Not being terribly bright, I have never understood the difference between Gain and Amplify. I always use Amplify to adjust levels, partly to ensure levels don’t exceed 0 and partly because portions of a track can be adjusted. When would it be relevant to use Gain instead?
Thanks
Andrew
The benefit is in experimental or live changes - you can change gain (or pan) while playing and adjust in real time so that the playback does not clip in Meter Toolbar .
Another benefit of gain or pan is that disk space is not used until you Tracks > Mix and Render to write the changes to disk and waveform. So this keeps your project smaller.
Gale
Maybe I’m not being that bright either… I don’t seem to have a “Gain” effect.
I assume they are the same thing… I can say, “Amplify the signal by a gain of 6dB”, or “Increase the gain by 6dB”, or “I need 6dB more of amplification”, or “This amplifier has a gain of 20dB”…
P.S.
OK I found it. 
I assumed we were talking about the Gain slider on the Track Control Panel: Audacity Manual .
If not, I don’t know either… .
Gale
Thanks very much. Yes, I was thinking of the gain control in the track panel.
Andrew