Self-recording an audiobook
July 6, 2019 11:57 AM   Subscribe

I’ve got a book I’d like to give to a cousin who can only do audiobooks, not print or ebooks. There isn’t an audiobook of this title, so I’m going to record it myself. What’s the best way for me to do this with the tools I already have? Looking for tips on the recording itself and the formatting into an audiobook file.

I have:
-an iPhone
-a chromebook
-a no frills Lenovo ThinkPad

The recipient has:
-an android phone

Ideally, I’d like for her to be able to listen to it like any other audiobook, but I’m also okay with sending it to her as podcast episodes if that simplifies things. But I don’t know how to do that either.
posted by ocherdraco to Computers & Internet (14 answers total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Get Audacity for the ThinkPad. Practice recording your voice in short bursts until you know how it works. Listen for quality and see if you need a microphone (it may not matter). Follow the instructions for saving things as MP3 (will involve downloading a thing and clicking a thing but it's pretty straightforward) Record the book in chapters and save each one with the chapter FIRST in the name of the file (i.e. you want the title to be 01HarryPotterandtheWhateverThing.mp3 and not HarryPotterandtheWhateverThing01.mp3). Zip all the filles together. Send a link to your friend on DropBox. Your friend can listen on the phone either direct from DropBox (I think) or by downloading into their music player of choice. There are, obviously, a number of ways to do this. This is the one I'd suggest.
posted by jessamyn at 12:18 PM on July 6, 2019 [8 favorites]


The LibriVox Forum has tons of great tips for recording audiobooks yourself. (LibriVox is a community for public-domain audiobooks)
posted by bcwinters at 12:32 PM on July 6, 2019 [8 favorites]


Indeed, you might want to consider contributing a short story to Librivox as practice.

If you do that, (if I recall correctly) you will be asked to upload a short excerpt first, so the community can give you feedback on whether your recording quality is acceptable. If you're willing to contribute a short story to Librivox, that could be a good way to get input on how your voice work sounds before you do the whole book for your cousin.
posted by kristi at 12:39 PM on July 6, 2019 [3 favorites]


  1. Get a USB or bluetooth microphone. Even a cheap USB headset will outperform any fancy system plugged into the analogue input jack.
  2. Get like a cricket clicker or something, and every time you mess up in your narration, either clap or use it to send a lot of very loud noise into your microphone directly. This will show up as visible spikes on the waveform in Audacity, visually indicating where you wanted to edit. Cut the mistake bits out from there, including the clicker noises. It's important you remove everything but the good vocals before you move on.
  3. If you have room noise, you may want to use one of the remover modules here. It's better to just do your recording in a quiet space surrounded by blankets or something, but we can't always do this. For persistent noise you'll probably select a part of the track where you weren't speaking, and the plugin will "subtract" that from the whole track. For spot noises, you may need to edit them out and re-record, or you may be able to selectively use the EQ to minimise them for a short span.
  4. open up one of the equaliser modules, and knock like 20db off of anything 70Hz or below. Electric mains hums tend to be in the 50 or 60Hz range (depending on country) and you actually don't need too much below 100Hz (which is largely inaudible anyway, though some audio engineers swear there are magical undertones around 85, so whatever).
  5. add a few dB (5 or 6?) to some of the frequencies from like 4000Hz-8000Hz. Just do what sounds good, as this tends to be dependent a bit on the pitch of the vocal track itself. It may start to sound more "crisp" to your ears at this point.
  6. Use a compressor plugin to make the volume more or less even across the whole track.
  7. Use a normaliser plugin to make the volume hit a standard level for everyone's playback devices (ever notice how radio ads are louder than the music? They're deliberately normalised higher to get your attention!)
Are you hoping to put music behind your reading? If so, make sure that you keep it reasonably soft, and that you use the EQ to keep it specifically out of your way from the like 400-2000Hz ranges (or wider). This means that tracks that provide low drones or high tweeting are usually okay (so long as they aren't annoying), but a lot of other stuff will clash with your voice unless you do some audio editing on it first.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:42 PM on July 6, 2019 [7 favorites]


Also, seconding providing a short sample to librivox first. Pick a short story off the gutenberg project or something else in the public domain, and see if you can get a small project to your liking before you tackle a whole novel!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:43 PM on July 6, 2019 [3 favorites]


2nding use a mic, rum-soaked hobo's suggestion makes sense. Do everything you can to diminish ambient sound.
posted by theora55 at 1:05 PM on July 6, 2019 [3 favorites]


Is there by chance a Kindle version of the book with Whispersync? That would provide an audio reading of the book without you having to record it yourself.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:18 PM on July 6, 2019 [1 favorite]


As someone who's narrated a few dozen audiobooks and a whole bunch of magazine content in a studio setting, the advice above is quite solid.

Definitely use a mic if at all possible -- I'd just add that one of the key things that will reduce ambient noise is making sure that you're extremely close to the mic (this way, you don't need to set the recording level as high).

Using Audacity and breaking down the files by chapter as jessamyn suggests is spot-on advice for usability of the recording.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:51 PM on July 6, 2019 [2 favorites]


One last bit of advice for narration is this: s l o w    d o w n! We read much faster than we speak, and it is tempting for those of us who are voracious readers to just plow through everything. Your instinct will be to read far faster than makes good audio.

Pop onto any storytelling podcast that uses professional narrators, like the Escape Artists podcasts or the District of Wonders family, and just try to time with a wall clock how many words they get in per minute. It's fewer than you'd even find standard for some people's conversational style! Just sit straight, relax, and make sure you have enough breath to let it last for a while without sighing.

Oh, and if you're getting close to the mic, make sure you have some sort of pop filter. We used to make our own out of wire coathangers and discarded hosiery, but if you don't want to faff with that then just make sure that the mic is slightly to the side of the direction of your breath when you say the words "Pop" or "Hiss" with emphasis on the 'p' and 's'.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:40 AM on July 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Oh, one more logistical thing about recording an audiobook: managing page turns.

If the last sentence on an odd-numbered page runs over to the next, you can write out the end of it on that odd page ahead of time. That way, you can end the sentence smoothly and naturally, and pause the recording before turning the page.

This eliminates distracting page-turning noise along with stumbles that might occur where you're trying to keep reading as you flip the page.

Keeping a finger premptively on the pause key will let you keep your eyes on the page while still letting you hit pause quickly, meaning less editing later. Audacity will let you pause the recording by pressing "P," and resume by pressing "R."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:56 AM on July 7, 2019


Response by poster: Thanks so much for all of this information! I poked around a bit and decided that the easiest thing for me is going to be using the Anchor podcasting app on my phone (I know my cousin already listens to podcasts, so she can take the RSS link and just start listening).

Here’s the first episode I’ve recorded. I’d appreciate feedback on the recording quality, pacing, etc. Right now I’m just using the intrinsic mic on my phone, but if y’all think the quality is too bad, I can certainly get a little lav mic to plug into my phone.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:00 PM on July 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: (My cousin is at camp this week, so if I’m good to go, I'm gonna try to bank several episodes so she can start listening when she gets back.)
posted by ocherdraco at 5:02 PM on July 7, 2019


I listened to the beginning and it sounds very good to my non-professional ears. You're a nice cousin BTW.
posted by mundo at 11:24 AM on July 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


Had a listen to a few spots in each of the files. Not bad! Pacing's good.

If you want to to cut down a little more on the ambient noise with your phone-only setup, make a little blanket fort to record in. Seriously. This is what a lot of podcasters do if they're recording on the road in a hotel room or other ad hoc location. It does quite a bit to damp out ambient noise.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:13 PM on July 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


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