I’m looking to even out a very unevenly recorded interview (single track) and I do NOT want to use compression as that affects the sound too much, causing sharp ESSES and other effects. I’m not looking for the compressed sound at all. just evening out the audio. Any suggestions?
Free Audacity plugin “LevelSpeech2.ny”.
Or old free standalone software: Levelator.
The best solution might be to fade-up and fade-down “manually” with the Envelope Tool.
Or there is a Leveller effect, which is (oddly) categorized as a “distortion” effect.
…Leveling (or automatic volume control/automatic gain control) is a slow-kind of dynamic compression.
Or you can try limiting, which is a fast-kind of dynamic compression. Limiting (when used “reasonably”) usually has fewer side-effects than regular compression and there are fewer settings to mess with. I recommend the Legacy Limiter because it actually allows you to set the limit. (Effects → Legacy → Legacy Limiter).
Good advice.
Manually adjusting is out of the picture time-cost wise (it’s hours of material)
I had no idea of the levelling hiding under the “distortion” effect, odd!! Will try!
Limiting is another one that I have tried using, but it hasn’t quite done what I need because the volume difference is quite large.
Gonna check if the hidden leveler effect might do the trick! Thanks!
The levelator sounded interesting but didn’t find anything that run on a current mac?
Level2speech.ny will definitely be tested. Thanks!