Audiobooks - make money by reading literary materials. How to record an audiobook at home A program for creating a high-quality audiobook

Download the Koobaudio program from here (at the time of writing this article, version 2.0.12 was released). To work, you also need to install Microsoft .NET Framework 4, if for some reason you don’t already have it, and the speech engine Acapela Elan TTS 5.1 Nicolai. Immediately after installation, the main program window will open:

In “Basic Settings” you need to specify the directory for saving finished audio files, for example D:\audiobooks:

On the “Audio File Format” tab, you can select the appropriate codec (mp3 or aac):

If necessary, you can enable additional functions on the “Audio Signal Processing” tab, but this will increase the size of the output audio file. You don't need to change anything else in the settings.

To import a book, click the button in the left corner of the toolbar and select a file in one of four formats (txt, djc, rtf, fb2):

The “Book Import Window” will open:

In order for the program to pronounce words correctly, you need to import an accent dictionary. Then click “OK” and wait until the program processes the text (the waiting time depends on the size of the text and the dictionary):

That's all. You can now listen to the resulting audiobook or import it into an audio file. If in source text There are headings of different levels, the program itself will divide the book into separate chapters. By using context menu you can manually specify from which and to which chapter you want to convert the book:

As you can see, making an audiobook is not at all difficult. Happy listening.

The person who wrote the text has a desire to read it to the listeners personally. He cannot get rid of this desire, spending sleepless nights in thought and tormented by the inability to realize the desire in life. Readers categorically do not want to come to meetings with the author, making him suffer even more. It’s not their fault, they are busy people, they don’t have time to go to meetings with a little-known writer.

Is there a way out? Eat! You can create an audio version of your immortal work and post it on the Internet for everyone to read and listen to. Many people believe that this is only accessible by investing a lot of money and spending long hours in a recording studio. I should make you happy - it can be done with my own hands in a cozy home environment. To work, you will need headphones with a microphone, a computer and a couple of programs for working with sound. Naturally, you will need enthusiasm and a burning desire to reach the end of this new adventure for you.

The Samplitude Music studio 2014 program is suitable for recording and editing sound. It takes some getting used to, but in principle it is a fairly simple and convenient program.

For final output to a file, I recommend using the Sound Forge Audio Studio program. It allows you to add volume to the sound by adding some echo, simulating a recording in the room. This gives the sound richness and color. In addition, it will help you level and set the volume level, as well as obtain an output audio file of optimal quality and size in the format you need.

Effects, additional sounds and music can be found on the Internet - there is a lot of this stuff nowadays, it’s difficult to choose what you need from the variety, but there is plenty to choose from. Don't forget about copyrights if you plan to sell your creations.

You need to immediately understand that if the entire text is read in one large piece, it will be read by ONE person, one character, one emotion, no matter how hard you try to highlight it when reading. You need to be a great actor to sight-read the entire text at once. This is difficult for an ordinary person to do.

Practice speaking like your hero, imagine him completely, enter the image of “an old man sitting in a chair with a pipe in his hands,” “a young girl full of life,” “a moth flying into the room.” Right now you will understand that it is very difficult to switch from one image to another on the fly - this requires many years of actor practice or natural talent.

Practice the speech of each character so that you can do it easily and naturally, otherwise you will inevitably fall on your own character of speech in each subsequent fragment. Don’t try to read everything for one character first, and then for another, hoping in this way to avoid the problems of getting out of character. Each scene has its own emotion, it is difficult to remember all the emotions at once.

You will have to switch automatically to the author's speech, but this is quite easy, because it is as simple as “letting go of the reins.” If the author's speech comes in a large fragment, you can make it a separate block.

Please note that in the audio version the author's speech may be shortened if it contains something that is already clear from live speech. It makes no sense to say “the old man coughed” if in the recording the old man does just that. Therefore, review the text again before reading and cross out what is unnecessary.

So, about blocks. Your text needs to be dissected, that is, prepared for reading. The fact is that reading from a sheet and speaking at the same time, maintaining the desired character, is difficult - this has been tested in practice. Therefore, regular text formatting will not work for you. It is advisable to use a larger font and clearly separate blocks from each other with large separators. Believe me, you will want to close your eyes altogether in order to more accurately convey the character and emotions of the hero, but then you will definitely fall out of the author’s text, unless, of course, you have learned it by heart.

Prepare the text for reading by performing special formatting. This will save you a lot of time and feelings.

Having turned on the recording of the text from the microphone, start reading, trying to maintain character and volume. No need to whisper, no need to shout, it’s better to stick to approximately the same volume level, using the stage techniques of “loud whispering” and “quiet screaming” :). Please note that you will then need to “assemble” the final audio clip from various pieces and the issue of volume uniformity will arise. full height. Additionally, there is natural noise from the equipment you use to record audio, as well as natural noise from the environment around you, and your voice needs to be louder than that.

Practice your reading pace: don’t rush, don’t slow down unnecessarily, choose a reading pace that suits the meaning and essence of your story. This applies both to the work as a whole and to the voicing of individual characters.

It is advisable to have something soft behind your back that muffles the sound: a carpet, a curtain, a special sound-absorbing coating. All this will improve the quality of the final audio clip, but you shouldn’t go to extremes - after all, you don’t plan to record a MASTER level video! This is your personal creation and desire for self-realization. The main thing is to do all the work from start to finish!

The microphone is on, recording is in progress! Learn to cope with the anxiety of this fact. Nothing catastrophic will happen if you do something wrong: you sneeze, miss a word, lose your voice, lose the mood, or a cat suddenly sits in front of you. And this happens, because the people and animals around you love you and miss you!

You have started reading a block of text! There was a glitch during the reading process - no problem, just repeat this fragment again without stopping writing the text. If necessary, do this several times, separating the fragments with silence - this will help you later easily visually trim off the bad piece when editing the sound. The fact is that “entering” reading is an emotionally difficult moment. It is much easier to “jump into cold water” and “swim” further. And the volume level is already stabilized, there is no characteristic rise in the voice at the “input”. For a professional actor this is not a problem, but for a beginner it is the scourge of God!

For each recording, feel free to open a new track in your recording program. The excess can then be removed, but maneuvering fragments of the recording within one track is much more difficult.

Having finished recording a fragment, move it to the desired position in the time plan, so that later the audition will take place in a normal time frame. Usually, by default, all recordings on a new track start “from the stove,” that is, from the zero mark.

Before recording a new track, temporarily turn off all the others so that they do not disturb you while recording, otherwise you will hear them in your headphones. This is usually done by turning on the “Mute” checkbox. The exception is something in the background that you want to adjust to, or a simultaneous conversation for which it is important when exactly the other person cuts in. When writing a text, it looks like a broken dialogue, but in life it’s quite normal for people to speak at the same time. You have the opportunity to implement this, but there is one unpleasant feature - you need to really, really transform yourself so that the listener can distinguish your characters in the stream of speech. Otherwise, everything will merge into one voice stream. In the text it’s easier in this regard - I just broke up the dialogue and the reader himself will complete everything in his head.

So, you have spoken all the fragments of text, you have a huge set of tracks and recording fragments. It's time to arrange them carefully on a time scale (time plan) and turn on all the tracks for playback. You don’t need any effects or backgrounds yet, just your voice and nothing more.

If you have several options for scoring a fragment within one track, choose the best one and limit the fragment to only that section. If the error is inside the best fragment, you will have to use the services special program on fine work with audio recordings. Usually, audio editing programs do not have great capabilities in terms of editing recordings - at most, you can trim a fragment from left to right, although in principle you can sometimes even cut out a piece from a recording.

If the voiceover options for a fragment are located on different tracks, listen to each fragment first and leave only the track with the highest quality sound on. Before the final assembly, you can remove unnecessary tracks, but sometimes it happens that a previously rejected fragment turns out to be better than the selected one. Therefore, do not rush to delete your work.

You collected all the fragments into a single sequence and listened to it several times. Please note that it is up to you to create pauses between fragments!!! This is exactly what many people forget about when gluing fragments together end-to-end. In ordinary life, a person needs time to comprehend what he has heard and prepare an answer, except, perhaps, for true choleric people who are ready to talk continuously. This is also character and this must be taken into account when assembling the sequence. Play with pauses, imagine exactly how the dialogue is going, feel the internal rhythm of your narrative.

A lot depends on the internal rhythm of the story. We say “at the tempo of a waltz”, “a solid hopak”, “at the rhythm of a tango” and the like, without thinking that we are talking about the tempo inherent in the event. It is this tempo that the musical background should correspond to, the background, musical accompaniment to your story. But it’s difficult to choose the right musical backing, so immediately decide for yourself – do you need it?

If you decide to add a musical background, you will certainly understand that it is extremely difficult to do this, because you do not have the skills of a professional sound engineer or composer who can hold thousands of musical works in memory and are ready to offer the only correct version of the musical background based on a minimum set of criteria. There are only two options: you search on the Internet for music that suits you or turn to experts.

The musical background will depend on many factors and only experience or a professional will help you here. But you will also need to work with it, since the timing, that is, the duration of the music itself and your audio clip may not match. Moreover, you can use fragments from different music sources or repeat fragments of the same music. But God forbid you to pile heterogeneous musical fragments into the context of the narrative for, as it seems to you, a better emphasis on events. Try listening to an orchestra in which each musician plays something different, not obeying the general plan of the conductor and composer. Would you like to listen to this? Therefore, less is more!

It is important to follow the rule - in an audio clip, the main thing is not the music, but the text, so you should not choose music that draws attention away from the text.

When working with a musical background, it is important to understand how the accents in the music correspond to the accents of the narrative. It would be strange if the apotheosis of Mozart’s 40th symphony came with the author’s speech about the gray rain falling outside the window and the dull life of the granny looking out the window.

Another rule when working with a musical background is to monitor the volume level of the music in relation to the main text. The voice should sound clear, the music should not overlap it and interfere with its perception. Music can increase the volume to maximum at the beginning, during pauses, and at the end. But even in this you need to observe moderation, as in everything in life.

Your text may explicitly or implicitly contain some sound effects, such as coughing, the sound of a hammer, the sound of rain outside the window, creaking floorboards, birdsong, the whistle of a bullet, and the like. Reading your text, you can imagine all this, and the image will be drawn by the author’s remarks and the reader’s memories. You can embed the necessary sounds into your audio clip, but these will be completely unambiguous sounds that leave no room for imagination.

For this reason, you need to be very careful when choosing an effect and integrating it into an audio clip. General rule the same as for the musical background - monitor the volume level and the adequacy of the effect to the scene. A gun shot would be inappropriate, like the effect of a pistol shot with a silencer. And you won’t be able to mute it, since each sound effect has its own “portrait”, easily recognized by the ear. You shouldn’t get carried away with effects to impress the listener, because you don’t have a blockbuster, but just an audio version of your text. Keep everything in moderation!

Once we've got everything in one big pile and all the details of your audio collage have been properly arranged, it's time to polish it up.

The fact is that the studio voice sounds dry, but in fact we are used to being surrounded by extraneous noise and echo! Yes, exactly an echo, that is, the reflection of sounds from surfaces. When recording, all this is superfluous, but when listening, this is exactly what is missing. We can say that a studio recording is a preparation for future live speech. The living water for studio recording is the reverberation effect, which allows you to convince the listener that the conversation is taking place in a small cozy kitchen or on the stage of a concert hall. Just a little reverberation and the voice gains volume and richness.

Using additional processing, you can change the timbre of the voice, but this should be done with care so as not to distort the sound into complete gibberish filled with gurgles or growls. Nothing can replace a live voice, so more artistry and self-confidence!

You've finished polishing the audio clip, you've listened to it several times and found no flaws in it, then it's time to save it in single file. Miracles are also possible here, as well as opportunities additional processing sound.

Specifically, you can apply reverb to the entire file, meaning your entire performance with voice, effects, and music will be “performed” in the appropriate environment.

You can set the overall volume level, and also perform volume equalization if you did not bother to do this previously.

When saving to a file, you can select different versions of audio files, as well as select compression options if a compressed codec is used when saving. The quality and size of the resulting file depends on the degree of audio compression. You can save audio to pure form without compression, but it will be a completely unmanageable file that hardly anyone in their right mind will decide to download.

Therefore, if you literally step on the throat of your own song, try different compression options until your own ear begins to distinguish between interference and distortion. Compression means a loss of quality in any case. But there are losses that are practically indistinguishable by ear. In addition, the inimitable color of the author’s voice, combined with the inspiration that sounds in it, can compensate for almost any compression flaws. And the small size of the resulting file will allow you to listen to your imperishable work even on mobile phone with poor internet.

I would be glad if my short notes inspire you to create your own audio versions of your texts, because only the author knows exactly how they should sound! Do not give up! You can do it! The world is waiting for your voice, don't make it wait in vain!

There are more professional notes on the same topic from my great friend Jerry Lee:
I recommend reading it if you have decided to blaze your own path into new knowledge and skills!

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For example, you can listen to the audio versions of my own texts I made:

“Tender feelings” http://linear.ucoz.ru/NegnyeChuvstva.mp3
“Buttercups-flowers” http://linear.ucoz.ru/lutiki-cvetochki.mp3
“Muse on call” http://linear.ucoz.ru/MuzaPoVyzovu.mp3
“Palenka” http://linear.ucoz.ru/palyonka.mp3
“Suicide” http://linear.ucoz.ru/samoubiyca3.mp3
“SPIRIT” http://linear.ucoz.ru/souls.mp3
“Venechka, not this!” http://linear.ucoz.ru/venechka_tolko_ne_eto.mp3
"Odnoklassniki.ru" http://linear.ucoz.ru/odnoklassniki.mp3
“About low and high with Vladimir Vysotsky” http://linear.ucoz.ru/VladimirVysotskiy.mp3

What do you need to do to voice a book yourself? What equipment should you have and what qualities should you have? We have identified three components of success, these are the rules for recording audiobooks:

Careful work by the reader on the text of the work;
Correct diction, articulation and breathing;
Good equipment and quality sound.

The reader's work on the work

The main question that an actor must answer before recording an audiobook is: “What do I want to say?” or “What did the author want to say?” (if we are talking about recording a work that is not your own).

The second question, to which it is also important to find an answer: “Who do I want to tell this to?”

And finally, the third: “For what?” What, in the opinion of the actor or the author’s intention, should the book push the reader to, what emotion should it evoke, what should it make him think about.

Having answered these questions for yourself, the manner of presentation, the mood becomes clear, and the subtexts that should be conveyed by voice become visible. You understand the problem, know the solution, and are almost ready to write the book yourself.

It is also important to highlight the climax of the work and read, gradually “rising” towards it, strengthening the presentation, in order to then firmly put the last point.

Only this way and no other way. Otherwise, we will hear not an audiobook, not a literary audio work, but a “reading of the text.”

These are, perhaps, the most important skills that a reader must possess in order to captivate the listener with his performance and turn a printed work into a unique audio work. On these basic concepts we will stop, because by continuing, we risk getting lost in the subtleties of stage speech, but our task is different.

Diction, articulation, breathing

As you understand, without correct and clear sound production, all attempts to immerse yourself in a book, even the most successful ones, and “transmit” it to the listener seem empty. What's the point if he doesn't hear half the sounds?

On store shelves and on the Internet you will find many detailed books and courses on stage speaking, but we don’t have much time, right?

Therefore, we bring to your attention a short but extremely effective video course from the Russian Speech Theater Center. The course consists of four short lessons, performing exercises from which you will significantly increase the clarity of sounds, gain the basis of breathing and confidence in speech. By practicing constantly, you will be able to voice any book yourself (well, or almost any).

Happy studying!

Lesson 1 - Articulation

Lesson 2 - Relaxation

Lesson 3 - Breathing

Lesson 4 - Diction

Hardware and programs for creating audiobooks

To record an audiobook you will need:

Computer;
Microphone and sound card (or USB microphone);
Program for recording and editing sound;
Prepared room without echo and extraneous sounds.

Anyone can register modern computer, because sound does not require serious computing resources. The main thing is to pay attention to the noise of the fans, because the microphone will also record it.

Microphone and card

The microphone-card connection can seem not only complicated, but also quite expensive, so we recommend starting with a USB microphone. This microphone has a built-in sound card and is easily connected and identified by the system. From budget models we can safely call Recording-Tools MCU-02, from the more expensive line – Shure PG42 USB. However, many manufacturers now have USB models to suit every taste and budget. As for audio cards, the undisputed leaders in terms of price/quality ratio are PreSonus, Focusrite and, of course, Roland.

Programs for creating and recording audiobooks

Manufacturers of sound software delight with variety. And not only paid products, but, most importantly, free and no less high quality - except that the tools they usually have are a little poorer:

Audacity - home recording classic, free program for creating audiobooks;
Ocenaudio is my personal discovery last year, an excellent program for recording audiobooks.

Both programs are cross-platform, i.e. work on all major operating systems. The first has much richer functionality, but the second, in my opinion, is more convenient to use. Try both and choose what you like.

I also recommend the paid, but inexpensive Reaper - this is a full-fledged multi-tracker in which it is convenient not only to write a speech, but also to combine it with music and noise (important - the trial period is endless). And if funds allow, then you can pay attention to the Sony product line - Vegas and Sound Forge - programs for creating audiobooks.

Room

We put the room in fourth place on our list, although it undoubtedly deserves first. Because neither excellent clear speech nor professional equipment will save you from extraneous noise and echo, which is almost impossible to get rid of. This ultimately has a catastrophic effect on the overall impression of the book.

If you are taking your first steps in scoring and do not want to spend money on professional treatment of the room, for example, Ikea U-shaped hangers and thick blankets will help you: the structure can enclose the recording area and partially eliminate reflected sound. Of course, you can read under the covers, but believe me, it is very difficult.

And don't forget about extraneous noise! The room should be quiet.

Now you have the basic knowledge of how to record an audiobook yourself.

And if you need professional voice acting, contact us using this button:

Recording an audiobook is a complex process consisting of several separate stages.

Selecting a speaker whose voice is ideal for reading a specific text.
Studio recording. Includes the reading process itself and correction if necessary.
Treatment. Takes are collected and edited, the material is cleared of extraneous sounds so that nothing interferes with listening.
Control listening. At this stage, the quality of the voice acting is checked and final adjustments are made.
Preparation for shipment to the customer. The track is “cut” into the necessary parts (for example, chapters of a book), and additional audio materials are added if necessary.

Types of audiobooks

Audiobooks come in different formats, each of which is suitable for a specific type of text.

Single voice acting. The most popular and simplest type of voice-over, it is well suited for descriptions, reviews, scientific texts, radio programs, in a word, when the narration proceeds without division into roles.
Voice acting by a group of announcers. The text is read by professional actors of different genders, ages, with different timbres of voice, and are selected to suit the characters. This format is suitable for works of art with dialogues; in such cases, it can be difficult to perceive a single-voice reading by ear.
Audio play. It differs from simple voice acting in that the reader is completely immersed in the atmosphere of the plot: in addition to reading, the audio play contains musical accompaniment, sounds of actions and the surrounding space (passing cars, a creaking door, the sound of footsteps, a neighbor coughing...).
Business summary– a new, but quickly gaining popularity format of business trainings or forums. They are a brief retelling of the essence of the training, usually released in the form of a series of short recordings.
Training courses. This is the most popular format for training. foreign languages: It is easier to learn correct pronunciation by ear.

Price

The final cost of an audiobook is influenced by several factors: the length of your work (this directly determines how many hours it will take to create an audiobook), which speaker you chose (a famous actor or a newcomer), how many people will participate in the recording, whether additional sounds or only voice acting, etc.

The site company is ready to offer many solutions specifically for a specific audiobook, taking into account the specifics of the work and the wishes of the author of the book.

How to order an audiobook?

Send us your text, select the actors you want to entrust to voice your book (you can listen to demo recordings of their voices for free in our catalog). Next, we will calculate the cost of the work and after payment we record the audio and send you your finished audiobook!

You can always contact us for help with any questions by calling our toll-free number