i have a recording of myself singing via audacity and there are moments were the volume spikes dramatically and hurts the ears. i presumed the best away to avoid this would be to access some sort of noise leveller features, where all noise above a certain decibel would be leveledd to a level which i would choose. if there is such a tool in the program can someone guide me to it. if there is another way around this problem then i would also welcome a different approach. thanks.
How big is the waveform that you recorded? If it touches the top or bottom of the track at the loud parts then it is too loud and will be distorted, probably beyond repair.
You need to adjust the recording level so that even the loudest notes are well clear of the top / bottom of the track - about half the track height is a good level for the loudest notes. Once you have that part right, try playing with the Compressor effect http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/compressor.html
Overload and clipping are one of things you can do to kill your show. There is no recovery. You need to reduce your recording volume until it stops doing that.
People doing live recording find out right away that their iPod music, downloads, and TV shows are highly processed to sound very loud and compete with each other. Live recording doesn’t sound anything like that without a lot of help.
Koz