The song in question’s volume levels are very low especially when uploaded and played through my phone and comparatively to the other tracks I have in it.
So I tried using the Compressor on it with the following settings:
Threshold: -13dB
Noise Floor: -70dB
Ratio: 10:1
Attack Time: 0.20 secs
Release Time: 1.0 secs
[X] Make-up gain for 0 dB after compressing [X] Compress based on Peaks
And while the song plays at a much better volume now, the quiet parts are still low but the “loud” parts are much higher resulting in this strange, pretty audible volume difference especially at the beginning of the song (like an up and down sound instead of clear and steady throughout the song). Any remedies? Appreciate any help.
Can manually adjust volume with Audacity’s envelope-tool …
a/k/a compressor-pumping/breathing.
BTW “10:1” is extreme, & “Compress based on Peaks” is not the option if you want a smooth (transparent) effect.
There are free compressor plugins which work in real-time, so you can immediately hear the effect of adjusting controls, e.g. …
Where are you finding songs with large volume ranges? Commercial music is usually produced to be as loud as possible and no volume changes at all.
I would say you recorded music with Voice Processing and Noise Reduction turned on. Stop doing that. Voice Processing hates music. Any long sustained musical note is seen as background noise and is squashed. This can give you almost unlistenable music with pumping and volume changes.
Good point. Those fiddles in the south forty really need to lean into it more.
Chris’s Compressor still works, right?
I think the only thing we ever found that didn’t work quite right was that business of adding a couple of seconds of sound before and after the actual show and then cutting it off later.
