when soundediting old recordings, I often find spikes, which are much higher than the general maximum sound level. Therefore, when I amplify the recording to a resonable level, the spikes are clipped. So far, I use “find clipping” in the analyse menu or “show clipping” in the view menu to find and mark the clippings. then I move the curser to the marked position, zoom in and reduce the gain level of the spike and I end up with a sinusoidal curve. And the next and the next. That is quite time involved.
what I would like is a “go to” or “find next” (mark) command that moves the cursor to the maker (without zooming in and out) and I can change the spike. A bit like the “find next” in a word processor
and, even better. . . a command to reduce the gain of all clipped sections to a point where they are not clipped any more. . . or to some dB less
The difference in level between the loudest (highest level) parts and the lowest level parts of a recoding is called the “dynamic range”.
Reducing that difference is called “reducing the dynamic range”.
Effects that reduce the dynamic range are called “compressors” or “limiters”. Both compressors and limiters do similar things, they both reduce the dynamic range, but they work in slightly different ways.
A limiter works in a similar way to what you have been doing manually. It looks for peaks that are above a specified “threshold” level, and reduces them.
A compressor is similar, except that rather than just reducing the peak, it works by adjusting the level more gradually.
