Adjusting the playback volume

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hi,
I’m using Audacity 2.0.5, on Windows 7. I have made a recording of an interview (i.e. it is voices only not instruments). I made the recording on a ZOOM H4N recorder. The interviewee was speaking into an external microphone, I was speaking into the inbuilt microphones, I recorded it in ‘stereo mode’ as a wave file.

I think I made a mistake in setting recording levels when recording, because what I get when opening it in Audacity is two tracks with tiny, tiny squiggles, and the sound is very faint. The playback meter doesn’t seem to get much above -24 and at times hovers around -36. However if I slide the ‘track gain slider’ up, the volume is ok. I tried doing that and saving the file, and that worked, however there are sections of the recording e.g. the first 30 seconds specifically, which seemed to have recorded at a decent input volume, so that section is extremely loud and distorted in the new saved file. I have identified several sections of the recording and the differing volume gain that I want to apply to each section(varying between +5 and +25) , however I don’t know how to apply the gain to different sections and save it. Can anyone help?

By the way, I did try the Amplify effect and it didn’t seem to do anything (I left it on the default values) and I also tried the Compressor effect, and it did improve the volume, but not enough. Also, my voice on the inbuilt microphones is fainter than the interviewees voice, but I don’t care about that – i.e. I don’t need to isolate the different tracks and apply different volume gain to them, I want to just make both tracks equally more loud. Any help much appreciated.

2

Try the [u]Envelope Tool[/u].

It might be easier start by knocking-down the occasional loud parts to match everything else with the Envelope tool, then Amplify everything, then go back and make fine adjustments wit the Envelope tool wherever needed.

By the way, I did try the Amplify effect and it didn’t seem to do anything (I left it on the default values)

Yeah… Amplify scans the file to find the loudest part. Then, it defaults to whatever gain is needed to “maximize” the peaks at 0dB. That means the loudest part dominates the volume adjustment.

I recorded it in ‘stereo mode’ as a wave file.

…I don’t need to isolate the different tracks and apply different volume gain to them, I want to just make both tracks equally more loud.

If one of you is on the left and the other on the right you can click the little drop-down arrow to the left of the waveform and then select Split Stereo Track. That will allow you to edit/adjust the voices separately. But, if you are not both talking at the same time, that may not be necessary.

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Thanks DVDdoug. I tried what you said and it worked well, also I hadn’t realised I was able to lift the Amplify up above 0, as long as I allowed clipping, so I lifted it up to +15. Then I tried a different tack using Envelope tool to even out the variation in volume and then Compression rather than amplify, and that worked well too. I moved the threshold for the compression down to -35. Thanks again, the recording is not perfect but good enough for lodging in an oral history archive now I think.