Same volume across all tracks

[JackSpratt]

Apologies in advance I am 100% AudioNoob!
I have been asked to provide some music as a background for a powerpoint (powerpoint will ultimately be saved to video format)
This will be played at a funeral and the music will span the length of the presentation.
With no idea what I was doing I started to play with Adacity. Pitch, spectrum, tempo etc are a diferent language to me.
Here is what I have done so far (no idea if it's the best/only/dumb way but...)

Opened Audacity.
Import audio (MP3 #1).
Import audio (MP3 #2)
Select #2 and choose edit-cut
Select #1, move cursor to the end of the track and chose paste.
Delete track #2.

I did this until I had 4 MP3s end to end on a single track. I can export it as a single MP3 and play it with media player. All good!
However the volume (wrong word??) across all 4 songs is not consistant. Is there anyway to do this? The first 2 MP3s (start of track) are fine but the 3rd and 4th are noticably quieter.
TIA

[kozikowski]

For good vanishing background music, I would Effect > Normalize > Remove DC (only) for each track. Then apply Chris's Compressor to each track.

http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/

Then Edit/Cut/Paste your brains out. The tracks should all match in loudness and not have any pops or clicks at the transitions.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You know you don't have to go through half of that cutting and pasting. Just slip each track late, so it occurs at the right time in the show. When you export the WAV, all the tracks will mix into one stereo track.

Koz

[JackSpratt]

Again apologies if I'm not getting it....
The tracks all work fine as they are one fades out as norm and the next starts up.
The problem is that when tracks 3 and 4 play they are at a lower volume level than those of 1 and 2.
The 3rd and 4th tracks are some kind of church hymn so could be of lower quality (?) the 1st two are ripped from a CD so are better.
I need all 4 tracks (is tracks even the word... I have 4 songs back to back on a single line) to be at the same volume level so that nodoby has to rush to the volume control on the DVD to turn it up/down during the presentation

[waxcylinder]

One way of managing this would be to use the Envelope Tool - this tool tlets you change the amplitude at different parts of an Audacity track.

See this page from the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... elope_Tool

I'm sure there are other ways to achieve this too - maybe someone else will chip in with an alternative method.

WC

[Irish]

Since you have all 4 songs on the one Audacity track, you could use "Amplify" selectively.

For each song in turn, select just the part of the track that contains that song, and use Amplify, setting the New Peak Amplitude value to -3dB. This should give you a fairly consistent volume over the 4 songs.

PO'L

[JackSpratt]

ok might be getting there.
I select each song in turn along the track and choose ampliy.
I set the peak to -3
Then I export as a single MP3. When I play the MP3 the last 2 songs (of 4) need to have the volume raised quite a bit to have them at the same level as the first 2 songs.
When I did the amplify I noticed that each song now had the same length(?) of spikes(?) on the track so something seemed to have happened. But the volume is not static across the track/mp3
When I did select the last 2 songs for amplify I noticed they had different values in the other box (not the peak one, the other). One was 3 and the other 5 point something. The first 2 tracks seem to be 0. Is this a clue?

Again apologies for the mungled jargon, I am brand new to audio fiddling.

[Irish]

When I did select the last 2 songs for amplify I noticed they had different values in the other box (not the peak one, the other). One was 3 and the other 5 point something. The first 2 tracks seem to be 0. Is this a clue?

Yes it is. The value in "the other box" is the amount by which the song had to be amplified to bring the peak value to -3dB. the value of 0 for songs 1 and 2 means they didn't have to be amplified.

What you have now is four songs with the loudest part of each song having the same volume level (i.e. the same height spike that you saw). However, it appears from your description that the average volume of songs 3 and 4 is less than 1 and 2.

Now is the time to use Chris's Compressor, as recommended by Koz.
Download the plug-in version (the compress.ny file) from the site, and put it in Audacity's plug-ins folder. It will appear in Audacity's Effects menu as "Compress Dynamics". Select the whole track (all 4 songs) and apply the effect. Leave all the settings as they are and you should get a good result. Export as you did before.

PO'L

[JackSpratt]

Awesome! thanks to all the help.
Although I had no idea what I was doing that ended up being quite fun.
Can Audacity be used to make ringtones for the iPhone?