October 27, 2021

New Course Announcement: ACX Audiobook Production Using Audacity (016)

7 minutes

I have been buried these last couple of months with creating a new online, on-demand video course called ACX Audiobook Production Using Audacity. I'm happy to say that this shiny new course has been rolled out onto the showroom floor as of this morning and it's ready for public consumption. Here's a feel for some of the topics in this new course:

The ACX Requirement for Room Tone
The ACX Standard for Noise Floor
The ACX Standard for File Size
The ACX Standard for RMS Loudness
The ACX Standard for Sample Rate
How to set Audacity Preferences for ACX audiobook recording
Simple definitions of Noise Floor, Sample Rate, RMS Loudness, and Bit Rate
How to fix narration mistakes as they happen using Punch and Roll Record
How to apply Equalization and when
How to apply Compression
How to level your audio using RMS Loudness to meet ACX requirements for RMS
How to apply the Limiter effect to meet ACX standards
How to apply the De-Clicker effect to reduce/remove mouth sounds
The importance of running Audacity's ACX Check Plugin
How to build and run a Macro to automate our process
How to clean up breath sounds using Punch Copy/Paste
How to clean up breath sounds using Attenuation
Content editing and final MP3 export
How to meet the ACX requirements for MP3 file size and bit rate

The course consists of 19 videos, 8 practice assignments, 9 downloadable resources, and 5 quizzes to track your progress. We don't cover things like mic technique, mic placement, vocal technique or inflection, or room conditioning like soundproofing, etc. There are unlimited resources for those important subjects out there and I supply you with the links to several in the last lecture. Instead, we stay fixed on Audacity and how to make it work for us in producing great audiobooks that will pass ACX's requirements. We don't venture into 3rd party software or 3rd party plugins or effects. Instead, I show you how to create exceptional audiobooks for free, using Audacity. Here's the 50% off link to the course I mention in this episode. That's only $12.99 and the link is good for 30 days!