AURYN AUDIO
helps you tell a perfect story with bespoke audio
post-production tailored to your project's needs.
ABOUT US
Hello!
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My name is Alex Hahn - I'm the founder of Auryn Audio and our production director.
The goal at Auryn is to simplify the audiobook production process as much as possible for clients - to allow them to release a sonically clear, textually accurate, perfectly edited audiobook with minimal stress, on time and under budget.
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With over ten years full-time experience as an editor, mastering engineer, and audiobook post department manager, I've produced over 1500+ audiobook projects for Harper, S&S, PRH, Hachette, Gildan, Audio Sorceress, Scribe Media and Curated Audio, done directing & post for independent ACX authors, assisted many narrators with audio projects, and have been lucky enough to work on titles by acclaimed authors like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Joyce Carol Oates, Aldous Huxley, Walter Isaacson and many more. I was also thrilled to manage the post-production of 10 Audie Nominees, 3 Audie Winners and countless Earphones winners between 2015 - 2022, and hope to work on more in the future!
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Aside from myself, Auryn has a network of dozens of talented QC techs, editors, and project managers with a collective experience of many decades working in the audiobook sphere. If there's a potential problem with an audiobook, we've probably encountered it before and know exactly how to fix it.
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We pride ourselves on pristine audio production and meticulous mastering, and always strive for a 100% QC catch rate. We believe that every audiobook deserves the same loving attention to detail, and want every project to sound like a big budget studio production when it's finished.
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With traditional book consumption in slow decline and the popularity of audiobooks growing year over year as a market segment, expert post-production is needed now more than ever to meet the demands of a growing industry.​ Audiobooks will become increasingly influential in the media landscape in coming years, and I look forward to helping the industry grow and change. Most importantly, we want to help turn great books into transformative audio content that lights up a listeners' headphones or hi-fi.
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Whether you're an author, narrator, publisher or studio looking for assistance with post-production, we have the tools and knowledge to make your life easier. If you need a quick-turnaround raw edit, a difficult audio restoration or remaster, or a detailed QC, we can accommodate any project.
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AUDIO
SERVICES
PROCESSING / MASTERING
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Processing or mastering is one of the most crucial steps to producing any audiobook or podcast – this involves reducing background noise, hum, rumble and mouth clicks, smoothing the frequency response of your audio with EQ, de-essers and adaptive filtering, and compressing the dynamic range to make sure your voice is consistent, always audible, and within the Loudness / RMS spec limits set by ACX, Spotify or a publisher. We use a custom chain of high-end plugins (and years of experience) to create a smooth, easy-on-the-ears vocal tone that sounds good on all playback systems.
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We always check the audio in a treated room, on a reference grade DAC, on 2 pairs of headphones, and a set of Focal Solo6 Be’s to check compatibility and identify any remaining resonances or problem frequencies. Each system often shows different problems with the audio that need to be addressed. On our 'samples' page you can hear examples of our mastered audio for reference.
EDITING
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Our editing process involves carefully going through the audio in Pro Tools, formatting tops and tails, adjusting pacing when needed to conform to the script, removing bad takes, excessive breaths, mouth clicks, plosives and any other distracting artifacts from the signal. We always keep the performance and material in mind, and try to preserve the narrator's natural rhythm when editing.
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Our editors also mark down any obvious misreads, mispronunciations, deviations from the script, and unfixable noises. This edit log will be sent to you for review, and if you decide pickups are needed, we will cut them in.​
QC / PROOFING
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Proofing, QA or QC (quality control) involves a dedicated listening pass through the audio alongside the script and pronunciation guide, noting down misreads, mispronunciations, noises, and pacing issues and creating a pickup list for the editor to fix, and for the narrator to record replacement lines. We also often utilize Pozotron as a double-check for high accuracy in catching misreads.
FULL AUDIOBOOK PRODUCTION
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This would entail a start-to-finish production from raw audio to finished WAV and MP3 masters, ready to upload to Audible and other retailers. We will master, edit, then QC your files, double check them with Pozotron, provide a pickup sheet with audio clips for you, then cut the pickups in and deliver final WAV's and MP3’s with metadata, plus a further round of fixes if you do a second round of QC.
MISC. AUDIO POST SERVICES
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While our primary focus is on audiobooks currently, we love working on different types of projects!
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Mixing and dialogue editing for podcasts or radio productions
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Sound Design
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Audio restoration for poorly recorded location sound / dialogue and interview cleanup / reverb reduction
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Music mixing, mastering etc.
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Please contact us with your project information and we can send you a quote for the desired services.
CONTACT US
PROJECTS & SAMPLES
Here are a few notable examples of audiobooks we've had the pleasure of doing post-production for recently:
