idea, and then when the time was right, helped us find each other.
His name is Hans Peterson, and he actually has a year head start on me. He already has an active website, and has been producing and publishing podcasts to get experience. Check out his site, it’s called Voices Divine.
You may be hearing my voice on there soon as well. Remember when I said it didn’t look like Baha’u'llah wanted me to get distracted by podcasting? Good thing I listened. I would have wasted a lot of time trying to get the website part up and running – and now I don’t have to! Providing podcast material will be good practice for me, in much smaller, more manageable bites. But you’ll hear more about that later!
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April 10, 2009 at 11:15 pm (Baha'i, Verdanta, audiobooks, business)
After I received the feedback from the recording engineer, I made some adjustments, and started over. To date, I’ve recorded and edited the first 30 pages of Advent of Divine Justice.
Last week, I asked my toughest critic to take a listen to my latest recording. I got a call from him later that morning. He said, “It sounded really good. The pacing was good, there was no background noise in the silences, and you didn’t over-emote, ” which was something he had pointed out in a much earlier version.
I then sent if off to the recording engineer again, who said that from a recording standpoint, it was good.
So. Now that recording engineer has OK’d it, and my husband has put his stamp of approval on it, 
I’m wondering if there’s anyone else out there who would like to be a test subject and take a listen? I’ll take the first five people who are willing to listen carefully to what I’ve done and offer their honest, carefully thought out opinion. (Specific likes, specific dislikes, suggestions…)
If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, don’t delay! Contact me today!
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