Tai Manivong's Blog

Building a new vocal booth part 3

I finally was able to cover the gaps in the vocal booth door. I used rock wool and moving blankets. no more light is getting through the door, but it is by no means air tight.

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I was a bit disappointed that adding plywood only added -2 db to my noise level . I guess in the future, I will need to invest in a whisper room or something similar. Although my noise floor is acceptable for audiobook standards, I'd rather have it at least -75db. Studio specifications were tested from a raw audio sample sent to an audio engineer.

Studio specs before:

Levels: No problem here at all, peaks about -7dB is perfect Noise: -63dB RMS room tone is good, and it sounds clean and quiet. Mic technique: Very good! Full, rich, clear, present with minimal plosives (heard 1 or 2 so move mic 2" up to reduce them). Acoustics: GREAT, the space is dry with no echo or resonances.

Studio specs after:

Recording levels: Spot on for a raw audio sample Noise floor: -65dB RMS is quite acceptable, no issues here Mic technique: Excellent, focused, clear, no plosives. The mic is very bright and sibilant sensitive, so EQ in software will be useful to compensate. At 51 seconds you move further away from the mic, so be consistent as possible. Acoustics: No issues when proper mic placement is observed.

While I didn't get the results I was looking for, I am really proud of the work I did in creating the booth and am excited to start recording more audiobooks in the new year.

What I’ve been working on

This week has been busy, but I managed to revise 3 chapters of book 4 of The Dragon Keeper Chronicles. It's coming along nicely. I hope to release it in March of 2024.

Looking to get a few ARC readers with this release. It's not somthing I have done before, so I thought I'd see how it goes. It also gives me more motivation to write knowing I have to get this book out to ARC readers 3 months in advance.

I am also looking forward to revealing book 4 cover art soon!

The End of NaNoWriMo

So I didn't win the challenge of 50,000 words in 30 days. As I look back at the challenge I can see more preparation is needed for writing a novel in November.

This year, I volunteered and was nominated to be a board member for our Home Owners Association right after declarant control ended. I was not prepared for the amount of work that would take, and that took up most of my free time. I also took on the role of treasurer and had to sift through mountains of accounting paperwork and created a website. So I take 17,891 words as a win. I fully intend to do the challenge again. Maybe even another month of the year like February or March.

Building a new vocal booth part 2

Finally after a week and some days, I finally had some time to work on my vocal booth.

I started with making the walls. Each wall was filled with Rockwool safe and sound and then covered with insulation foam board. Last I stapled on a moving blanket to cover the wall.

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Yes, sadly while taking apart the old wall , I tore a moving blanket. But Its fine with the insulation board under.

Next I began making the ceiling. Putting it together wasn't bad, but pushing it up on top was hard when are doing it alone. (Single mom problems), and also I could have asked for help, but I just do things in the moment.

Ok back to the top. It fit perfectly, 3" down into the booth. Very proud of this moment.

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Next I worked on the door which was created similarly to the walls. First I made a frame with 2x4's.

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I think it looks good for a particle board wall. Maybe I will cover it with moving blankets in the future. Yes the cuts are crooked, cut it using a jig saw.. ‍♀️

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The only problem is that there a gaps in the door that will let sound in. So now I need to research a method to cover these spaces. In the next post I will share my solution and the setup for my microphone, computer and digital audio workstation (DAW).

Building a new vocal booth... part 1

About 8 months ago, I built my first vocal booth. It was made with some 2x1x3 beams and insulated with rockwool then covered with moving blankets. Then the walls were put together in my spare bedroom. The booth was ok. I had a decent noise floor most of the time. I think it was around -63db. But, I wanted to get it down some more so that any outside noise wouldn't make such a big impact on the sound.

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Now as you can see the walls probably don't block enough noise. I decided to try so oriented strand board. to make the walls have more mass and hopefully block out some noise. I started to create some walls that will fit like puzzle pieces together.

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The next step will be to add the insulation and moving blankets. Then create the door and see how soundproof. The booth will be. I need to buy some more insulation and a few more 2x4's to put on tops and bottoms. I left 4 inches on the top so that when I build the ceiling it will fit right in ... like a puzzle. Part 2 coming soon......

It's hard to write words when you work

I wrote 586 words last night and starting thinking... Its really not that easy to write a lot of words after a long day of work. I guess I can't expect to be too productive during the weekdays.

700 hundred words last night..

I didn't get to my 2000 last night but that's ok. I consider 700 a win. I was listening to Michael La Ronn's podcast The Writer's Journey and he was saying it's better to have a range then a set number to aspire to and I think that is a great idea. SO instead of trying 2000 a day I can say between like 1000 and 2000, or since i am just getting back into the swing of things 500-1000 for now and hopefully once I am constantly writing everyday again I can get my words up to like 1,500-2,500 or something like that. If you haven't had a chance to listen to the Writer's Journey, you should definitely check it out, lots of information on writing.

ON voice over news. I am taking a week off from audiobook narration so that I can reinforce my booth. It is at like -63 noise floor some of the time but I need to get it down more so that recording will be more professional. I am thinking some plywood on the outside walls. I haven't talked about my booth, but I made a booth with some 2"x3'x6' boards and insulated it with Rock wool safe and sound insulation and for the most part its really good. I still think to much outside noise gets in. I don't have the funds for a whisper room or high level soundproofing right now so hoping adding some layers to the walls helps make it more sound proof.

NaNoWrimo Progress

Today is 11/5/23 and I have currently written 2,757 words in my work in progress for NaNoWriMo. I want to try and finish another 3,300 today. If you are not familiar with NaNoWriMo it is the National Novel Writing Month challenge where you have to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. I you join the official challenge you can get a certificate and submit your book for rewards. However, I am just doing this as a personal goal.

Back to writing

I started listening to more writing podcast and am getting back into writing after taking a long hiatus. My life changed a lot this year as I left my teaching career and had to look for new avenues of income. I am now back to focusing on writing and my goal for the upcoming year is to write 3 novels.

What I learned Recording my first audiobook

I am so glad I started my journey as an audiobook narrator. Who knew one could have so much fun sitting in a booth creating character voices and telling a story. I am learning so much each time I go in to record. I thought i'd start sharing on my journey. Why not a video blog you ask? Not ready for that step yet. Anyway, here are some of the things I learned when I recorded my first audiobook.

Give yourself more than a month.

My first accepted audition was on Findaway voices. I was super excited and thought, I have some time on my hands, ,I could do this in a month. So that is how long I put on the contact. I scheduled the first 15 min check a week later. About a week in, lots of personal and job stuff began popping up. I finished recording everything in the month, but had a lot of editing to do. I missed my own deadline. I did write to the rights holder and let them know it would be late. They were fine with the extension, but I really feel like I should not have put them or myself in that situation. Also feeling rushed during editing made it that much more stressful. So lesson learned, even if I get really efficient at editing and recording, I am still going to give myself at least 2 months for each audiobook. If I finish early, everyone wins!

2. When mastering render a copy.

So when I had to deliver my 15 min sample chapter, I edited, mastered and uploaded. It was approves so I went to record the rest of the chapter. I couldn't because the mastered audio portion could not be changed. I had to record everything over again losing lots of valuable time. I leaned to render, and using Reaper, open a new project tab for mastering. This has helped me and I do all my auditions this way as well. Maybe in a few months i will find a better way to do this. (I did end up paying for stacks (Fx Chain) and mastering setup for Reaper because I wanted my book to sound the best it could be at my current level.

3. Slow down and edit while recording

I read the book chapters, uploaded to Pozotron (a proofing software) and then went back in the booth to edit. That took a very long time. I think on some chapters had over 60 mistakes. Now, I listen to each paragraph or group of paragraphs back and correct as I am recording. It doesn't eliminate all the errors, but it helps a lot. I also edit out gaps and spaces so pozotron doesn't add those in. So far it's been working.

I think those are my big takeaways. If I think of more I will add them to this blog later.