Audiobook Mastering Advice Needing

W

way95

New member
So I got a great narrator to narrate an audiobook for me. Now I'm realizing that the quality of the recording is far from perfect. I have attached a sample below of the raw audio with just a slight expander applied. You'll notice that the sound is somewhat muffled, exaggerating the airy sounds like 's' and 'f'. I didn't notice it as much till I listened to it on cheap desktop speakers and found that I could hardly understand the words because the cheap speakers only muddied the sound more.

I'm at a loss to know how to effectively minimize the problem and I'd appreciate if some of you guys could share advice as to what frequencies to tweak in EQ etc.
Here's the sample:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hzd5dvqpfcsf4p4/Sample.wav?dl=0
Wayne
 
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How does this sound to you?
I spent all of ten seconds on it, but I think it's better.

The clip you attached just sounded a little bit muffled to me. Not awful, but a bit unclear.
 
The link to the original is gone so I can't compare.

There is a strange 'buzzy' kind of sound going on in Steeno's post. Did you notice that?
 
The guy does have a nice voice. Reminds me of the narrator in Civilization 5.

The recording is fuzzy, like jimmy said.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Yeah, it's not a great recording.
Either that or it's been processed.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the buzzing sound is there on the original as well.

The dood does have a great voice-over voice. Just needs to find the cause of that buzzy sounding crap.

What is this 'expander' you had on there way?

I'd say take that off and let's listen again.
 
Yeah, I hear the problem. That raw clip's not really much better.

It's like the esses are weird but not in the usual sibilant way. It's more like a fusty sound.
Apparently fusty is a word!? :eek:

I think the best you can do is some careful eq cuts and just hope you don't make the whole thing sound hollow.
 
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