Looking for a shortcut...

[Justafingerpicker]

I am editing a lot of my MP3 files to make new compilation CDs. In general, I want to maximize the actual music and or vocal levels, and decrease the spiky intrusion of over-loud percusion "hits" during playback. I've been manually normalizing the spikes themselves to more closely reflect the levels of the instruments/vocals, based on a visual "guestimate" of the wave form, but that can be a very time-consuming process. Is there some way I can apply some sort of general setting to the entire track, and minimize the amount of time needed to manually adjust the really flagrant spikes?

[steve]

The effect that you need is called a "Limiter".
A "limiter" is an effect that is closely related to a "dynamic compressor" (sometimes just called a "compressor") and essentially does what you are now doing manually - it looks for peaks above a threshold level, then scales them down so that they do not exceed the set level. Probably the most suitable limiter for your needs is the "Fast Lookahead Limiter" by Steve Harris. I think it is included in the set of "90 LADSPA plug-ins" that you can download from the main Audacity site: http://audacityteam.org/download/plugins