Make every note in a selection exactly the same volume

Yes, I know that audio dynamics are a good thing. I also know that the best way to deal with this would be during the recording process. But just for the sake of argument, let’s say I actually have a very good reason to make the volume of every note in a selected portion of a track the exact same volume. (NOT increase or decrease the volume of each note proportionally, but make the volume of each note EXACTLY the same, whether that requires increasing or decreasing its volume to reach the same exact value.) How do I do that? Even if I could put in 20 hours painstakingly trying to change the volume on each note manually, one at a time, I doubt I would get the results I really need–the tool is just not fine-grained enough to do that. As best I can tell, there is no way to use either of the built-in Audacity compressors to do it; no matter what settings are applied, they always leave some notes louder and others quieter. If there are actually compressor settings that would do this, can you please tell me what they are? Thank you!

Assuming you have something simple with one note at a time, try the Legacy Limiter.

You’ll probably need “extreme” limiting, like maybe -10dB, and you’ll probably want to use Make-up Gain (or Normalize after).

Thank you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do what I need. It doesn’t actually adjust the volume of every note to the same level. There is less variation than before, but there is still enough to be audible, and the variation is quite visible in the normal view of the wave-form. The best results are with: Soft Limit, Input Gain at 10.00 for both channels, limit to -10.00 dB, Hold at 50.00, and no make-up gain. (Applying-make-up gain actually increases the variation in volume.) But it’s just not enough. It seems to me that somewhere in Audacity the volume values for each of those peaks on the wave-form are stored. How hard could it really be to create a tool that just sets all of them to the same level? But I appreciate your response.

It will depend on what you start with… If you start with peaks at -5dB you’ll only get 5dB of limiting. And in any case, nothing below -10dB will be affected.

It looks like -10dB is the most you can do in one shot, but…

Try Normalizing or Amplifying (if make-up gain didn’t already bring the peaks back-up to 0dB). Then run it again(including the Amplification step) and repeat as many times as you wish.

If you repeat that enough you should get a “solid wall” with almost no variation in volume.

If it’s “too loud” when you’re all-done, run Amplify with a negative dB to bring it down.

…Or, you could Amplify by 20 or 30dB before you start. If you are set-up to Show Clipping, Audacity will “show red” for potential clipping, but the floating point data isn’t clipped (yet).

That sort-of what limiting does, but in the opposite way. It “pushes down” anything that’s above the limit.

Usually, limiting is used with make-up gain the bring-up the volume of everything without hard-clipping.

You can try the new limiter too but it’s weird because it’s a limiter without a clear way to set the limit.

BTW- Limiting is a fast-kind of dynamic compression. Automatic Volume Control, Automatic Gain Control, and Leveling are slow-compression. All of these things compress/reduce dynamic range (or “dynamic contrast”) by bringing the loud & quiet parts toward the same volume.

Yes, repetition was the key. I was able to get it to do what I wanted by repeating several times. Thanks!

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