Audiobook Production with ACX Part Four (Audio Quality)

Last week my narrator began posting the completed chapters up to the ACX website for my review. It’s a very exciting stage of the process since I can start listening to the actual audiobook! But one thing I noticed right off the bat was that the audio quality wasn’t as rich as I expected. I was a bit puzzled since I had listened to audiobooks created by narrator so I knew he produced top quality audiobooks, which is of course why I hired him. I downloaded one of the files from the ACX website onto my computer, and wow! What a difference.

Take a listen for yourself… the first part is what it sounds like when you’re listening to it on the ACX website, the second part is the same exact file downloaded from ACX and uploaded to my website’s server. The difference in quality is night and day!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tagx_2ZS_jA[/youtube]

I purposely used the same exact snippet and I left the volume on my computer at the same level (highest it would go).

The only explanation I could come up with is that since ACX has thousands of hours of audio uploaded on to their website servers and they probably have a lot of people like me that are playing the audio files at the same time that they have the settings set low for bandwidth and website performance purposes.

So remember to download your actual audio file from ACX to get the full feel for the audiobook production before asking your narrator/producer why the audio quality isn’t as crisp as you might expect. Its more than likely not them, but ACX.