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ACX and most other narrators and articles and blog posts will tell you that the average time spent on 1 hour of finished recording is 3 to 3.5 hours. If you have thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of pages to record that doesn’t work. You need to be down to .5 to 1.5 per hour of finished recording. Otherwise you are going to drive yourself batshit trying to get it all done. This inevitably means that you cannot sit and demaplify all the breathing. It’s tedious. It’s annoying, and eventually, you’re going to want to throw your computer through a wall.
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If you are contemplating recording your own audio books just know that the process is very tedious. I think it’s harder than writing the book in the first place, and for some of my books, it takes me just as long to record the audio as it did for me to write the initial book.
1. Figure out where you need your mic
You want to minimize echo and breathing while maximizing sound. This may mean that the mic is not directly in front of your face. You may need to put it off to the side. You test this by moving the mic and recording a paragraph and listening to it. When you get it to where you want it, leave the mic alone.
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The only way to keep breathing off the audio is to not record it in the first place. Now, you can give yourself motion sickness by rocking back and forth every time you need to breathe, which also means you need to focus on WHEN you need to breathe, which is a pain in the ass. You’ve not gonna be able to do it. Not reliably anyway. I briefly tried this cause the mic I have sounds best if you're on top of it. Unfortunately, if you are on top of your mic, it records every sound that comes out of your mouth. Even breathing through your mouth doesn’t stop it, especially if you have 24/7 allergies like I do. Forget it. I breathe like a freight train, and I’m always congested. It’s also time to record Little Bitey, so now I gotta find a way to truly keep that shit off the audio. In other news, AVIA I is done. The metric was - I'm sick of fucking playing with it.
Read more: Getting Better: How to Keep the Breathing Off the Audio
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Initially, I was going to tell you how to debreath your audio automatically, but the truth is that if you’re using Audacity, you can’t. I did find a way using the Auto Duck feature, but that put static in the middle of the vocals. The minute you hear it, you won’t use that method anymore. Just to be sure I had all the freaking information on debreathing, I talked to two sound people. The end result of those conversations – You can’t debreath the audio automatically, and you will drive yourself nuts doing it manually.
Read more: How to Make Passable Audio and not Spend Your Life DeBreathing
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So you’ve finally reached the point where you’re ready to create audio books. Maybe you’ve publish two or three books and they’re selling well, or maybe you’ve written more than 20, like me, and one of them finally decided to do well enough that you think audio books are the next logical step to increase your sales and give readers more options. Congratulations. You’re on to the next step of the publishing process, and you’re about to take extreme DIY self-publishing to the next ludicrous level.
First Things First: You Need:
A microphone that hooks to your computer – I chose the USB Microphone, TONOR Computer Cardioid Condenser PC Gaming Mic with Tripod Stand & Pop Filter. This microphone works with Windows and Linux. However, as you all know by now, I have a Linux machine, so the directions forthcoming were created while on that machine. It may be slightly different for Windows. The microphone I chose is USB, and it does not have any buttons or dials. If you want a gain/volume buttons on your mic, choose a different one.
Audacity – It’s a free download that can be used on Windows, Linux and Mac.
ACX Check – An add-on plugin for Audacity. Trust me, you need to download this and get it working. You’ll save yourself many many many many many many hours and headaches.
Read more: How to get an Audio Book to Pass the ACX Automated Checks