Soundscape recordings play very quietly in Audacity but when previewed in Finder

[philipus]

Hello everybody

I’ve made a soundscape recordings (poly WAV files) which I’d like to edit in Audacity.

When I preview them in Finder they play back at an acceptable level, similar to what I remember from recording on my MixPre.

But in Audacity the files are very quiet with the wave form being thin and narrow.

Is this due to some import setting perhaps? If possible I’d like to avoid having to normalise the files just to get the audio to the level at which it was recorded.

Cheers
Philip

[evilmrb]

@philipus

But in Audacity the files are very quiet with the wave form being thin and narrow.

Are you sure the level settings for recording and playback are high enough? They are the little circles almost hidden in the slider as shown below:

A more detailed explanation is here: Setting Levels
Mark B