Mixing Live Tracks - volume issue during transition from track to track

[steve]

OK, something interesting. I’ve been noticing that volume changes between tracks only when I export the the project into a FLAC file to play in the car or on my phone/headphones. When I play that same transition on the laptop via Audacity (through the project), I do not hear the volume diff…it sounds like a smooth transition. Is something happening upon export???

I think the problem must be with your monitoring in Audacity. To me, some of the songs sound considerably louder than others.

What I’d suggest is that you downoad and install the “ReplayGain” effect from here: ReplayGain plug-in
Installation instructions are here: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/installing_effect_generator_and_analyzer_plug_ins_on_windows.html#nyquist_install

1. Reset all of the track Gain sliders back to zero
2. Apply the ReplayGain effect to each song individually, using the default settings (you will need to join the split near the start of the first song first). Note that you can use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl + R” to repeat the effect rather than getting it from the menu every time.
3. When you’ve applied the effect to each song, mix down the entire project and Normalize to your preferred peak level (I generally go for around -0.5 dB for WAV or FLAC files).
4. Export the finished mix.
5. If you intend to keep the Audacity Project, I’d suggest using “Undo” (Ctrl +Z) to get back to separate tracks before saving and closing the project.

Here’s the mix as an OGG file using the method described above: Dropbox - Live Medley 2.ogg - Simplify your life