linear amplify?

[russfink]

I needed to linearly amplify a section of a song. I had two segments from different songs joined together, and one segment's amplification was different than the adjoining segment. For instance, the first segment's volume ended at 0.5db, and the beginning of the next segment was 0.1db.

I searched in vain for a linear amplification plugin. What I wanted was to de-amplify the tail of the 0.5 - kind of like a fade out, but not completely to silence.

Is there such a plugin?

I ended up selecting a swatch, reducing amplification by 0.1 db, then resizing the swatch, hitting ctrl-R, and so on, simulating a crude kind of step function. Seems that using some plugin should be a much easier way to do this.

Thanks! Please e-mail replies to my username at hotmail dot com if you don't mind.

[kozikowski]

<<<0.5db, and the beginning of the next segment was 0.1db.>>>

A few nomenclature rules are in order. The default Audacity timeline isn't in dB (decibels), it's in percent. Video may work pretty well like that, but audio doesn't. Change your timeline with the little black down arrow on the left and select Waveform dB.

Then, grab the bottom of the timeline and pull down so the waveforms get taller and taller. The numbers on the left will start to get more and more detailed. As you should be able to see, the differences in songs are a lot more than .4 dB. They're probably much more like 20 or 25 dB. 18dB is roughly equivalent to "half volume" to your ears.

Right about now, you should be saying to yourself wouldn't it have been nice to level out or normalize the songs ahead of time. Yes, that's normally accepted practice. Trying to do it in post production (after the fact) can be a nightmare like the one you have.

Rather than searching for a plugin, I would be messing with the compression tool. You can set that so as the volume of the performance tries to go up, it simply doesn't. That tool simulates somebody turning the volume up and down at the right time, so there are a number of adjustments to make. Also note that the compressor tool works in dB, so it's really important for the timeline and the tools to match.

You may also find that fixing the performance later is going to take more time for a worse result than going back and fixing the mistake in the first place and recut it.

[time passes]

You know, this may be the magic place that audacity projects come to the rescue. Pick two small WAV files to experiment with, one louder than the other. Don't touch your show or any parts of it until we get this to work.

Edit the two files into one performance. They don't match in volume, but you don't notice that until later when you play the mix (let's say).

Save the performance as an Audacity Project. File > Save Project As.... You should be able to go back to the original low volume WAV clip, change the file name, open it in Audacity, change the volume, export it as a new wav with the old name, and put it back exactly where the original was.

When you open the project again, the volume difference should be gone. At least that's the theory. An Audacity Project is a clip manager, effects supervisor, and traffic cop. It's not a sound file. You need to Export As... to get a sound file.

Koz

[kozikowski]

<<<Thanks! Please e-mail replies to my username at hotmail dot com if you don't mind.>>>

We do mind. We're here to serve everybody who reads the forum. Valuable answers should stay searchable on the forum in case anybody else has the same problem.

If I do manage to solve your problem, you'll be back now and again to help out other people, right?

Koz