Audio Leveling

[Chuckcobb3]

The audio leveling effect has been removed from the latest version of Audacity and I’m unsure of an alternative approach for doing that. I do a lot of audio narration that I embed in PowerPoint files and sometimes the levels will be different between two or more audio recordings that I have combined. What is the best way to do audio leveling with the latest version of Audacity?

Thanks,

[steve]

The "Limiter" provides a similar effect to the old Leveler effect, but with much less distortion. http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/limiter.html

If you want the distortion that the Leveler effect gave, there are settings in the "Distortion" effect that are virtually identical to the old Leveler effect. http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/distortion.html

[kozikowski]

If you mean "leveler," it's still there under Effect > Distortion > Leveler.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Leveler used to be a generic audio processing tool except it did it by brute force distorting waveforms, much like some broadcast limiters do. Much better, more graceful audio production tools were developed and Leveler was going to be put out in the back alley for trash pickup when some of us put up our hands and objected.

The distortion could be useful.

It's included in Distortion Effects because multiple passes through highest possible limiting is a dead ringer for Airline Pilot, Taxi Driver, Two-Way Radio and Ground Control voices.

"ROGER LUFTHANSA NINETY NINE HEAVY, CLEAR FOR LANDING TWO FOUR RIGHT."

It's just terrifically hard to get that voice using the other tools.

Koz

[Chuckcobb3]

OK, thanks...I didn't understand the purpose of the "Limiter" so I have been using it incorrectly for a while. Here's the problem I'm trying to solve - I add a lot of audio narration to PowerPoint slide shows and the level of each slide or the level of an audio segment within a particular slide might be somewhat different. I would like to fix that so that the levels are more consistent. What is the best way to do that?

Thanks,

[Trebor]

... the level of each slide or the level of an audio segment within a particular slide might be somewhat different. I would like to fix that so that the levels are more consistent. What is the best way to do that?

One of two Audacity plugins : "LevelSpeech" or "AGC", see ... http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 45#p336945

Here's how to install those plugins into Audacity ... http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Downl ... ns#install

[steve]

... the level of each slide or the level of an audio segment within a particular slide might be somewhat different. I would like to fix that so that the levels are more consistent. What is the best way to do that?

One of two Audacity plugins : "LevelSpeech" or "AGC", see ... http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 45#p336945

Here's how to install those plugins into Audacity ... http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Downl ... ns#install

The latest version of the "Level Speech" plug-in is now available on the Audacity wiki: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyqui ... vel_Speech

A new version of "AGC" will be going on the wiki very soon - perhaps later today.