Audacity Forum

It is impossible to amplify those peaks any higher without causing distortion.
To make the track sound louder, you need to reduce those peaks to that there is room to increase the average level. To do that, try the "Limiter" effect.
See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/limiter.html

The file ending is .DSS Where did it come from? An Olympus voice recorder? I'm guessing that the file is as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Speech_Standard There's a website here that claims to be able to convert a .DSS file to WAV: https: // convertio.co/dss-wav/ Note: this i...

Set the number of channels in the device toolbar to "2 (stereo)".
What happens when you click the Record button?

You can view the project history: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/und ... ml#history

When you export to a file, all tracks that are not muted, are "mixed down" to a single file. ("Render" is the same process as "Mix" but when there is only one track). The "Mix" process applies Track Envelopes, Track Gain and Track Pan. This occurs whether usin...

The easiest way to get truly stereo sound is to simply record the track twice, then pan one channel to the far left, another to the far right. That's called "double tracking", and while it will give you a stereo track, it's not the same as a true stereo recording of one sound source. Anot...

Please try this as a test. If you are unsure how to do any of the steps, ask and I'll give more detailed instructions: Download "Audacity 2.3.0 zip" from the link on this page of the Audacity website: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/ Extract the ZIP archive to your "Docu...

It's "mains hum" (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_hum)

Are you using a good quality XLR lead between the mic and the pre-amp? Do you have another XLR lead that you could try?

Please be more specific about what you are doing and what is happening and what you are trying to achieve.