Help with hard limiting very quiet music tracks

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hi,

I’m in the process of mastering volume levels of a lot of hard trance music that I have downloaded from various sources. The problem is that a lot of the tracks wont amplify to the desired volume correctly without clipping, and I’m having to resort to hard limiting, as some are way to quiet, and just adding gain next to the track goes into the red in the playback meter. So my question is fairly simple, should I apply make up gain when hard limiting? I’m not 100% sure if that’s a no no or good idea? I want to achieve this without clipping.

MP3 Gain is not an option either as it doesn’t have best results for me. Hopefully in layman’s terms you can help me understand the best option?

My OS is Win 7 Ultimate SP1 64-Bit, Audacity version 2.3.2.

Kind Regards,

Karl.

2

Yes. Apply make-up gain if you want it louder. (Or you can Normalize or Amplify after limiting.)

3

Thanks for clearing that up :smiley: