I have a song in .m4a format. It has very low sound and human voice ( female ) is trembling as well. Amplify corrects the low sound level. Can someone help me fix the trembling voice as well ? Thanks.
Hi @Gale Thanks for the response. Please find the sample attached
Sorry it is not my style of music so I have no idea what is wrong with it or what it is meant to sound like.
Also it is not a low sound, if you meant by that low volume. It is in fact recorded too loud. If you amplify it back down again you can see the clipping very clearly (flat tops where the peaks and troughs should be).
Gale
It is actually the amplified .aup file I used to create the sample. Low volume level part is now fixed. I used 8 as amplify level. Now the human voice is degraded a bit. It is Indian music. The female voice is a bit fluttered as if it has degraded by poor recording. It will be great if someone can help me deal with it. Thanks.
You’ve amplified the audio too much which has caused some of the peaks to be clipped off.
This is a picture of a close-up of part of your file (I zoomed in very close on part of the waveform).
I have roughly drawn the parts of the waveform that have been clipped off, though what I have drawn is just an educated guess - there is no way to be sure what the missing part of the waveform should look like.
Clipping peaks from the waveform damages the sound quality.
Thanks @steve . Can you tell me how to amplify without such loss ? I have the original m4a file with me. I amplified this much ( 8 ) because that’s the best quality of volume level where I can actually enjoy the song. It is a 90s pop album which is long lost from the main stream stores.
Leave the checkbox “Allow clipping” not selected (disabled) and use the default setting when applying the amplify effect. By default the effect automatically amplifies as much as possible without clipping.
I did try that in the beginning. But, could it be a bug, the [ok] button never comes alive until I click " allow clipping ".
Open the amplify effect and press OK without entering anything else.
Alternatively, use “Normalize” with -1 dB as new peak.
After that, go to the limiter and try out different settings. Soft limiter is probably the best choice, especially if you want to amplify by 8 dB (in the effect, it’s the control “Limit to” where you must enter e.g. -8).
Ensure that the make-up gain is also applied but no input gains are necessary.
Afterwards, I would go a little back with the amplification if you want to export as e.g. Mp3–normalize to -2 dB or so.
Robert
I am able to press ok when I do not choose to enter any values. When I did that 3 times in a row, the amplification was giving desired volume level and there was no clipping. I will update once I listen to the full track. Thanks a lot.
If it was appropriate, you could choose negative amplification and still press OK without enabling “Allow Clipping”.
The second and third times would have no effect on the audio unless you enabled “Allow Clipping”, because after the first application of Amplify without modifying values, the audio would already be as loud as it could be without clipping.
Gale
Hi @Gale
It worked the same way as you told me. But during my initial attempt with it, the timeline for clip was displaying effect of amplification on the display. The wave was getting bigger. Now, I am not able to reproduce it.
Side note:
The clipping safety option does not apply if one does
- call the effect and accept the (positive) amplification and
- presses Control-R (repeat last effect).
In other words, the audio will again be amplified by the previous amount, regardless of the clipping check box state.
Robert