Babel Audio: A guide on how to not suck (updated)
IF THIS INTERESTS YOU, PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE GUIDE OR YOU WILL BE SAD WHEN YOU AREN'T ACCEPTED, OR WHEN YOU TRY IT FOR A DAY AND GET KICKED OFF BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION TO THE REQUIREMENTS. IF YOU THINK YOU CAN APPLY FIRST AND THEN FOLLOW THE GUIDE IF YOU GET ACCEPTED, YOU ARE WRONG. THIS MATTER BEFORE THE APPLICATION.
The last time I did this, I think I got 50 referrals, maybe 6 were accepted, and only one completed the requirements. Several people reached out and ask when they can redo their application because they thought their cell phone mic was good enough, or they ignore this whole thing. They can't. No redo.It's good, easy money if you follow a few basic instructions.
WHAT IS IT?
Babel Audio is an AI data/AI training gig. There's a pretty large variety of tasks, but the main (and for many: only) task available right now is their video chat. I'm writing this guide, because an old guide didn't cover a lot of what is important for this, and a lot of people on the site have issues and frustrations around the requirements. I've maintained a consistent max limit on the site, pretty much forever, and I don't think it's especially difficult. It just takes a little bit of prep, which I'm more than happy to share with everyone.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
It's pretty great. Super simple work you can do at home. The workflow is very very straightforward. You click the job, click start a conversation, do some pre-checks to make sure your equipment is on, and then it pairs you with another person on the site. The two of you pick a topic you can both talk about easily and comfortably from a provided list, and click ready. Deliberation can take 15 seconds or 5 minutes, its up to you. You do NOT get paid for that time, though, so most people wanna go quick here. Then the call starts like any other video conferencing call, you talk to one another for 8 minutes about the topic, say goodbye, and the call ends. you do a quick 4 questions survey (about 30 seconds) about the call and then move on to the next or stop for the day.
That's it. That's seriously the entire job. It isn't hard at all. There's people online to get paired with 24/7. So if you wanna work at 2am when its nice and quiet, you can totally do that.
WHAT'S IT PAY?
Ok so if its that easy, it must pay like 50 cents a call? nope. it pays $50 per recorded hour right now, sometimes more if you have a bonus running. That's for the video project that's running right now. They change them up, usually with a lot of voice only ones, but those pay less, often around $17.50 per recorded hour. The "effective pay" works out to around $20-$30 depending how efficient you are with deliberation and whatnot. Pay is every week Tuesdays, paypal, direct deposit, etc.
You are limited at first to only a couple calls per day, but if you have good metrics around your call quality, it goes up to a max of 40 per day pretty quick. It took me I think 3 days to max out. You can do as many calls as you want up to your cap each day. If you don't want to do calls for a week, don't do call for a week. It doesn't matter. if you just wing it and hope for the best, you will fail, and you WILL get your call cap reduced until you get removed from the project.
So if your cap is 40 (highest possible), and you do every one of your calls every day for 7 days, It works out to about $1,870 in a week. You'd probably be at your computer for 8.5 hours a day each day for that, including breaks and some farting around.
WHERE IS IT AVAILABLE?
I only know about the US stuff. I think you can do it in most states. Their main website DOES say they need people who speak other languages, and I know you can apply from other countries, but I have no idea what work is available for those things right now.
OK WHAT'S THE CATCH?
Like a lot of gig work, the jobs are transient. Meaning they are not permanent. And because of the largely secretive nature of AI work, they will not tell you when a particular project is due to end. The last project (a voice only one) we all got 24 hours notice, and had nothing to work on for a couple weeks. It sucks. So you CAN NOT treat this like a full time job. I've been on this site for over a year now, and I'd say 95% of the time there's projects I'm eligible to work on, but that's by no means a guarantee. I've even seen people on the forums babel provides for us say stuff like "as an employer, there is a reasonable expectation they provide us with enough to do our full call cap." That's not true. we are not employees. a 1099/gig worker is specifically NOT an employee, and they have absolutely zero obligation to make sure we have reliable income. period. It's shocking to me how many gig workers don't understand that.
Also, THEY ARE INCREDIBLY STRICT. If you've ever done AI training work before, they are one of the tightest when it comes to quality standards. The reason they pay us $50/recorded hour is because they demand very very high quality data. That's what this guide is for. It's doable with a home setup, if you follow my guide. I help people on the community forums all the time.
EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS
You need a webcam that can stream 720p at 30fps. Pretty much every laptop for the last decade has one built in that can do that. I use a c920. It's been the simple standard for 1080p quality for many years, and it works great for this.
You need a microphone. It's POSSIBLE to do this with a combo headset/mic, but I really do not recommend it. They recommend a fifine or maono or rode dynamic mic. Dynamic mics are the best for this (not condenser). You can find new ones around $50/$60, and used ones for less than that. I use a Rode condenser mic. It isn't ideal, but it's usable with the right prep.
Stable internet. At least 50mb up and 100 down. the higher the better, and if you can go ethernet instead of wifi, all the better.
A place to do your work that is SILENT. Any background noise will get you dinged. Reverb in a big empty room will get you dinged. Your neighbor mowing the lawn might get you dinged. A lot of people record in a closet with clothes and stuff all around. I personally have a kind of blanket fort I record in with blankets on the ceiling and floor to reduce reverb and echo.
a headset (optional, highly recommended). whatever's comfortable and not distracting.
Lighting. A ring light is great. Some kind of decent lighting. There's loads of cheap LED options if you want something you can move around.
HOW TO NOT SUCK
OK! SO! You have all that stuff, and you're ready to apply. Now you need to stack the deck so you have the best possible chance of being accepted, and also the quickest path to success and maxing out your call allowance. If you think just having a $600 mic and a $300 8k webcam and a 10k PC will bring you success and you can ignore this, you are wrong.
First things first: your audio. You need crisp, clear, unprocessed audio for this. This applies to EVERY job they offer. If you try to run filters, they will know and you will be kicked out.
- Reduce background noise as much as possible. Don't be near vents or AC or fans, record when you know you won't be interrupted, turn your phone to silent and make sure every alarm is turned off, everything. Me, I have my blanket fort and I even unplug my mini fridge because my mic is too sensitive and can hear it. My AC is off, and I walk my dogs first so they get tired and don't click clack around the house. Seriously. Have a plan.
Pro Move: I installed FanController. its a third party app that lets me set all my PC fans custom curves. PC's will often suddenly ramp up fan speed if internal temps hit even a middling thing. Now my fans are nearly silent, and when my PC warms up, the fans only speed up gradually instead of all at once. It's awesome, even if you don't end up doing this work. The whole reason I'm doing this post now instead of my calls is that my house is too hot and I need to run the AC. If I did calls now I'd get flagged for noise. once it cools down a bit, I'll shut it off and get back to it. you MAY have background noise that's so quiet you can't actually hear it but babel's detection CAN. For me, it was electrical hum from my mic connection. see the rest of the guide for how to tell.
Extra noises: you WILL get dinged for movement sounds. People have gotten flagged for tummy grumbles. I tried 4 different chairs in my house before finding one that didn't creak even a little when I move around. I also clip my headset cord to the desk so it doesn't rub my clotheswhen I move my head. And right when I click "ready" both my hands go under my legs, so I don't fidget too much. You're not meant to be motionless, but you also can't have dirty extra sounds in there. get that stuff under control.
Echo/reverb: For this project, echo is when your mic picks up a little bit of the sound coming from your speakers or headset. For that reason, you want your headset volume as LOW as you can get it and still hear. I watch movies and play games at around 22. I do babel calls at 8. I never get echo flags. Reverb is sound bouncing off hard flat surfaces. That's why people do blanket forts and closet recording studios. It kills that noise. The don't care that I'm obviously sitting in a blanket fort in the video. They DO care if my sound sucked.
pro move: Install Reaper or Audacity. Don't go nuts trying to figure out all the bells and whistles just ask an AI how to do a basic test recording. With those sound editing programs, you can see the sound wave visual of your audio. When I needed to kill reverb, I would clap twice, expand the audio wave, and look for a specific pattern. Once I killed that pattern, I knew I was good. You can do the same for background noise. This is how I diagnosed my electrical hum problem. It was so quiet I couldn't hear it. I ended up needing to buy a usb isolator which sucked, but it made my audio way better.
- Other audio issues: know your gear. know what settings you can tinker with, know how to adjust your gain, stuff like that. For normal video calls, my mic volume is set to like 75 (also my gain). When I do babel calls, it goes to a 43. I don't need it picking up my heartbeat or my tapeworms wiggling.
NEXT! your video. This is the one that baffles SO MANY people on the actual platform. They think because they use their webcam all the time and its never had issues, or they have a really high quality one, than their flags must be babel's fault. They're wrong 98% of the time.
- IF NOTHING ELSE, UNDERSTAND THIS. Your webcam is designed so you can easily video conference out of the box. It comes with a lot of great features that are really amazing for that purpose. Those same features are a NIGHTMARE for this kind of work.
ALL of these camera tips are about maintaining control of your setup. They won't guarantee you have a perfect call, but if nothing else you will have a much much much easier time troubleshooting.
Turn off EVERY automatic feature your camera has. Open up your camera settings and look for them. for the c920, I needed to install "Logi Tune" which is a settings app for logitech devices, since the stock controls don't give you access to everything. So just be aware of that. Auto focus, low light balance, auto exposure, auto blah blah blah. turn all of it off. If it looks like its a setting where the camera is allowed to do something automatically, turn it off. this is probably the single biggest killer IMO When you're on a video call and the light in the room changes, your camera probably has a feature to adjust the gain or exposure automatically to compensate. It happens so fast you don't see it, and it makes a really nice video call experience. But when it does that, it causes your framerate to dip and/or your latency to spike for just a split second. Its so short you don't notice, but the babel system detects it.
With all of those off, set the rest of your stuff manually. You want your camera gain as low as you can get it. I have a lot of lights so mine sits between 8 and 11. You want to rely on your actual real lights. Higher gain can introduce noise or static to your feed. If I don't have my light pointed at me and just use a normal room light, I look like I'm about to film a narco documentary. It's fine.
exposure I have at around 1/40, or -5, whatever your camera reads as. try to keep it pretty close to that. Again, you want to let your lights do the work. We're trying to make the camera have to do as little as possible here.
Set it to 720 and 30fps. You will not get brownie points for doing a perfect 4k 60fps. They really do not care. The lower your resolution, the less your camera and computer have to work. Just dropping resolution and speed to those settings has fixed LOADS of peoples issues with network flags, lag, etc. I know its painful for some people to intentionally give lower quality, but that's actually saving you a lot of headache.
sharpness around 95. really high sharpness can make your video look like it has ants crawling on the lines. its more noise like high gain. so keep it around 95.
everything else, around 105-120 is fine. just move things around til you find something you like. but stay in that range. Those are less critical.
check your settings before every session - Logi Tune won't save my settings. I reset them every single time.
NEXT! Internet! This ones pretty easy. Use ethernet if you can can. If you have to use wifi, make sure you do speed tests on cloudflare and other sites that show your latency and jitter. you don't need gigabit, but if you only have like 10mb upload, you're gonna have a bad time. I think mine is 300/300, and that's wayyyy more than enough. I know plenty of people with much lower than that who do fine.
- If and when you get into the platform, and you start getting latency or network flags, it isn't a guarantee that its your internet. It could be your camera settings. make sure your camera stuff is right, as above.
most of this stuff is about controlling every aspect of your gear. If your camera is allowed to autofocus and you get a flag for latency, you have no idea if it autofocused during the call, or if it really was an internet thing, or if it was low light balance, or whatever. But if you can get rid of those variables, its much easier to pinpoint exactly where the fix needs to happen. Get flagged for low light? well your light is probably too dim. You know it isn't the gain or exposure, because your set those manually and they never adjust ever.
- EVERY day you plan on doing calls, no matter how smoothly its gone, always start by doing like 2 or 3, then waiting an hour to make sure everything is good. If you just power through your whole 40 cap but there's a weird electrical hum or your camera setting reverted, you're gonna be real upset when you get done and find out your cap has been reduced to 1 for the next day. It happens. But if you do 2 or 3, it takes about an hour for the first wave of checks to come in on those. you can check them on your earnings page. If you're all green, you're good to power through your whole cap. If not, you know to do some troubleshooting.
FINALLY! Be a good partner! Every single call is meant to be professional and friendly. no cursing or name calling or dirty jokes or anything. Don't put your partner in a weird position, either.
If something happens on your partner's end, like maybe a baby woke up and is crying, DO NOT acknowledge it. Just keep talking like normal. Log it in your head, and know that you may need to carry the call for a little bit. You won't get in trouble for their background noise, but you WILL get in trouble for acknowledging "project talk" if you point it out. If it's an alarm or something, carry the call, try to keep it natural, give them a second to turn it off, and continue as normal. They're already gonna get a flag, they might as well get paid for the full call. so just press on.
never ever ever give medical advice ever. zero tolerance. you will get kicked off the platform. I had a partner once tell me crystals can cure depression. I stayed professional through the end of the call, but I also never saw them again.
If you have a topic like "debate", its usually structured in a way that you MUST take opposite sides. But there's ways to do that without being hateful. Just yesterday I had a partner who wanted to debate something about symbolism in protests or something. I forget exactly. But I was like "yeah I can devil's advocate this." but they immediately steered it to civil rights and tried to make me take the side against civil rights. don't do that. "opposing opinion" does not mean "negative opinion." There are potentially touchy subject. Just avoid them if you think you're gonna end up ranting about modern politics.
ASK QUESTIONS! If you're new and you tell people that, I have never met someone who wasn't thrilled to help out where they could. "I've never done this topic type before." is always met with "oh, its pretty fun. I'll take this side and you can see how it works. try doing X, Y, Z." people on this platform are like 99% very friendly.
Use the community forums! loads of help and friendly people there. We crack plenty of work-related jokes, but you need to keep it professional. Every so often we get a wave of people who just wanna complain about babel and how they hate some feature or complain about a bug that happened. Don't do that. The admins are almost always there, and you just look like a dope and a jerk.
UNLOCK YOUR TOPICS BEFORE YOU START A CALL - This will make more sense if/when you get accepted, but when you click the project, it is organized very clearly. click the "topics" button, and make sure you unlock them if you are able. you need to click the orange bubbles and play the whole example to unlock it. When you join a call, you can only choose from topics both people have unlocked. If you've unlocked nothing, you're making your partner have to go back to dashboard and redo the whole thing. Its very annoying.
Just read the question. most topics are like "person A opens with the following question." don't editorialize. Don't put your own spin on it. Don't make it sound more natural. Just read it verbatim. THEN you can have a normal human conversation. you will get in trouble for putting your own spin on it. I know...it sounds stupid and robotic....just do it.
There's also helper questions to keep the conversation from stalling out. That is NOT a script. Don't just read those questions out loud. Ideally, you never even look at them once the call starts. They are only there to help prompt the conversation along. I've had so many problems that sound ultra robotic because they just read those things word for word like a 2nd grade Christmas pageant. its awful.
REFERRAL
This is my referral / And this is the normal website link- If you use it, and you complete 10 hours worth of calls in 14 days (very doable in under a week) you get $50 and I get $200. But just using it supposedly gets you "priority processing" so your application may get seen sooner.
WHETHER OR NOT YOU USE MY LINK, I AM MORE THAN HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY AND ALL QUESTIONS!!
Please, if any part of this is confusing, ask. Once you submit your application it's too late. Even after you get accepted, feel free to ask me anything. But you'll probably also see my in the forums there too. I answer questions more than I do calls most days haha.
Good luck!
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoney/comments/1u1orie/babel_audio_a_guide_on_how_to_not_suck_updated/
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