Did the applause overload? View > Show Clipping. Did the screen fill up with little red bars during the applause? If so, those areas will always sound crunchy, harsh and crackly. Overload is pretty deadly.
There is a program called Level Speech.
And there is an older program called Chris’s Compressor.
Chris appears as “Effects > Compress dynamics…” when you use it. The only shortcoming I know of is needing to leave some sound after the valuable show. Chris doesn’t like to fall off the end of the show. After Chris is done, you can cut off anything extra.
