Audacity Forum

steve wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 25, 2020 9:00 pm

joe sixpak wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 25, 2020 7:21 pm

it should give me the option for the amount of make up gain to use if any.

You can always turn off "Make up gain" and then apply the Amplify or Normalize effects with the amount of make up gain that you want.

I did not see any place to turn off make up gain. It just seems to default to -1 dBFS.
Note: I am on 2.0.6 which seems to be the last audacity for XP. Maybe later versions are different.

There is an option to add make up gain to 0dBFS which I left unchecked as I did not want any make up gain.
Unless this is another non intuitive reverse option where if I had checked it then it would NOT add the gain?
Just checked it and it added the gain when I had the box checked.

If it did not add make up gain *I* could always amplify to get any amount of gain added back.
What it should do is either nothing wrt gain, or else ask what level to raise the compressed result back up to.
It should never default to raising the gain to any arbitrary level on its own.

I also note that the compress ratio is confusing too. Instead of changing the ratio on the chart like A&H does it changes the threshold setting (or what I would expect would be the threshold setting) and the threshold slider moves the threshold as well as the start of signal.

Now maybe the chart makes sense which is why I asked the original question but to me and what I see on the Qu32 it is very confusing whatever it is audacity is really trying to show me there.

joe sixpak wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 26, 2020 12:08 am

There is an option to add make up gain to 0dBFS which I left unchecked as I did not want any make up gain.

This is another weirdness of the current compressor. If you compress based on RMS and have "make up gain to 0dB" turned off, then the high level signal is compressed down with no make up gain. The weird part: If you compress based on peak level, then it becomes an "upward compressor" and increases the level of audio below the threshold.

steve wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 26, 2020 12:18 am

joe sixpak wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 26, 2020 12:08 am

There is an option to add make up gain to 0dBFS which I left unchecked as I did not want any make up gain.

This is another weirdness of the current compressor. If you compress based on RMS and have "make up gain to 0dB" turned off, then the high level signal is compressed down with no make up gain. The weird part: If you compress based on peak level, then it becomes an "upward compressor" and increases the level of audio below the threshold.

Also at times it clips when it makes up gain.
Can't say if it merely touched 0dBFS or how far it went past but the red lines show up as if it had made up too much gain at some spots.

Amplifying down seems to remove it visually but I do not know if it fixed it digitally or there really was no problem to start with.

I wish A&H had an upwards compressor but they are doing it in RT not batch like audacity does, so they only provide normal downwards compression.

joe sixpak wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 26, 2020 12:51 am

Also at times it clips when it makes up gain.
Can't say if it merely touched 0dBFS or how far it went past but the red lines show up as if it had made up too much gain at some spots.

I know that if make up gain is enabled, it does not clip.
As far as I'm aware, upward compression without make up gain does not clip either (I would be very surprised if it did, but I've not exhaustively checked).

You can check by zooming in close on the red lines. If there is just a single sample touching 0 dB, then it's not clipped.

joe sixpak wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:30 pm

I googled but did not see them in what I found ...

IIRC there are two versions of that plugin, the "pro" version shows the numbers ...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130329211 ... vst_jb.htm
[Plenty presets].