How to clip the part that's far too loud.

[rgelb]

I have a small audio file of a woman saying "Are you listening to me?". When she says "you", it seems like the mic overloaded when recording or something. It sounds like the speakers on my laptop will blow out (could be just cheap speakers).

The file is here: http://www.angryhacker.com/toys/a7.mp3

I have 2 questions:

1. Does this audio sound crappy on computers with better speakers?
2. Is there anything I can do in Audacity to make it sound better?

Thank you

[flapjack47]

There's a bunch of things you do.

Load into audacity, highight the part you want to reduce in volume/abrasiveness.
If you want, View- Zoom to Selection.
Under effect, you can choose to either: amplify, compressor, equalization, Normalize, FFT filter.......and probably a few other options that i'm not naming.
Any of the above can be used to get the desired results.

[steve]

1. Does this audio sound crappy on computers with better speakers?

Yes.

2. Is there anything I can do in Audacity to make it sound better?

Record it again with the microphone further away from the person talking.

During the recording process, something has been overloaded (could be the microphone, the pre-amplifier, the recording level, or anything in the signal chain). The clipping is rather severe and I doubt that any processing effects are going to be able to provide a satisfactory amount of improvement.