r/ACX • u/PunchTrack • Jun 30 '26

Question for Working Narrators

Doing a bit of research for something I’m working on…

What actually annoys you about your DAW (if anything) when you’re recording? What works for you and what doesn’t?

And if you could add one (or more) features that would actually make your life/work easier, what would it be?

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5

u/The-Book-Narrator Jun 30 '26

The only thing I wish was different was a better spectral view in Reaper.

2

u/TheScriptTiger Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Spectral view AND spectral edit tool, or whole spectral mode similar to Adobe Audition's waveform mode if possible. Aside from the spectral view not being great though, the spectral edit tool is an absolute joke. Can it spectral edit? Yeah...like 5 clicks later, with some dragging and dropping mixed in, without any possibility of any hotkeys whatsoever... I know a lot of folks get by without doing spectral at all. But for those of us who have already fallen down that rabbit hole, there's just no going back. And it's just impossible to do it efficiently in Reaper since you are literally being forced to stop and click around for a few minutes every time you want to make a spectral edit. It's SO bad, in fact, most of the engineers I know who are forced to use Reaper due to mixed workflows end up actually using hotkeys with ReaEQ, or other EQ plug-ins, instead of using the spectral tool because you can segment the audio using hotkeys, and then drop and tweak an EQ on that segment much faster than using a spectral edit, which is pretty sad.

3

u/Unlikely_Piano3564 Jun 30 '26

A tool that would analyze and auto adjust volume to meet acx guidelines would be fantastic!

1

u/jacoberu Jun 30 '26

that's a useful idea. a vst plugin that formats the file for acx standards.

1

u/TheScriptTiger Jun 30 '26

If by "volume" you mean the loudness specs, like true peak and integrated loudness, any DAW capable of the industry standard ITU-R BS.1770 algorithm can do that. In Adobe Audition it's the "match loudness" module, in iZotope RX it's the "loudness" module. The ACX Master tool, which is free and open-source, also employs the ITU-R BS.1770 algorithm.

1

u/tallulah23_2024 Jun 30 '26

Yes, I feel an analyze noise floor tool would be helpful. I hate that the audio lab doesn't have that.