Hello all,
I am a newbie to audacity and I am learning everyday. My question today is about amplification.
I am recording an audiobook, and while editing the track, I rerecorded a few of the words, but the db are not the same, sometimes I am amplifying that particular word to match the rest of the track, and sometimes doing the opposite. Is there a way to make sure the entire track has the same amplification?
Do you know about these corrections in real time? Like, do you know you are fluffing or mispronouncing a word as you do it, or you only find the mistake when you play back the track 20 minutes later?
If you’re doing it in real time, you’re much more likely to get the volumes and vocal quality right. Run down the sentence, make the mistake, stop announcing (but don’t stop Audacity), back up a word or two, or maybe go back to the beginning of the sentence and read it again. If you don’t think you can keep track of the errors in your head, you can put a label down in real time so you can find it later.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/label_tracks.html
You will find the errors when you proof-read it through before submission, but labels are faster.
Going back and trying to patch it after you get done with a whole chapter is much more difficult. Are you watching the Audacity sound meters as you speak? That can go a long way to making sure all your corrections are the same volume as the show.
Past that, you’re doing what I would be doing. I know of no Audacity filter or effect that will seamlessly and automatically go through and correct the volumes, particularly if they’re tiny one word or short phrase corrections.
There is Chris’s Compressor.
https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/chriss-dynamic-compressor-plugin-for-audacity/
That one will charge down your show and automatically correct your volumes, but it’s brutal about it and any chapter you processed like that will not match the other chapters in your book. ACX is pretty strict about having all your chapters match.
Do you know about ACX-Check? There is an Analyze tool for download that mimics the ACX AudioBook Quality Control Robot. It may save you days of ping-pong back and forth with ACX Submissions.
Koz