Increase the Volume for A Participant

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

I am using Audacity 2.4.1 in Windows 10. I have a .wma recording with the principal speaker at the mic and three other secondary speakers talking at irregular intervals. They are some distance from the mic and therefore their volume is low - the principal speaker’s volume is fine. Is there a way to increase the volume of these secondary speakers?

I am not a regular user of Audacity so my knowledge level is low.

Thanks in advance for any help.

2

There is a plug-in called Level Speech.

https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Effect_Plug-ins#Level_Speech

I’ve never used it, but I think your job is pretty much exactly what it’s supposed to do.

This is not going to produce award-winning voices. All the background noises and trash are going to get boosted, too and you can’t stop it.

Koz

3

Thank you.

4

I have not used this plugin either, but if you find that it doesn’t give the results you want, you can do this manually within Audacity.

If the intervals of lower volume are discrete (the mic person and the lower volume person aren’t speaking over each other constantly), and fairly short (e.g. audience Q&A to a speaker), the process is simple and won’t take you long to do.

With the audio file loaded in Audacity, listen and select the interval of lower volume speech (click, drag and release within the waveform window). Select Effect - Amplify. Use the Preview option to hear the difference. Once you execute the change, you should see that the waveform for that section looks more like the rest of the audio. If it’s too high or too low, you can undo and redo the effect.

One challenge you may encounter in longer sections are spikes (clicks, pops, a cough - something much louder than the rest of the material). If you have those, the default Amplification amount that comes up may be too low. In that case, try selecting the Enable Clipping check box and increase the amplification (or edit out the offending section).

5

Thanks. I did find that the plug in worked well. However, your comments are very helpful for my understanding of the program and they’ll be useful in the future.