What i can use to "normalize" / make equal the volume etc of a mix?

Hi , i post here because i have a problem you may can solve / help me …
I done a 2 hour long mix ( a 100% guitar + DnB / Metal + Dnb for the curious ones ) , i tried my best to play with the gain levels on my controller to “flat” the tracks , but even with this attention paid to gain levels i have tracks who are “upper” than others , like some sounds louder than other / previous tracks…
A moment ago i talked with a man who have knowledge in sound engineering and he said me there is tools in softwares like Audacity to “flat” or “equalize” the volume etc of tracks in a mix …
So here i am , do you know what i can use to make this mix better to listen ? ( at least correct the loudest ones tracks to don’t have this “shocking” effect with a so big diffference between ? ) and what settings / presets for theses tools ?
I know i probably don’t use the right terms and words , i hope it’s understandable …
Thanks for reading me and maybe responding me / helping me :slight_smile:

The Normalize or Amplify effects can be used to set the peaks at or near the 0dB “digital maximum”. But that doesn’t necessarily make them sound equally loud.

Loudness Normalization is different and it can set the LUFS level which approximates perceived loudness. BUT… With Loudness Normalization you don’t know where the peaks will end-up and you can end up going over 0dB and clipping (distorting).

Unfortunately, Audacity can set an LUFS level but it can’t simply measure it. For measuring LUFS, you can use the Youlean online loudness meter.

So… If you want to volume-match a small number of tracks here is a procedure:

1- Run the Amplify or Normalize effect on all of the tracks to “maximize” them. Amplify defaults to whatever up or down change (if any) that’s needed for 0dB peaks. Normalize defaults to whatever change is needed for -1dB peaks.

2- Listen to all of the tracks and if they don’t sound equally loud, chose the quietest one as your reference and adjust the other tracks down by-ear to match. (The Amplify effect with a negative setting will bring the volume down.)

Or after “maximizing”, measure the LUFS level with Youlean and again the lowest one is your reference. Use Loudness Normalization to adjust the other tracks to match the LUFS level.

Thanks for your answer !

In your step 1 , when you say “all the tracks” , it means i do it with the record of the mix , or all tracks one by one ?

Because there is an issue : i can’t modify the tracks , see i use Tidal DJ , basically it’s “streamed” tracks directly from Tidal ( well , in fact they allow you to virtually download temporary tracks on your computer as a crypted file just the time of the use and when you eject it from the mixing software , Serato here , it delete the temporary crypted file from your computer and you can’t do anything else than play it on your software , for my case : Serato , and it’s impossible to decrypt it , see it will be totally illegal if it can be done ^^’ )

So if i can do something , it’s only on the 2 hours long recorded mix , not on the tracks ^^’

Sorry, I don’t understand exactly what you are doing…

I don’t know what this means: “( a 100% guitar + DnB / Metal + Dnb for the curious ones )”.

“Mix” and “track” have a couple of different meanings… You can make a “mix tape” with several songs in a row, possibly cross-faded between songs/tracks. Or more commonly, a “mix” is a multi-track recording with vocals, guitars, and drums, mixed together.

A “track” might be the guitar or drum track before mixing, or it could be a file or song like “track 1” on a CD.

Everything I suggested was for adjusting one file/song at a time… the equivalent of adjusting the volume before it starts playing, like Sound Check.

If you want to even-out a 2-hour recording that’s not as easy.

If you have a long recording (like an album or concert) with breaks
between the songs, you can do as above and select-highlight one song at a time for Amplification, Normalization, or Loudness Normalization. (These are all doing the same thing… making linear volume adjustments… just with different ways of working.)

If there are no gaps, there will be an unnatural jump up-or-down in volume when the volume suddenly changes.

For a longer continuous recording, there is a Audacity Leveller effect listed under distortion. (It’s not supposed to sound like distortion but I assume it uses some similar code as the other “distortion” effects.) But it may not make automatic adjustments that sound right to you.

You can use the Envelope Tool to manually fade-up and fade-down different parts of the recording but it will be a pain making several adjustments to a long track.

Yeah it’s why i precised i maybe not use the exact terms (and i’m not english so i can have a very bad english to who may not help to be well understandable ^^’ )

So it’s a mixtape , i take already made tracks from like singles , EP’s or Albums and i chain them by mixing them together with a DJ controller ( exactly like some done with 2 vinyl turntables , sometimes 4 ) but with numeric tracks ( what i call “tracks” is as said upper, taken from singles , EP’s / LP’s or Albums ) , some call this a DJ set instead of a mixtape but see it’s done alone on my livingroom i’m not very comfortable by using this “DJ set” term , see it’s more common to design a show with a public and a DJ.

Well if it can help to understand better , it’s this : https://youtu.be/S156LqFNqLg ( it’s the one i was working on and needed help for :slight_smile: Really sorry for my bad english , i’m French and still learning ^^’ )

But i finally managed to find a solution who is for me the best , see i’ve already done anything i can with gain levels and vu meter to stay as close a possible of orange zone / not in red zone of the vu meter , and by ear but still some differences , i used the leveller and manually done adjusts with negative amplifier effect as most as possible on each song / track who was upper than the others , with avoiding to do alterations of the song ( there was some weird noises like distorsion or high peaks sometimes so here i used the negative amplifier effect ) and it worked … :slight_smile:

Still some small differences here and there but nothing who shock so much than before trying to adjust , it was a way worst before, at least it’s enough satisfying for me, it’s not for a pro use so it’s not a big deal.

I asked to some people who know better than me why there is so big differences between songs / tracks and it’s proper to this Tidal DJ , it’s FLAC streaming BUT sometimes the artists post their work in a strangely compressed FLAC or made FLAC with things like 320kb/s mp3 ( yes , it’s weird but apparently some do this , generally it’s to avoid paywalls on some music production softwares who allow to export for free their work but not in Hi Res format / files , and so often in mp3 only , it’s why there is so big differences and hard to correct … )

Well , thanks for all your answers , it will help me in my future mixes / mixtapes to better correct things, and it helped me a lot with the mix i shared you upper , i repeat but the result is clearly better than the first raw record and without alteration of the songs / tracks ! :slight_smile:

To equalize the stereo balance could you?..

Break the left and right sound into separate tracks.

Auto-duck the louder track using the softer track as a control.

No , nothing to do with stereo balance , just the levels of the volume , as you can see in the YouTube link i posted upper , there is some tracks / songs who are upper / louder than the previous or next song / track , ( for example , the track “Revenants” by Insideinfo is clearly upper / louder than the track before , and the track after , you clearly can ear the difference , and i tried to correct this without alteration like distorsion , glitches , strange peaks , etc … ) , it was about this only.
I tried to reduce it at maximum but when a was doing it a bit much , some strange things appears like sound glitches , so i let it like this , the difference is not so big than before.
But thanks for your answer , i keep it in mind if i need to balance stereo lines one day :slight_smile: