You may find the new Limiter effect to be useful for dealing with
occasional peaks prior to running Normalize, Compression or other
tools. The Limiter effect is described in the manual here:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/limiter.html
For this type of use I'd suggest using the "Hard Limit" mode with
"Input Gain" set at zero. Set "Limit To" to what appears to be the
peak level not counting brief blips.
Of course, if you have mic stand thumps, then they should ideally be
edited out manually.
Steve
On 30 October 2015 at 09:53, Andrew Downie <access_tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Just to demonstrate that I am not entirely inept, I have since successfully
added Peakfinder-rtf.ny to Audacity and like it.
On the issue of amplifying and/or normalising, I have had numerous
discussions with people who will not believe that there may be just one (or
perhaps a few) little blip in a recording that is higher than the rest.
Tools such as Soundfinder and Peakfinder are very useful for finding these.
In a recent discussion one bump of a mike stand was found to be the culprit.
That few milliseconds can prevent the rest of the recording from reaching a
desired level. While compression can be very effective, I like to deal with
any significant peaks before compresing.
Andrew
On 30/10/2015 6:56 PM, Andrew Downie wrote:
I use (some may say misuse) Sound Finder in the Analyse Menu to find
peaks. Instead of the very low level offered by default, I set it to,
depending on the situation, to minus 6 or minus 3. It puts a label at
points where that threshold is reached. I can then decide whether to reduce
the level, delete the sound or mutter darkly.
After reading Gary's post I tried installing the Peak Finder rtf plugin,
but it doesn't show up. Looks like Butter Fingers has done it again.
Andrew
On 29/10/2015 6:37 AM, Gary Campbell wrote:
And if it shows 0 try it on portions of the selection. Sometimes a very
narrow sound like someone bumping something or some other click can be the
loudest sound and keep normalize from doing what you want. If there is an
extraneous sound doing that you might be able either to cut it out or use
hard limiter or click removal on it. To find the loudest point I either use
the Peak Finder plug-in (which you can get from the plug-ins page). It puts
a label at the position of the loudest sound in the selection whose text is
the peak amplitude in DB. If I don't use Peak Finder, I select the first
half. If Amplify doesn't show 0 for it, I then try the second half. if
Amplify shows 0 for it I then try the first half of that half, etc. until I
narrow down the position. Save/Restore Region (Alt+e, g and Alt+e, n) may be
helpful when doing this. I might also set a label on the original selection
so I can find it again when I'm done. If the label track is selected, the
selection range of the label will adjust if you edit the sound, whereas the
stored region will not.
I make recordings with a Sansa Clip Plus MP3 player/recorder, and
pressing the start and stop buttons produces a click at -6DB when the audio
is at less than -20DB. I often use the hard limiter to limit the click to
the amplitude of the surrounding audio. (Or I did with 2.1.0-- there is a
new limiter plug-in in 2.1.1 with more features, but it won't let me limit
that much, maybe only 10DB. Click removal sometimes also helps.) Sometimes
it doesn't sound too good, but the compressor doesn't have to deal with it,
and sometimes it doesn't sound much different.
Of course if it's music and the cause is a peak in it that may not help,
although I bet one of the settings of the new limiter might be better than
the old one.
Gary
On 9/15/2015 8:31 AM, Robert Hänggi wrote:
2015-09-15 15:45 GMT+02:00, Annabelle Susan Morison
<foristnights@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
What value does the "Amplify" effect propose?
I got the Decrease/Increase Gain shortcut keys to work, but I still
can't
get the Normalize dialogue to work as expected.
If it is zero, you'll already normalized and should use the Limiter in
order to increase the volume further.
Set the gain slider back to zero, otherwise the exported audio will
clip.
It might be that you'll also need some compression if softer parts are
barely audible - but this can also increase the noise.
Robert
-----Original Message-----The audacity4blind web site is at
From: audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Vitor
Ferreira
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2015 3:45 PM
To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Normalize Command and Gain Shortcut Keys
Don't
Produce Results
If you leave configurations as they are, the sound should be braught to
0 db.
Please make shure the check box to normalize the amplitude is checked.
Best regards.Às 23:23 de 14/09/2015, Annabelle Susan Morison escreveu:
The track is selected, but the effects still don't produce results.
-----Original Message-----
From: audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Vitor
Ferreira
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2015 3:19 PM
To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: Normalize Command and Gain Shortcut Keys
Don't
Produce Results
Hello.
Are you shure your track is selected?
I ask you that, because some of the effects can be previewed even when
the
track is not selected. I tryed in my system. Gain, pan and normalizing
may
have that behaviour. If the track is selected, then all effects should
work
--
fine. Best regards.
Vitor
Às 23:06 de 14/09/2015, Annabelle Susan Morison escreveu:
--
Hi, it's Annabelle.
I'm trying to normalize a sound that is slightly too soft in volume,
but when I work with the Normalize command, I set it to 0.0. When I
press "Preview" it works, but when I press "OK", nothing's changed. I
also tried the gain shortcut keys (- and =), but even those don't
produce results, in other words, the volume remains the same. What do
I do next? How would I fix it?
Vitor Ferreira
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