Hello, i have been historically using audition, just lately installed the audacity, very excited. Sadly to say, I´m rather disappointed - it behaves very weirdly, doing completely opposite or giving me errors. I have win11home and fresh the lastest audacity
Normalization to -5 does the completely opposite - attenuates signal to almost zero. From this
Nevermind, i try amplification, just to get another validation error.
Does anyone know what the hell is going on?
Before that happens… Run the Amplify effect and check what it defaults to (then you can cancel the effect if you wish). This is a quick way of checking your peak level.
Audacity has pre-scanned your file and Amplify will default to whatever change is needed for maximized/normalized 0dB peaks. So for example, if it defaults to -20dB, you have peaks of +20dB and it the volume will be greatly reduced if you Amplify or Normalize and accept the defaults. It’s possible that you have a short “loud” glitch" or something, and Normalize is based on that.
Nevermind, i try amplification, just to get another validation error.
What does the error say?
I did the amplification +20 dB and it did the complete oposite, to lower the signal to almost zero. When trying to normalize - i left at the default, still I have got the validation error that it is out of range -50 to +50
What’s the file format and where did it come from? You didn’t just record this, right?-
Have you tried opening another known-good file? I suspect you have corrupt audio data that’s WAY out of the normal range. It could be just one sample and you may not hear anything wrong.
Here’s another experiment for you: Export as a regular 16 or 24-bit WAV. Regular (integer) WAV files can’t go over 0dB. It will probably be clipped (distorted) but when you re-open the new WAV file you should be able to normalize to -5dB, or whatever.
You misunderstood… 20dB was just an example…
Just run the Amplify effect and make note of the default. The default is the inverse of the peak. I’m expecting a big negative number indicating that your peaks are really high…
If it defaults to -50 that’s the biggest change Amplify can make and it’s not the whole story. The default New Peak Amplitude will give you another clue. Your peak may be way above +50dB.
it is an audio recorded by Nti XL2, there is no setting or gain to be made. It is normally audible when using a proprietary Nti software, unfortunately can´t be used for this dataset. In Audacity it is audible when I move a “volume” all the way to the right. That works. I might try some another file recorded with the actual sound recorder to figure out if it´s audacity who is getting crazy. Thanks
From what I found online it records as 4-bit ADPCM, 24kHz. I don’t know if Audacity can open that or not. (Apparently, no.)
4-bit ADPCM is somewhat unusual. I know some telephone systems use it. Regular WAV files are uncompressed linear PCM (usually just called “PCM” and sometimes “LPCM”).
If you haven’t done so already, try installing FFmpeg_5.0.0_for_Audacity_on_Windows_x86_64.exe . FFmpeg is a CODEC that allows you to import and export many different formats that Audacity doesn’t natively support.
Or you may be able to find another conversion program to convert it to “regular” WAV.
It is normally audible when using a proprietary Nti software,
You can also record whatever is playing on your computer. But if you have many hours of audio, Audacity isn’t the best application for that. It stores audio in 32-bit floating point which is 8 times as much data as 4-bits and it can just get “unmanageable” because when you start editing Audacity saves multiple copies of the data so you can “undo”.