A new trick with Audacity
Posted: 14 Oct 2019 03:57
How many times have you been trying to pick up on something whispered or what not in an audio file, only to get your ears nuked out a few seconds later by something loud. You can keep your finger on the volume slider, but that is hard. As an aside, it is funny for as much simpler as doing a lot of things in the digital realm is, some things were just a lot easier back in the analog days... Anyway, I found myself trying to listen to something quiet right before something loud and it hit me. I may be able to use the limiter to my advantage.
Limiters were big things back in the days of tape. They keep a signal below a certain level. They do not do anything until that level is reached. The idea is to set the limiting threshold as low as you can. You do this by Tagging the entire file. Go into the effect menu and choose the limiter and select soft limit from the drop down. Turn the input gain sliders as well as the limit to sliders all the way down. The default hold time is fine to start with and make sure you have no selected for apply make up gain. Run this once or twice. You should see the big loud things get significantly smaller, but the really small things are left untouched. You can run this a few times.
When you are done with one or two of five runs of the limiter, you can use the amplify tool to bring the overall gain back up and give a listen.
You should find that now there is still a difference between loud and quiet things, but the difference is not nearly as ear blasting as it used to be.
Limiters were big things back in the days of tape. They keep a signal below a certain level. They do not do anything until that level is reached. The idea is to set the limiting threshold as low as you can. You do this by Tagging the entire file. Go into the effect menu and choose the limiter and select soft limit from the drop down. Turn the input gain sliders as well as the limit to sliders all the way down. The default hold time is fine to start with and make sure you have no selected for apply make up gain. Run this once or twice. You should see the big loud things get significantly smaller, but the really small things are left untouched. You can run this a few times.
When you are done with one or two of five runs of the limiter, you can use the amplify tool to bring the overall gain back up and give a listen.
You should find that now there is still a difference between loud and quiet things, but the difference is not nearly as ear blasting as it used to be.