Often I'm mixing down to 2 channels some sort of location recordings of folk music that may have in the beginning from 2,3 to 7,9 channels.
Usually it's a camera mic plus a stereo channels from various pocket recorders.
It's a non-amplified authentic folk music mostly from a third world countries, so it's a very special sounding material.
Finding an overall balance between the channels for me it's OK.
What I want is find a good way to smooth out the levels of the audio clips inside some of the channels. The levels between loud and soft parts.
For example, some composition when somebody starts hand clapping at some moment don't let me to raise an overall level of this audio clip for some db.
It's because of short audio peaks that hand clapping may give to audio.
What I'm often do is simply put this region a few decibels down via level automation (Adobe Audition), and rise up when hand clapping is over (for example)
But I'm just think that maybe I can have another way to work with audio like this?
Is there a way to reduce this peaks gently with plugins like hard limiting?
Maybe someone can recommend a book about mixing/mastering basics where I can find an answer for the question like this and more?