That’s why every woman needs a makeup gun…
Compression is very nice for spoken word recordings.
Even nicer is multi band compression, where you compress (and / or limit) the ‘carrier frequencies’ (the main tone of the voice) separately from the higher frequency range that defines the letters you pronounce.
You can cross over at about 1kHz [/edit] hmm… 2 kHz is better [/edit] with a 6dB / octave slope and afterwards mix it together again.
Also a subsonic filter is nice to reduce the punches of the Ps and the Bs and other bumps and thuds. (you should do that before compressing)
Finally limit the product to take out the peaks, preferably with a ‘look ahead’ limiter.
I like the limiter. Do you think it’s better to apply that before or after the compressor?
After.
I use it for ‘sheering off’ the peaks of the end product.
I use a very short release time, so there’s no audible ‘ducking’ effect.
Watch out though, with Audacity ‘fast lookahead limiter’ there will be 200 samples added before the audio (in my set up anyway, YMMV)
You should delete them before mixing with other tracks that you didn’t do that to.
But hey, it’s free… 
Ok, thanks guys. Here’s what I am going with. I think it sounds professional on all the speakers in my house
…come to think of it…
I first look at the wave and listen.
Then i may decide to limit the peaks first before anything else…
Often i start with making a couple of tracks with different frequency ranges.
It depends…
Sounds good. :+1:
Could perhaps use a little more treble.
Yea I agree. I boosted it a bit. I am spending so much time on this… :weary:
So what would be the best way for everyone to be able to retrieve the sound file? I was thinking I could just email it, but if there is a better way let me know…
I shared a Dropbox link for the raw file. It worked good.
Yeah, if you have Dropbox (and if you don’t, you could get it) then sharing the file via a link is really easy.
I tried to download it, but that’s not a dropbox shared link. It tells me to login, then tells me that’s not my file.
I will try again
I had a look, and there’s a big issue with signal strength. At your loudest, you are using less than 25% of your microphone’s range. You need to get closer to the microphone so it can pickup a fuller sound. Turning up the gain after recording just isn’t the same. Most recording programs have a green/yellow/red range and a indicator that moves as you speak to help with this. Ideally you want one loudest moment of your recording to go all the way to red. That way you are getting the strongest pickup without losing anything. Getting too close has the problem of exceeding the mic’s range.
A 10 second comparison of your raw file and my raw file:
Downloaded.
Sounds fine to me, maybe a little ‘pimping’ to make it sound warmer / ‘fatter’ if that’s what you want.
You have 11.4 dB headroom left, so your track peaks at –11.4 dB.
Yeah, that’s a little low…
It doesn’t have to be 0dB.
Personally i render audio at –1.4 dB, because i find that’s around the average maximum of an average well rendered audio file.
So i would amplify your track ‘as is’ by 10 dB.
Spectrum looks like you used a <100Hz low cut.
[edit] …or your voice has a <100Hz cut off… 
With my slight tweaks:
Yep. Trust me, getting closer will help pickup a fuller profile. And it will essentially increase the resolution in the digital file. You aren’t getting the full definition when you amplify a weak signal.
Hmm… No, his voice does nothing below 100Hz.
Below that there’s only some rumble and some thuds from the letter B.
I think you’ll find that –10dB sounds just about as good as 0dB.
Also, the microphone seems it may not like to handle 10 dB more sound pressure.
He could raise the mic input when recording though.
…now how can i share my ‘audio engineering’ attempt?
Should i make an account on that file sharing site?
Anyway, what i did is basically correct the audio spectrum and give it more high frequencies and a little more low (tone of voice)
Also multi band compressed and peak limited and a noise gate / reduction.
Was having fun trying all the tricks.