Audacity Forum

Hello everyone,
Here is what I have done: I am using Audacity to record a podcast and one persons mic is very over powering. If, for example, normal vocal level for the cast is 0.2 he is at about 0.4 or 0.5 to the point that the audio is very sharp. I have tried using Amplify to decrease the voice and it works ok but the resulting effect it isn't really desireable. I also tried to Normalize the track with little success.

What I want to know is if there is a way to force his voice down to around 0.2 or 0.3? You will have to excuse me for the lack of professional terms as I am quite new to audio editing so I am not sure exactly what the name of the procedure I am looking for is called. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It's always tricky trying to correct this type of problem after the event, but you may have some success with Chris's "dynamics compressor"

Download the "Nyquist" version from his blog http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/ and put it in your Audacity plug-ins folder (see here: http://audacityteam.org/download/plugins )
Set the compression amount a little higher than the default value.

Thanks steve I will give it a go!