I want to volume level all of my audio files on my pc. I have too many songs when it transitions from one track to another the volume isnt the same. I want to be able to level them permanentaly so when I move them to another device, the tracks will be the same. ie mp3 player, phone, flashdrive etc.
I am using Audacity 2.0.5 and I my OS is Ubuntu LTS 14.04
You could get close with the Amplify effect and Chains. You can set Amplify so whatever you started with, the peak sound will finish at a certain level. Chains is the Audacity version of Batch.
If you do build a Chain for this, try it out on a small subset of your songs that you have safely backed up. One common mistake people make is saving corrected work as the original filename. When something goes wrong, the correction and the original could go to the Happy Hunting Ground. I believe Chains will automatically create a new folder.
I don’t know that Chains will run over format boundaries. Open this WAV, open this MP3, open this M4A… And even if it does, MP3s and maybe other formats as well will be lesser quality when Audacity gets done. Audacity doesn’t edit MP3. It converts the music in, and then back out again and picks up compression distortion when it does that.
One oddity: Amplify only works on extreme sound peaks and a show will not necessarily be as loud as the peaks. One example is a show of whispers with a gunshot at the end. You won’t suddenly have the whispers match other normal shows. But the gunshot will be perfect.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/amplify.html
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/chains_for_batch_processing_and_effects_automation.html
Koz
You would be better to use Normalize in the Chain. The Chain parameters for Amplify store the amplification to be applied, so if the files to be treated have different peak levels, Amplify will leave the files still having different peak levels.
Gale
The exported file will be in a “Cleaned” folder in the folder the original files were in.
In almost all cases the original file will not be overwritten. The other case is probably a bug.
If Audacity can import the file, it will export it to the format(s) you specify in the Chain. There is no Chain command to export to the same format as the original file.
Gale