I’ve been getting into voiceover projects lately, and it’s time I documented my recording setup. For those new to this subject, the key challenge in making high-quality voice recordings is setting up a “treated space.” There’s a whole literature on sound treatment, but the essence of it for this purpose is to kill all echoes in the recording room. It’s harder than you might think. My carpeted home office sounds like it has fine acoustics on my podcasting mic, but with even a prosumer-quality voiceover mic, it sounds like I’m at the bottom of a well.

My first complete solo audiobook is now online and free for anyone to download at Librivox. The Track of the Typhoon was a book I read in serialized form several years ago, in the delightful zine Messing About in Boats. It’s a travelogue from a slightly insane sailing voyage in 1920, written by the aptly named chief instigator, William Washburn Nutting. Nutting was the editor of Motor Boating magazine at the time, but he was a sailor at heart.

It looks like I’m starting to build up a decent set of chapter and short work contributions on Librivox. Anyone who wants to check them out can now find a continuously updated page of my free audiobook recordings there. The ones without a “Download” link are still in the editing process.

Another of my Librivox audio contributions is now online, in which I read the chapter on Sir Henry Morgan in Edward Keble Chatterton’s book Daring Deeds of Famous Pirates. Check it out here. Listening to some of the other narrators, I think I’m reading too fast, so I’ll try to slow down my pace a bit on the next project.

Responding to peer pressure from my wife, I’ve started getting into audiobook recording. I wanted to do some low-stakes pro bono work to iron out the workflow before holding out my services for hire, and after finding the delightful community of open-source hippies at Librivox, I jumped into several collaborative projects. My first published audiobook contribution is now online there. I read Chapter 11 of “Prowling About Panama,” a 1919 travelogue.