Page, are you suggesting to use the amplify effect in order to determine peak levels, but use the limiter to do the fix? If so, be sure to undo the amplify action before gaining up the whole thing using the limiter. If you are suggesting to amplify, then limit, I'll disagree, and say just use one process to do both. Though I don't really like the sound of audacity's hard limit plugin.
I don't use the hard limiter as a gain function (period, at any time). I do in ozone because it doesn't give me much choice (so for precision edits, I have to use audacity's), but audacity's can function as a limiter without gain. The reason I specified gain first, was gain on the
entire show to bring it up to levels that are easier to work with. Your end result is gain (entire show) > limit (selective portions) > gain (entire show). Technically you could limit the entire file but with the residue value set at half, you'd be effecting musical portions even as they are under what you want to resulting peak to be, hence the surgical method noted above. I find I have more trouble working with stuff that's around -15 then I do at -5, but I've also got my metering configured so that I only see the first 18db or so, but I get a lot of detail in that area.
Otherwise doing the limits first, and then gaining the entire show would work just as well.
As for the sound of the limiter, I think it's ok when you keep the residual value above 0.3, any lower then that and I agree it turns to ass (IMHO). The other time it falls apart is if you're knocking out more then 5-7db of the resulting file (so a limit of 10-14db with a residue of half).
Ok sounds like the applause levels are actually louder than the music.
If it was a quiet show and there are huge applause swells - I'd resort to manually selecting each applause segment and just bringing them down with the Amplify tool -
-5 or 6db at a time. As long as the level shift isnt bothersome. (And you can use the envelope tool to prevent the shift if you like) You might easily use -10db...
Another thing I've done is cut a few seconds of the loudest applause...it can sound a little cooky - but a least it gets it over without being too obnoxious.
I've tried it both ways and I didn't like the effect on the background sound when that was done. That works best when you have applause that isn't mingled with music, at all (so no clapping during the trail end of a song) since you suddenly lose that musical content when you do the amplify function with a negative value. The envelope tool works better, but then suddenly your crowd gets quieter slowly, but so does everything else so it's similar to the effect of walking out of the concert hall backwards (sound decreases as does the loud stuff) which is better than the hard change, but still sounds meh
to me.