Audacity Compressor Tutorial – Audacity Compressor Settings

Last updated on July 12th, 2020 at 10:47 am.

Audacity Compressor Tutorial - Audacity Compressor Settings

Audacity Compressor Tutorial for beginners

Audacity Compressor Settings Explained

What is Audio Compression?

If you have high volume areas and low volume areas in your audio, you may want to level them. By leveling them I mean, you may want to make them have an almost equal sound level / volume.

This is where Audio Compression comes in. An audio compressor is used to lower the high levels in your audio. Once you lower the higher gain areas of your audio, you can then amplify the entire audio to make it louder.

If you amplify your audio without compressing the audio first, your audio will sound irregular in that, some areas will be too low and some areas too high.

An Audio compressor can help you lower the entire audio to a certain decibel. And then after carrying out the compression, you’d then amplify it to raise the volume of your Audio.

What does a compressor do in audacity?

The Audacity compressor is a free audio compression tool that is available for free to anyone. You can use the Audacity Compressor effect to lower the high gain areas of your audio. Lower the high volume areas in your audio so that it can almost match the lower volume areas of your audio.

Once you do so, you will then raise the gain through amplification or normalizing the audio using the Audacity Normalize effect.

Read below or watch the video above if you want to learn how to use the compressor in Audacty .

How do you use compressor in audacity?

Watch the video above to learn how to use the compressor in Audacity. What Audacity compressor settings should you use?

Watch the video above to find out.

Here is how to use the compression effect:

Open up Audacity . Drag in your audio file.

Click on the track window Toolbar to select the entire audio.

Audacity compression effect

Go into effects , then choose compressor.

The default compression settings are as shown below.

The default Audacity compressor settings

More about the Important Compressor Effect Settings :

Threshold:

This is the value which determines where compression begins. Audio above the value you set here will be compressed. If the lowest gains on your current audio ranges at about -16dB and the highest level ranges at about -5dB, you should set the gain to a value that is near -16db. You can go slightly higher or lower than -16dB.

Noise Floor:

Compression will reduce the overall decibel level of your audio. That means you will amplify it so that you can raise the volume again. When you amplify your audio later, you definitely don’t want to amplify the white noise in your audio as well.

The compressor will adjust the audio below the level set here. It is advisable to find out the level of noise on your audio using the playback meter on your audacty. If the noise in your audio is dancing about -48dB, you should set the noise floor to slightly above -48dB or at exactly -48dB .

The rest of the settings can be left at default settings. I would also suggest that you uncheck the Make-up gain for 0db. Uncheck it so that you can later use Normalize to amplify your audio to a level less than 0, such as – 2dB to -6dB. You can also amplify your audio using the Amplify audacity setting.

Read more on the audacity comprssr docs.

Watch this Free Audacity Tutorial if you are new to Audacity.

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