de-Amplify and Adjustable Fade in Audacity - quieting 10 loud unclipped seconds?

[morst]

That looks like a good explanation morst. There are a ton of youtube videos on this as well. Being able to see the change in the waveform makes it beyond simple. I use Reaper, which does not do that, or not as clearly if you enable it. Peak meters tell you how far off you are anyway.

You do not have to make an hourglass with the envelope though. You can add more points in between to change the fade in or fade out rate. The last set in the attached image has quite a lot of points, for example.

Thanks.

Yeah, Audacity makes it easy to see the shape, but doesn't give much in the way of hints for the actual numbers. Sounds like Reaper is the opposite.
The "Hourglass" shape is the minimal useful shape created with only 4 points total.

[admkrk]

Yeah, you can use less than 4 points, but it will not usually give very good results.

I was used to seeing the waveform change, as I adjusted envelopes, before I started with Reaper. The top part Audacity shows does not really mean anything, though. It is not like you can change the top and not the bottom. It might make more sense in terms of automating plugins.  The envelopes are still basically the same, but all the way up is active and all the away down is bypass, or the other way around? In that case it is more like a square wave.

I make heavy use of volume envelopes. They are great for smoothing out when you initially set your gain not right and have to make quick adjustment when the set starts. If you get too much of a ramp, just add another point to round it out more.

[chiefscribe]

Ah, this worked perfectly, and I only spent a few minutes on it. I knew there had to be a better way. This isn't clipping, my nightmare, but I am glad I can keep the rest of the set louder w/o making this one little audience participation bit sound like it was manipulated. 

This little tutorial was helpful too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP9bzByrE0I

Thanks again.

[morst]

Yeah, you can use less than 4 points, but it will not usually give very good results.

I was used to seeing the waveform change, as I adjusted envelopes, before I started with Reaper. The top part Audacity shows does not really mean anything, though. It is not like you can change the top and not the bottom. It might make more sense in terms of automating plugins.  The envelopes are still basically the same, but all the way up is active and all the away down is bypass, or the other way around? In that case it is more like a square wave.

With three points, the volume will decrease from point 1 to 2, then increase from point 2 to 3.
That minimal style can be useful for a single peak, but not really for a section with any listenable duration.


In order to lower peaks on the negative excursion only, you can envelope each peak tightly with a three-pointer, in order to get the asymmetrical envelope you seek
That would be unfeasible at length without automation, though.


Glad it worked for ya chiefscribe!!!


note that my example is made using a generated noise section as the audio program, which is far less interesting than music, both to look at and to hear