Someone needs to make...

[zircon]

...a PROPER, cross-OS program that levels volumes properly without increasing noise floor. Currently, there are no programs like that, that I'm aware of, including the new "Levelator" from GigaVox. Most programs just do severe compression, hard limiting, and normalization, which drastically increases the volume of the non-voice parts, and thus, the noise floor as well. To properly increase volume, the two methods are to (1) manually draw in volume automation curves or (2) do noise removal/selective EQing THEN compress, so there is no noise floor to raise.

One might bring up the idea of a gate, which is the opposite of a compressor and would silence the quieter parts of the audio; however, gates generally are not good for sound quality because they tend to cut off the beginning and ends of words as well (which makes sense, given that most people don't start speaking at a maximum volume).

A piece of software that *intelligently* evens out levels in a WAV/AIFF file while either softening, eliminating, or just not touching the non-voice parts, would be golden and I think would save a lot of us some work.

[X Pat Radio]

There is a application for both Mac and Windows that does what you want. It's called T-RackS 24 from IK Multimedia.

http://www.t-racks.com/

I use it on my podcasts.

[zircon]

Heh. Believe it or not, I already use T-Racks. It's what I use to master all of my music ;) However, it doesn't entirely do what I'm talking about here. There is no sort of intelligent algorithm for noise removal or gating. It's simply an analog-modelled compressor, limiter, and EQ suite. It's FANTASTIC for what it does though.

[X Pat Radio]

Heh. Believe it or not, I already use T-Racks. It's what I use to master all of my music ;) However, it doesn't entirely do what I'm talking about here. There is no sort of intelligent algorithm for noise removal or gating. It's simply an analog-modelled compressor, limiter, and EQ suite. It's FANTASTIC for what it does though.

While not software, take a look at the Aphex 230 voice strip.

[Shawn]

the new "Levelator" from GigaVox
I tried The Levelator on one of my podcasts. I thought it did a great job with the voices and music. But it also made the background noise (which is seemingly inescapable in my recording environment) constantly fluctuate in volume. And that was very distracting. So, unless I can figure out some way to completely eliminate that background noise, The Levelator isn't a solution for me.

[philrossimusic]

Pro Tools has a neat feature called strip silence, where you can eliminate pars of the track that do not exceed a certain DB level. It's a great tool. I wonder if there are any plugins/programs like this for other software?

[X Pat Radio]

Pro Tools has a neat feature called strip silence, where you can eliminate pars of the track that do not exceed a certain DB level. It's a great tool. I wonder if there are any plugins/programs like this for other software?

I'm sure there are plenty of software noise gates. A couple of apps I use have this as a standard feature. I'm sure someone makes a plugin.

[SkinnyWhiteBoy]

One might bring up the idea of a gate, which is the opposite of a compressor and would silence the quieter parts of the audio; however, gates generally are not good for sound quality because they tend to cut off the beginning and ends of words as well (which makes sense, given that most people don't start speaking at a maximum volume).


How can you say that? If you have a problem with speech being clipped off by a gate, then you have a problem with signal to noise ratio. I use a gate on all my voice recordings, it is set to trigger at -20 (which is pretty aggressive). Words never clip, but when I stop talking.... dead silence! Try pushing up your mic volume