adjusting the volume

[hue]

i'm a newbie.

i have one long, live recording. how can i go about adjusting the gain for each song?

thanks,
hue

[kozikowski]

You may not like the way it sounds when you do this, but... Put the performance on your timeline (File, Open...).

Select the song you want to adjust. This is the hard part. Audacity doesn't have very good tools for this. Somehow you have to find the first note and last note and select everything in the middle.

Once you have just the song selected, then Effect, Amplify and set the slider for more or less volume, OK to set the volume change, or Preview it without actually affecting the song.

You will at once find that the transition point from No Boost to Boost will sound like someone smacked you with a fish. It will not be pleasant. This is where you get to adjust the volume change gradually--like someone at the club slowly turned the volume up. I'm getting into heavy water here, but I think that's what Effect, Cross Fade In and Effect, Cross Fade Out do.

That's your homework.

It's digital so the dog can't eat it.

Koz

[hue]

koz,

thank you for this guidance. i will give it a go.

further to my question: is the other way to do this to place labels,us the Export Multiple command, then open the newly created tracks again one at a time and then adjust the volume for each individual song file?

h

[kozikowski]

<<<is the other way to do this to place labels>>>

Very probably. I know we would all love labels to magically turn into edit points, but they only do that under some restrictive circumstances--like what you want to do.

The basic process is the same; once you have individual songs, you have quite a number of tools available to affect volume--Normalize, Amplify, Compressor/Limiter, etc.

Your next post will be: can I automate this? There is no timer or scripting language and there is at least one request to make Audacity pay attention to Apple Script. You may find that process available in the less-stable Audacity version 1.3.

Koz

[hue]

koz,

thanks muchly for this additional info. i'll jump right in.

hue