Best Way To Reduce Gain On Section of Audio?

Is the Amplify effect the best way to reduce the gain of just one section of audio? It seems quite confusing for that.

Example - Rather than using compression, I just want to reduce one loud syllable in a vocal recording. So I’d like to “manually” compress (basically) by just lowering that one syllable and then raising the level of the entire track.

But the Amplify effect is kind of confusing. I tried lowering the level in the effect and the waveform actually INCREASED. Pretty sure that was due to the fact that it was already set (for some reason) to a positive number like 4 dB in the Amplification (dB) window. I dragged the slider to the left to reduce it, but didn’t get the number already there to a negative number.

That is just so non-intuitive (if that’s a word). Am I using the wrong effect for this? Or is that just the way this effect works.

Thoughts! Thanks.

Envelope tool

All that and because it lets you have many control points, you can make the transition as abrupt or gradual as you want. You can get rid of a control point by dragging it off the window.

Koz