Two voices in one recording: how to level loudness

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

I have a recording with two voices and some music, they don’t have the same loudness-level. How can I make them sounds both the same loudness. And how can I level more different parts of those recordings in one track making it one track together with everywhere the same loudness, suitable for a podcast?

2

Not a good situation… :frowning:

If one is on the left and the other on the right of course you can adjust left & right separately.

Or if they aren’t both talking at once there is a Leveller effect, which strangely is categorized with the “distortion” effects… I assume the underlying code is similar to the actual distortion effects and that they were developed at the same time???

Or the Envelope Tool can be used to manually fade the volumle up-and-down. And the trick is to “fade”, keeping the end-points unchanged so there are no sudden up or down jumps in volume. It’s rather tedious…

The music makes things more complicated. If the music dominates, it will dominate the leveller, and when the voices are adjusted up or down the music will be adjusted too.

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Most podcasters use a mixer to adjust the levels during recording, and they may have a sound guy running the mixer. Or they can record multi-track and mix in post-production. But most podcasts or radio broadcasts don’t put that much time into post-production editing.

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3

“I Have” rather than “I Made.” So you’re cleaning this up for someone else?

“Help Me Clean Up” questions almost always fail.

You might try Chris’s Compressor. Chris wrote this to change the relative volumes of operas so he could listen in his car. He got tired of cranking the volume up and down between full orchestra and weak soprano singing behind the barn.

And as above, if they both talk at once, you’re stuck.

Nobody wants to hear this, but the Hollywood Rescue is copy the words, print them out and have actors present them fresh with a good microphone in a quiet room.

Koz

4

There’s an app for that: LevelSpeech2.ny

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5

Post back if it works.

Koz

6

If you’re up for taking it away from Audacity to repair, you may have luck with Adobe Enhance. But as others have mentioned, it can be messy if everything in on a single track, even with the best tools.

7
  1. Separate the music from the voice (OpenVINO Music Separate instrument, you need to install OpenVINO first).
  2. Level the voice track using the LevelSpeech2.ny tool (or another tool whose quality of work you like better; personally, I use another tool that, unlike LevelSpeech2.ny, does not change the frequency response of the signal).
  3. Mix music and voice track.
8

Adobe Enhance will “kill” all the music in the background, as well as the room. It also doesn’t always work correctly.

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9

D’oh! I didn’t realize he wanted to keep the music. Yes, you are correct, Adobe Enhance is more of a “dialogue isolate” option.

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10

Thank you! It was a little puzzling and finding out, but I think I succeed!

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11

Thank you all for giving me great tips! :folded_hands: I can go further!

12

Hello, I can address your first question, “How I can make them sounds both the same loudness”. Please visit the web address below. When at the site, You must read the whole thing, do not skip anything including the last sentence about (Best practice) If you agreed that what your read is what you are looking for ? then proceed to follow the instructions.

Important: Duplicate the original audio track, rename as copy and work with the copy (always save the original audio file).

Thank you