Is there any way to boost audio wave by about 25%? Not the “volume” but making the peaks go up 25%?
I can’t think of a reason you would want that.
If you have a mixed production that sounds perfectly fine, when wherever it is is probably correct.
Fill us in.
Koz
What?
Regular amplification is linear. If you increase the peaks by 25%, the average goes up by 25%, the quiet parts get 25% louder, etc., and the “volume” goes up by 25%. (But it won’t sound like a 25% increase.)
Amplification is multiplication. An analog amplifier multiplies the voltage, and when it’s done digitally, the sample values are multiplied.
FYI - A 25% increase is about +1.9dB. A factor of two is 6dB. +6dB is twice the amplitude and -6dB is half. 20dB is a factor of 10. (These are amplitude factors which apply to voltage or digital values. Power/wattage is a different formula, but an XdB change is always a XdB change. It’s just a different calculation.)
As you may know, 0dBFS is the “digital maximum”. Audacity can go over 0dB, but analog-to-digital converters (recording) (1), digital-to-analog converters (playback), regular WAV files and CDs are hard-limited to 0dB and you’ll get clipping if you try to go over.
(1) There are some new analog-to-digital recorders that work in floating-point and they can go over 0dB.
Visually you can zoom-in vertically, which makes the wave look bigger, but not louder.
So with Audacity, there’s no way to increase volume once a track is recorded?
You can turn the track gain slider up, or amplify a track,
or use the envelope tool to selectively change the volume of some parts of the track.
Well, no. Is that a trick you engineers use?
That’s what I was afraid of. Audacity seems to be a VERY advanced form of production program.
DrDee,
Can you explain exactly what you’re trying to accomplish?
The Amplify effect is easy to use (and you can enter a negative dB change if you wanted to attenuate instead of amplify).
Audacity has pre-scanned your file and Amplify will default to whatever change is needed for “maximized” 0dB peaks. Of course, you don’t have to accept the default and you can change the amplification or attenuation.
Also by default, it won’t allow you to push your peaks over 0dB into potential clipping (distortion). But you an override that if you check Allow Clipping.
And without knowing what you’re tying to accomplish… The peaks don’t correlate well with perceived loudness. All of your files can be 0dB peak-normalized (“maximized”) and some will be louder than others. (There are ways of dealing with that.)
Those two posts are contradictory…
Audio recording and editing is a “big topic”. And like every field it has its own concepts and terminology. And every audio editing application is different.
I’m not going to say that Audacity is “simple” but a full multi-tracking DAW application is probably 10 times more complex! 
I believe that was spam (now deleted).
OK. Here’s the rundown. I was a long-time radio announcer, etc. etc. etc. For decades we did commercials using two turntables, two R-R, and a couple of cart machines. I did hundreds of sometimes complicated spots with that gear. Finally, a station I was at (news) got CoolWave, and I fell in love. Later, I got goldwave for home use, and I downloaded songs from YouTube (marginally stereo). I didn’t worry too much about levels (which we old-timers call V-U), because I could very quickly highlight the keeper, quickly remove what I didn’t want, quickly use shaped fade in and out, then quickly boost or retard overall gain, and finally saving the selection as MP3 and putting it in a folder. Nothing but the basics for music I listened to primarily in my car. But now my Goldwave doesn’t work, and I need another (cheap or free) program to do essentially the same thing. I’ll keep looking. Thanks for the help.
You still didn’t explain what you’re trying to accomplish…
I’ve also had a GoldWave license for a LONG time! It’s been very stable and it still works for me but on one of my computers I can’t update because the latest version requires a newer CPU.
Post back if you find something that does what you want.
Koz
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