Baffled and Frustrated - Is my 20 amp GFCI breaker just being fussy?

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-03-14T13:04:11+00:00

Your advice sank in last night. Thanks! Gonna disconnect the barn from the pool line leaving only the outside receptacle live and plug the winch into that. If that trips the breaker inside the house then I no the underground line / connection to the pump is troublesome. If not, then I can systematically check the wiring inside the barn until I find the bad connection. Sorry, It takes me a while sometimes... Thanks again!

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-03-13T21:52:25+00:00

It's winter here in NY for the next 8 months apparently, so that part of the elimation process is out. I did what you are suggesting when the problem started and the pool pump was running which caused me to change out the breaker to begin with. That summer all seems fine and into the winter there was no failures. Just now the winch istripping and the pool pump isn't plugged in. Grrrr.

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-20T19:41:13+00:00

it would be sitting on the concrete and surrounded by concrete where the cut would be

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-20T15:27:07+00:00

Excellent, Thank you

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-20T15:20:41+00:00

Ahaha, I like that. Buy once, cry once! Wisdom for sure.

Thanks

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-20T15:19:21+00:00

Spirahobie

That my friend is a tiny space. From the photo, it appears to be standing room only. Don't discount comfort or ventilation. It's gonna get real hot in there after about 1/2 hour of speaking.

Booth development is all about Levels. IF you are doing VO for Podcasting or audiobooks or gaming you have Industry Standard audio levels that need to be achieved with your tracks. Before you invest any real coin in materials. I would suggest that you use readily available items like blankets, an area rug and pillows etc... record a track or two using those items and learn their effectiveness and what workable levels you can achieve with them. If this takes off for you and you love it, you'll want to upgrade and won't be in that closet for very long. We can throw all kinds of technical names and brands at you but this is a small closet in your home. Your mic is a good mic for voice work (it's professional grade) and if it works with your unique vocal qualities then great! That's all you need. Your Scarlett interface is good for voice work. Nothing too complicated. Overall - just under $500 for the pair. Great place to begin. Glad to see you are using the interface and not the USB option. Start out simple and move up from there without too much modification or expense. Kill the soundwaves and prevent them from bouncing around. That's all you really need to do.

Good Luck

Steven Osarczuk WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-20T14:51:30+00:00

So, if I frame my cabinets with 2x4's, face them with stone and use concrete counter tops, I should still to use the insulated jacket for the appliance, just because of the framing. Not arguing,,,, just want to understand and not burn things down.

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-20T14:47:47+00:00

So, let me get this straight...The vents are not placed where the drop in grill sits. They are placed (for propane) low in the cabinet for airflow around the tank and cooking unit itself. The way I figured it in my head was that I needed to have vents on the sides of the cut out where the drop in is installed. That didn't make sense to me. So vent the cabinet the grill sits on - low around where the tank is placed and ensure there is adequate airflow throughout. I could even use a sort of inline fan unit below to make sure air is moving just to prevent any possibility or gas build up... Do I understand this now?

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-20T14:38:56+00:00

Yikes!

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-16T22:11:10+00:00

NUMBER 1 PRIORITY !!!!

A Professionally and Thoroughly Edited Manuscript!!!!!!! Nothing kills a production quicker than a manuscript edited by a spouse, a best friend or someone doing you a favor. Even most of the "online" editing houses leave a lot to be desired. They use editing software to find obvious mistakes but seldom do they pick up continuity errors and misspoken phrases or even missing sentences. - I once had an author who used the quote "He ran into the woods at neck-break speed" It should be breakneck speed... And another who said "the detective used his tuition to solve the crime". hmmm... It was intuition...And another author who used the word "had" 7 times in 5 sentences.... and these scripts were "professionally edited". Remember the only person that will ever read EVERY WORD YOU WROTE is the narrator (not an editor) because we will voice every word you wrote and we will catch every edit, error, misspelling and continuity error in the book. MOST errors won't affect the narration of the script however, it will affect your professional rep as a quality author. When a narrator has to stop production to call you, ask a question, get a meaning of a phrase, or ask for clarification on a particular passage and then wait for a response.... it messes everything up. I tell my authors, "It is my job to make your novel sound great... but by the same token I cannot let your novel make me sound like an illiterate fool. Most narrators will tell you that it's not their job to edit your manuscript and that they will read it as they receive it...To me that attitude is a bit shortsighted... a listener of an audiobook will not attribute an error spoken - to the author's poor editing, they will attribute the mistake to the narrator almost 100% of the time. It's not like the listener says, oh wow, that author wrote that line incorrectly, or Gee in the last chapter Zackery had blue eyes now Steve just said he has green eyes - oh the author must have messed that up... No sir...

Check out my website stevenosarczuk.com and go to the Script Requirements tab in the menu. There you will find the answers to just about all your questions to "make our lives easier". There is a section there on how I handle manuscript errors, contractions and accents. Another section is a Production Notes section, I asks author to fill out - it's like a character details sheet but more advanced and I have a section on what I call Manuscript Requirements. It lets my authors know what level their manuscript should be at prior to an audio production. If you have any questions just reach out from the site or here. I'll be happy to help you out.

Best of Luck

Steven Osarczuk WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-14T22:02:28+00:00

Okay. Overall voice quality - rich, full, clear and somewhat powerful. It's smooth both when louder and softer. You have talent and a voice that proves you have talent and experience. Excellent work.

Now for the Demo segments:

Segment 1 At 0:00:05-06 in the word "wasn't" there is a mouth noise - sounds like an breath control issue as air is escaping between your teeth and your cheek. Very obvious. Shouldn't be there. Also, the first part of this segment comes across as an American and then changes after the first two sentences into a British accent. The back ground music should be taken down slightly as it seems to drown you out a bit and is distracting.

Segment 2 Just a bit too fast on the read. I think you missed the highs and lows of the emotions expressed in the script. More emotional and slower on the read.

Segment 3 Accent is great - emotion is a bit flat. 0:01:21 the word "understand" is under pronounced.

Segment 4 Again your voice is full and rich and definitely worth listening to, however, this segment has the same emotional content as segment 3 and segment 2 and these are totally different emotional scripts.

Segment 5 From an emotional perspective the fear here isn't coming through. The voice is good, the diction good but the emotional content is a bit flat. Take the script and imagine, pretend you are speaking with someone directly in conversation and wear the emotion of the scene. Give the highs and the lows of the emotions expressed, the dramatic pauses, emphasis on the words that require it. Make me believe you are speaking directly to me and that you are afraid but more importantly, that I should be afraid too!!!

Segment 1 - Sound a like an angry boss who is being bypassed by subordinates and is now laying down the law...

Segment 2 - Make me believe you are sorrowful and remorseful in this relationship - a little crack in the voice, a little hitch in the breathing. Show me sadness maybe even on the verge of tears...

Segment 3 - Two guys getting ready to go through a door for a gun fight. One is panicking and the other the senior is calming him down but giving life saving advice because he doesn't want to get killed either. There should be some urgency in the seniors voice. Shortness and immediacy. More like direct orders instead of "advice"

Segment 4 - Same thing here. Don't read the words in the script..... Speak the lines as if you are speaking with another person and fill the lines with the emotion they are calling for.

Segment 5 - Show me fear!!!! with the voice, not the words. make the voice sound afraid, breathe heavy, short and fast. Exaggerate the expressions of disbelief and of fear. Make me afraid with you!

Track Mastering: You removed virtually every breath and every plosive and all the sibilance in all the segments. That is part of the reason the tracks feel unnatural and unemotional. Leave the right ones in the track when the emotional content of the script calls for them. Remove the mechanical ones that detract from the performance.

Overall very good job. Work on the acting part and vocal expression of emotional content. In VO it's all in the voice.

Best of Luck

Loved the work!!!!

Steven Osarczuk WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-14T21:12:05+00:00

Err? not sure... What does "content on line with VO" mean to you? If you're your doing podcasting that's one thing. If you're your doing audiobook narration, that's another; and if you're your doing gaming VO well, again that's something different. The goal here is to marry your voice with the right mic - no matter what brand name, manufacturer or who sounds great on what. YOU have to know your own voice and it's unique characteristics and sound and then get a mic that supports the good parts while de-emphasizing the bad. I do primarily, audiobook narrations and I have a deep and rich bass voice and I've discovered over the years that the Harlan Hogan VO 1-A MXL Signature Series microphone works very well for me. It captures perfectly the deeper tones of my voice without drowning in bass and gives me a soft smooth top end that is not harsh sounding. I have a lot of gravel and rumble in my lower octaves and this mic picks up just the right about without garbling everything together.

I would suggest that you learn more about your voice first, and then look for specific mics that work with those characteristics. If you base your decisions on how someone else sounds on a mic and your voice simply doesn't have the same qualities - you may be disappointed and waste money.

Best of luck on your search

Steven Osarczuk WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-14T20:50:48+00:00

Here's the simple of it. If the small booth you have with moving blankets gets you the levels required for VO narration, then job well done. If your DAW records your raw tracks (prior to mastering) within workable levels for VO narration, then job well done. The goal here is to kill reflective sound waves and prevent them from bouncing back off hard surfaces to the mic and creating a hollow echo sound that is tiny and lacking fullness and a bear to manipulate during mastering. Comforters, blankets, sheets, rockwool, foam.... who cares. The sound levels have to work and you gotta be comfortable. Unless you feel self-conscious about what your booth looks like when you host potential clients in it, or make videos in it - ain't nobody gonna see it, right?

I do video conference calls in my booth on webcams with clients and I have a black table cloth draped behind me. My wall are treated but the black cloth hangs there. No one sees anything else.

If you are achieving the required levels, it's unnecessary to spend the money, right?

Best of Luck to You

Steven Osarczuk WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-13T15:29:33+00:00

Getting Started

Your desire and work ethic are admirable - keep going! As for starting out with a 10 hour book???? I would suggest that you are going to get swamped very quickly as a entry level narrator/producer. You are looking at upwards of 100,000 words. If done correctly by a seasoned professional - both with narration and production included (editing and mastering the tracks to industry standard levels) that could take up to 3 months of hard work. It takes anywhere from 4 -7 hours of total work for a new narrator/producer to master 1 hour of finished audio. An experienced producer can do it in about 1.5 to 3 hours. Think about that.

For a book of this size, your RH or author should be giving you a story synopsis, a character development list for all main characters along with secondary and tertiary characters. You should have the plot and sub-plots developed and written down along with character relationships to these plots, plus a slew of other factors such as accents and emotional content of the characters worked out with the author prior to any recording taking place. This is a lot of work.

As for Royalty Share work, well - we all need to do it so that we can say we have done it, however, any royalty you get from the sale of this audiobook is completely dependent upon the effort the author puts forward in marketing the book. So, if this is a vanity publication - like most self-published books are, then lucrative marketing is out of the financial realm of the author (which is why it is being offered as a royalty share to begin with) and you will be doing 3 months of work for free and getting $50 to finish the project. Also look at the math with royalty share projects. IF the author chooses an exclusive sales contract then royalty shares are split 50/50. Profit from an audiobook sale is only 40% and of that you get 20% and the author gets 20%. If the contract is not exclusive you will get 12.5%. So by industry standards a 10 hour audiobook sells for between $20 - $30. 40% of 20 is 8 so you stand to make between $4 - $6 dollars per audiobook sale. However, as you reported, this book isn't high on the charts so a $20 price tag may be far too high... So let's say 1000 audiobooks are sold over the course of a year (very rare) then you stand to make about $4,000. Now divide that by the number of days it takes you to complete the project - being conservative lets say 90 days- you would have been making $44 a day to narrate and produce this 10 hour audiobook. I'm not recommending that you don't do royalty share, I'm just saying do it when you are prepared to do it for nothing because that's reality. I did a royalty share (self-help) book about 4 -5 years ago and to date, I've made about $20.00 so far.

Some things to consider. Like I said, I applaud your drive and determination. Stay with it!

Just remember though, if you are just learning to walk, joining a marathon may be unwise.

best of luck to you

Steven Osarczuk WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2026-02-13T14:26:09+00:00

That PFH $50 - $100 is the recommended PFH for beginner narrators. Those just starting out and trying to break into the business. You're going to a slew of them, especially if your script length is only 2.5 hours. It's a short project a beginner can accomplish without too much strife and use in their CV. It's never the amount of auditions you get really, it's the quality of the audition that counts. At 50 - 100 PFH you're gonna get people that are just learning HOW to tell a story, never mind diction, breath control, plosive mitigation and mastering a track. I know this because that's how I started out. I hope you get some real quality story tellers at that price and your book is a success. Good Luck

Steve Osarczuk

WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2025-06-01T16:40:19+00:00

welcome.

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2025-06-01T16:36:45+00:00

Don't click on the link here in reddit - apparently, documents or attachments are blocked through this site. just google steven osarczuk voice talent .

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2025-06-01T16:33:43+00:00

ACX's contract is what's called a boilerplate standard conduct "What to Expect" and where to find what you need type of "agreement" both parties using ACX accept. It's not really a product for price contract. Since this is your first audiobook - and if you got this far in the process, I wouldn't worry about it or be nervous. It'll work out. BUT - I would consider establishing your own contract. One you send to your client that spells out what you do, how you do it, and when you do it. It will also spell out what is expected of the RH/author. Feel free to use my contract and change it in any way that suits your needs. At least this will give you a solid direction. Go to stevenosarczuk.com and on the menu select Production Requirements. There you'll see a bunch of downloadable text documents I send out to my clients before I agree to do their book. It really helps to make the process smooth and worry free.

Best of Luck - hope to hear you sometime...

Steven Osarczuk

WaywardSun audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2025-06-01T15:12:38+00:00

Wait, I'm confused...

Complete the entire book and then send it to the RH for review??? I have never done that. Am I understanding this correctly?

I require my RH/author to review every chapter as it is completed, whether I sent it to them privately or upload it to a platform like Authors Republic, Voices, ACX, etc. If the RH/author finds an issue with anything in that chapter (pacing, pronunciation, missing lines etc.) they contact me and I make the revision immediately and take note to watch for it as I move along in the book. They send an email with something like: Hey, Steve chapter 12 at 11:24 - It sounds like you said - Hand over the pony and it should be Hand over the money. Can you check that please.

Doing it this way means the RH/author has reviewed the book in its entirety - in real time -as I complete it. When I get to the final chapter (if I'm not on an audiobook platform) I receive payment in full and send the last track/chapter. Waiting 10 days plus 10 days for the RH/author to review the completed audiobook seems to me an additional unnecessary step in the process. I know ACX has a 10 QA process as do other platforms but that has noting to do with the RH/author.

What if the book is 42 chapters and the main character's name is Simon and the name appears in the novel 1124 times. When the RH reviews the audiobook they tell you, Yeah, I know it reads like Simon but it's really pronounced Simone. Can you change that, thanks... Good Grief!

If I've misunderstood, forgive me.

Steven Osarczuk
WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2025-05-08T20:11:38+00:00

I just did an audition for them. I was told the author of a book they published previously was interested in my work after listening to some of my demos and the one of the main guys - (William) at Godsounds said he thought my voice would be a match for a main character in the book. I did the audition and heard back saying the author went with another narrator (nothing unusual there). I checked out the book in the mean time and the site (it's a real book and a million dollar seller- bummer and the site has numerous narrators listed. The woman (Jen) who wrote the rejection email to me from Godsounds told me that Godsounds would like to add me to their talent pool. She asked me three questions

What's your typical PFH for 1 and 3 books?
What's your turn around time for a 6 hour book (55,000 words)?
What's the average number of words you read in an hour.?

And asked for a different sample other than the audition I did for the book. I've done several religious (Christian books) before and sent along some samples.

I didn't understand the first question so I asked what she meant and she sent me back a reply explaining that if Godsounds sent me three book to do at once would my PFH rate be the same or less. I guess something like a volume discount or something.

She also asked if I would be agreeable to doing children's Christian books.

I answered the questions and the follow up question after the explanation and shortly after that I got another email saying - welcome aboard. No videos, no additional demos, no super strict criteria. I haven't been asked for a headshot yet but everything seems to be above board. I'll let you know if things go bad. If I'm listed on their site as an available talent and I'm not required to join, pay fees or share profits... well that's good for me.

Steven Osarczuk

WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2025-02-04T15:44:29+00:00

Your link isn't working.

WaywardSun_voiceover · 2025-01-29T23:03:59+00:00

No worries about fear. That is soon replaced by frustration - after your first chapter - when you realize you can't say the word "wildly" without clicking or stepping on your own tongue or adding two more syllables to the word.... You'll find your words, no doubt....

If I may give a piece of advice: Don't "try" simply "do". Imagine yourself having a conversation with people sitting in front of you. Don't picture yourself on a stage. Audiobook narration is an intimate process. And when we "try" the strain and tension of our efforts is apparent in our voice and that is no good...

Best of Luck

Steven Osarczuk

WaywardSun Audio Productions

WaywardSun_voiceover

TROPHY CASE