Hi everyone, I am a total noob with Audacity. What I have is a single track with two people talking on it. The two people recorded a long (one hour) conversation on Google Hangouts, and ripped the audio from YouTube. The problem is that they both have EXTREMELY different outputs. One person is very quiet with the other slightly above normal. Is there a way to normalize the entire track and match their voices? I tried “The Normalizer” app, but it still didn’t turn out great. Thank you for your time!
If both people are talking at the same time, there’s not much you can do.
You can try the Leveler effect, the Compressor effect, or you can take the time and “manually” adjust the volume up & down where needed with the Envelope Tool.
…It’s not unusual to spend more than real-time editing an audio (or video) file. You could spend a day editing an hour or half-hour program. And if the “performance” and recording aren’t perfect you may never get good results.
When you turn-up the volume, the background noise will also come-up so it may sound unnatural after adjusting the volume, whether you do it automatically or manually.
“The Normalizer”
I don’t know what that does… Normalization adjusts the volume of the whole file (like adjusting the volume before you start playback). The relative loudness between quiet parts and loud parts is unchanged. But, some people misuse the term “normalize” and that app might be more like an automatic volume control that continuously adjusts the volume up & down during playback.
Ah gotcha thanks, yeah I knew a “quick fix” may not work, just hoping against hope really. The issue isn’t nevessarily they are talking over each other, it’s more that it just sounds bad with one person being quiet and the other loud
I wouldn’t recommend the “Leveler” effect because if it is used with a strong enough setting it will create noticeable distortion.
An effect that I developed for dealing with this type of thing can be found here: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/agc-automatic-gain-control/26706/1
It is specifically designed for “fixing” bad cases that may be beyond the ability of traditional compressors. It will not produce “perfect audio” (impossible), but can often give “usable” results from “terrible” recordings 