Make Your Audio Sound Great In Audacity

Post production audio processing can give your audio products an edge over the competition.

There is no substitute for meaningful content and good recording in your audio products, but good post production processing can make your audio sound better and easier to listen to and thus be of more value to your clients. Audio that is properly recorded and processed will encode better for efficient delivery over the web, too.

This is easy to accomplish in Audacity. After you have recorded and edited your program, select all of the audio and then go to the Effects Menu and select Normalize. Check the box that says "Remove any DC offset", and uncheck the box that says "Normalize maximum amplitude to -3 db." Then click on OK. This will bring the peak level of your recording up to the maximum level of 0 db.

Make sure that all of your audio is still selected and go to the Effects Menu and select Compressor. Set the Ratio to 10:1 and the Attack to .1. Check the box that says "Normalize to 0 db after compressing." A good starting place for threshold is -6 db. Then click on OK. This will raise the average volume level of your recording without the signal peaks exceeding 0 db. and causing distortion.

Listen to the file and make sure you haven't added too much compression. If the file sounds over-compressed and unnatural, click on Undo and raise the threshold to about -4 db. and try again. If it sounds OK you might want to Undo and add more compression by lowering the threshold to -10 or -12 db. and repeating the process. With a bit of experimenting and listening, you should be able to learn how to add the proper amount of compression.

Your file is now ready for transfer to CD or to be encoded for web distribution. IF you are encoding to .MP3 or .WMA files for web distribution, make sere you do a test encoding of your file at different bitrates and determine which rate will give you the quality of audio that is right for your needs. Remember, a higher bitrate will give you better quality audio, but at the expense of longer download times.