Audacity Forum

In a stereo recording, is there any way to chop off all sounds that are above a certain amplitude, without affecting those that aren't?

I have a 3-minute song that is fine except that all the snare beats are too loud, which means that everything else is relatively too soft
(the waveform looks kind of like ~~|~~~|~~~|~~~|~~~|~~~ ).

I could highlight every snare beat and reduce amplitude one at a time but there are too many.

I've done some fiddling with compression but it always seems to mess up the sound of the softer stuff.

I'd really just like to be able to globally cut off everything above a certain dB level, so as to target and change only the snare beats.

Possible?

<<<I could highlight every snare beat and reduce amplitude one at a time but there are too many.>>>

Did you try one or two and did it work?

Audacity 1.3 has a tool called the "leveler." It's a brute force limiter, not compressor. You can put Audacity 1.2 and 1.3 on your machine at the same time as long as you only have one open.

<<<is there any way to chop off all sounds that are above a certain amplitude>>>

Yes, there is, but that's not what you want. Chopping off the waveform peaks will make the snares sound like something else.

Isn't recording drums fun?

Koz

<<<I could highlight every snare beat and reduce amplitude one at a time but there are too many.>>>

Did you try one or two and did it work?

It worked fine, but there's over 200 of them. I'm not up for all that.

<<<is there any way to chop off all sounds that are above a certain amplitude>>>

Yes, there is, but that's not what you want.

Are you talking about the limiter here? I may experiment with it.

Thanks.

Try the "Fast Lookahead limiter" by Steve Harris http://plugin.org.uk/ladspa-swh/docs/la ... th_sEc2.39