I need a little help with audacity. I've edited a mix for black hawk down using the new leak and a few tracks from the commercial. The listen is inconsistent in volume and would like to know how to do this in audacity so that every track has the same volume limit. Any help would be great.

The "normalize" tool can be used to amplify a track up to a certain level, but you don't want to amplify every single track to the same exact volume right? Because some tracks should be quieter than others. Or is that in fact what you want to do?

the commercial releases need to be lowered quite a bit to begin matching the complete score tracks. but a few of the complete score tracks need to be increased, but this is where I'm stuck, i dunno how much to increase as some tracks are a little more boomy than others

the commercial releases need to be lowered quite a bit to begin matching the complete score tracks. but a few of the complete score tracks need to be increased, but this is where I'm stuck, i dunno how much to increase as some tracks are a little more boomy than others

All I can say is just do it by ear with the amplify tool. Sorry I'm not more help. :(

Yeah I think your right. I tried with normalise and it's just too overpowering on some tracks. Especially the ones with a deep lower end.

Yeah I think your right. I tried with normalise and it's just too overpowering on some tracks. Especially the ones with a deep lower end.

Yeah, I figured something like that would happen. :(

If you google "normalizing music", you'll see there are about three different ways to do it.

each one has it's own pros and cons.



The most common one is to normalize the entire track with a degree of compression so that the lower peaks (valleys) are raised while the highest peaks (peaks) are lowered so it looks very even in the waveform.

But this sort of limiting can have severe drawbacks, depending on the algorithm and settings you've used to analyze and make changes.
I notice with scores and classical music (where the idea is to have different volume levels, even at extreme polar opposites of the dB scale), this type of normalization can really destroy the intended listening experience.
Most often, I observe that attack/release seems to change the music drastically at the wrong times.

When the music is loud, it quiets the volume, as intended. Often without much notice.
But after the climax and the descent of the cue continues to new, soft themes that are quiet in nature, the volume picks (as it seems randomly) the most awkward point in the music to fluctuate drastically to incredibly loud. And this change is very noticeable and annoying. It distracts from the listening experience.

Horrible.



Then there's Peak normalization where it simply just lowers the highest peaks without affecting the rest of the audio. Which isn't too bad.
Except quiet parts remain quiet.
But you could lower the peak to reach the closest to the quiet parts, but then the whole track just gets quiet and then you're forced to amplify the overall track.
Which can sound terrible in the end.

This method requires a lot of testing and blind ABX testing between the source and the different mixes you made to see which one you like most.

And then listen to the whole album to see if you notice it at all.

Cumbersome.




Try looking at "Hard Limit" where it raises the whole track a certain volume dB (usually -6) to ensure quiet parts are raised.
This limit also protects from clipping as it clamps volumes that reach closest to 0dB.
Which is good.

However, I think some extreme cases of quietest/loudest music cues ever, the loudest parts will sound much much less powerful than the original source.
I think, there are some Hard Limit versions where you can specify the limit (instead of -6) to something more like -0.1 or something to try retain the most power from the loudest parts of the tracks.

I quite like using this one when I don't want to use Amplify on tracks.
With Goldwave, you can set Amplify to have a min/max value so it doesn't clip distort so much.



Also make sure you upsample all your work to 32bit float (I think it does that by default?).
And then on final product, downsample to 16bit, with optional dither if you've done heavy editing to the track (just volume modification shouldn't need much dithering).

Yeah, When i normalised i did notice the loudness on a few tracks. it ruined the whole listen. solo instruments were too loud as well as voices and the hiss was highly distracting. I'm working on those tracks now trying to increase volumes to a certain audible level without ruining it

i was too looking for the suggestions and now when has got some clues in this regard will surely implement for the good .. hopefully !!