digital silence problem

[Margareth]

Hi,
I record audiobooks and up till now no problems, using reaper.
but now I got a message from a studio where I hadn't used reaper before (I used to work with audacity) that there are digital silences between the sentences and that the server of their customer does not accept that.
I thought ok. I have the fx on green and I do have a gate installed and a threshold. so i put the fx on red and thought now it should be ok. so I rendered it with fx on red. but still the technician said it is not good.
so i made a new demo where I did not use the fx at all, so nothing added, pure sound. but still he said that there is a digital silence. he said maybe Reaper has a standard to silence sound digital.
Does this sound familiar to you?

[vitalker]

What are the digital silences?

[serr]

The most reasonable way to try to interpret that might be that the studio is complaining about what sounds like obviously gated program. "Obvious" meaning poorly, as in you hear the gate truncate the background ambience/noise to the point of distraction.

The statement "there are digital silences" just isn't a good way to state that. Such a statement would lead me to suspect there were random digital dropouts where the whole thing - program and all - dropped out in spots. ie. A real problem!

Anyway...

Are you gating the voice to try to push back background noise? Or are you using a broadband noise reduction? And maybe have it set too strong? A voice recording could certainly be made with a very silent background and sound perfectly natural with spots of digital silence following that. Just the existence of spots of digital silence is ambiguous without context. Someone had to hear something distracting. They should have been more specific. That comment without more context is a bit out to lunch IMHO.

I don't know what putting fx on green or red means.

[schwa]

REAPER doesn't do any gating (or any other fx) behind the scenes.

If the studio is complaining that the render sounds like it has been gated, even though you have bypassed the gate plugin, something is not right. Maybe they are still listening to the previous render you sent them, or maybe you accidentally re-sent the original gated render after re-rendering, or maybe there is a gate plugin that you overlooked on the master track.

[maxdembo]

Originally Posted by vitalker

What are the digital silences?

This is what I was going to ask and decided it was probably better just to walk away

I prefer analogue silence

[jrk]

Originally Posted by Margareth

Hi,
I record audiobooks and up till now no problems, using reaper.
but now I got a message from a studio where I hadn't used reaper before (I used to work with audacity) that there are digital silences between the sentences and that the server of their customer does not accept that [...] maybe Reaper has a standard to silence sound digital.
Does this sound familiar to you?

Of course Reaper doesn't just gate stuff all on it's own. That would be bonkers.

If you're sure that you're not gating somewhere, somehow (or splitting, leaving silent gaps), could it be that your environment is just too quiet? Hard to believe...

(or what schwa said - version control?)

If you can find out what the client's specification for dynamic range actually is, then you can do a track of "room tone" to fill the gaps. Or something.

[DVDdoug]

ACX will reject submissions for "excess processing" or "over processing" if they are "too quiet" or "artificially quiet," even if the gaiting/noise reduction isn't audible/obvious. I'm not sure what the limit is. Of course they will also reject it for too much noise and the spec for that is published.

The upper noise limit is -60 dB and -90dB will probably get you rejected. -70dB is probably OK.

What are the digital silences?

A series of zeros in a digital audio file is "pure digital silence". It's easy to get that with a noise gate or you can generate a silent file.

There is no similar thing with analog electrical audio signals and there is no totally silent acoustic spaces, except in outer space or in a vacuum. (There are analog and acoustic levels below the threshold of hearing that sound perfectly silent to the human ear.)

[jrk]

Originally Posted by DVDdoug

The upper noise limit is -60 dB and -90dB will probably get you rejected. -70dB is probably OK.

Then try a track of room tone at about -70 dB ?

[WarrenG]

Maybe add dither, see how they respond.

W

[serr]

Wow...

I'd want to get to the bottom of the request before going 'malicious compliance' and adding noise intentionally! We know no one really wants that...

[WarrenG]

Just messing wit cha.
I guess I'm in that kind of mood today.
Sorry

[jrk]

Originally Posted by serr

Wow...

I'd want to get to the bottom of the request before going 'malicious compliance' and adding noise intentionally! We know no one really wants that...

Adding room tone is a perfectly standard thing to do (to cover "unnatural" silence) in all sorts of applications.

[serr]

Yeah, I don't mean to argue against that. Just that I'd want to know what the exact complaint is.

[jrk]

I don't believe we use the term "malicious compliance" over here (UK) as it's just what we do by default. Was the OP to resubmit a version with a guaranteed level of noise, and that gets knocked back - the issue is with the "technician".