Topic: Amplifying whole track but clipped spikes

[stardustz]

I made a recording which has some clipping at 2-3 spots from sudden fireworks.  I listened to it and I think the clipped parts are fine considering that you don't expect to hear soft fireworks anyways so I don't think fixing the clipping or making if softer would be helpful.  However, I want to amplify the entire track but the spikes from the fireworks prevent normalization from actually producing any meaningful effect.  Is there any way to amplify the whole track aside from those 2-3 spikes with Adobe Audition or Audacity?  Something like masking in the photoshop realm?  Thank you in advance.

[brad.bartels]

You can do this in Audacity - in situations like you describe, that is what I usually do. When you select amplify, there is a check box at the bottom that says "allow clipping" or something like that. Check that and you can amplify it as much as you want above zero. If I don't care about the spikes (they are clapping or some other foreign sound like the fireworks in your case), then I just apply a hard limiter (usually -.1 or -.2 dB) to chop them off.

What I would do is find the loudest part of the music that you want to keep and select just that part of the file and hit amplify and see how much you need to amplify to get that to near zero (then just cancel), then select the entire file and amplify by that much (if the spikes are louder, then you'll have to check that allow clipping box), then apply the hard limiter.

An alternative is to determine how much above the max of the music the spikes are and select them one at a time and bring them down with amplify. If there are a lot of them, this can be very tedious.

[runonce]

Are these single blasts? Or a barrage of simultaneous blasts...?

If its just few singles - I'd just zoom - select the blast - and bring it down 6-8db...

Then Amplify the whole track...

[live2496]

Some software allows you to draw volume curve automation. Basically just like riding a fader on a console. Then you can increase the overall level.

[db]

unless the spikes are too numerous, i pencil tool them out in audacity. 

[F.O.Bean]

I do this ALL the time. I go into WaveLab 6 and highlight every peak as much as possible, and then just highlight that TINY milisecond of the file, and then I just lower the gain around 6-8db. Works like a charm and I am so good at it, you could NEVER tell I even did it

[page]

I use limiting on the audio as I'm too lazy to use the pencil tool (same net effect).

[colinw]

For spikes like that I use the Audacity envelope tool to lower the spikes to the range of the rest of he recording. I zoom in, select the spike, reduce it with envelope (you can make the curve pretty seamless with practice), then mix and render the file so he spikes are removed. After that you can amplify or normalize as normal.
It can take a while if there are lots of spikes or handclaps, etc but once you get the hang of it, it really is pretty quick and gives great results.