Matching sound volume of recordings

[SMoFo]

I greatly appreciate that this forum is available as a resource tool. I'm a school teacher who is very new to the Audacity program and has never attempted to use a sound mixing program, but believe the tools would be useful in my lessons. I'm not at all technologically savvy and so, while searching the forums for a similar problem, quickly became overwhelmed by all the information and found it difficult to locate a topic which was similar to mine. I apologize for duplicating.

My goal: Create data CDs that will incorporate recorded essays and personal music that can be played on my classroom computers for student use.

What I have:
- audio recordings of essays from NPR in mp3 format
- music I've ripped from CDs in mp3 format

My problem:
- the audio recordings of the essays are much quieter than the ripped music.
- students are complaining that they have to manually adjust the volume between the essays and songs.

My programs:
- Audacity 1.3.7
- Windows Vista

So, how do I adjust the volume of the individual mp3, using Audacity, so that they match? I'd prefer to raise the volume of the essays. Since they are so quiet, I can't listen to them on my personal MP3 player when, for example, I'm at the gym.

Sincerely,
Shawna

[kozikowski]

With one complete show on the timeline, Effect > Amplify.

That should help a lot. We warn people that doing production on MP3 files can lead to damage. If I were going to record shows from NPR, I would save them as WAV (which will be huge), cut, etc, produce, and level set, and then, only later Export As MP3. You will be missing one whole compression/decompression cycle and the show should sound better. MP3 always creates damage. It's a destructive compressor.

You don't have to keep any of the original large WAV files around.

There are much more complicated ways to do this that result in much louder and easier to listen to shows, but the tools are harder to use.

Koz