- In this brief tutorial, I'm gonna show you how you can normalize your audio files using Audacity. (upbeat music) When you normalize your audio what you're doing is you
are adjusting the level or the volume of your audio files without affecting their dynamic range, so the relationship that the louder points and the softer points have to each other. And there are two main reasons that you would want to
normalize your audio, the first one is to match volume levels across different clips. So let's say that you have
an intro music segments, and then you have a narrated segment, and then an interview section, you want all of those to sound basically at the same volume level and so you can normalize
your audio to make sure that one is not too loud
and the other, too soft. The other reason you would
normalize your audio is that your audio file just is too soft, that you can't actually see the waveforms, you're having trouble editing it and it's not actually that easy to hear, and normalizing your audio fixes that. Now the first thing you have to do in order to apply the normalize
effect is select the audio that you want to normalize. So here I have a track
that I've brought in, and so I'm just gonna use Command + A, or Control + A if you're
using a Windows computer, to select it. So you can see the color of the track changed in the background so I know that I've
selected this entire track. From there you're gonna
go up to the Effect tab on the top of your screen and go down and click Normalize. So here Audacity is gonna give you a couple different options, things you can do to normalize your audio. The first option it gives you
is to remove the DC offset and center on 0.0 vertically. So essentially all that means is that you want your waveform to be centered on that 0.0 line on the track. So if you go back and
you check this track, 0.0 is right here,
that's the center point, and you want that to be in the middle, so you actually wanna leave this checked. The second option that you have is to normalize your peak amplitude
to negative one decibels or whatever value you want. And the reason that is important is because when you normalize your audio, you don't want your peaks or your loudest parts to get so loud that they extend beyond
negative one decibels, that they extend beyond
the boundaries of the track 'cause then you get
distortion, you get clipping, and even though, sure,
you can hear the audio, it doesn't sound very good. And so you want Audacity to
stop at negative one decibel, and that's the industry
standard for peak volume, so you just wanna leave
it at the default there. The other thing you can do is normalize your stereo
channels independently. Let's say that you're
using a Behringer mixer and you're actually
mixing two microphones, one's recorded on the left
side of the stereo mix and one's recorded on the right side, you actually do want to
analyze both of them separately because you might be speaking in a different volume than
your co-host or your guest. So if that's the case, then you would select this checkbox to normalize your stereo
channels independently, but if not, then you wouldn't. Now before you make this change you can actually preview
six seconds of the audio so you can hear what it's gonna sound like when you apply this normalization. And then if you like what
you hear you can click OK. And so now Audacity has
normalized my audio, so it bumped up the volume to get that peak volume right
at negative one decibels and so now I can start
working with my audio knowing that it's at the right level. Now if you wanna learn everything you need to know about how to edit
podcast episodes in Audacity, then I would encourage you to check out our Audacity
tutorial playlist here on the Buzzsprout YouTube channel. ll leave a link in the show notes as well, so you can go and check that out. And if you're new here, make sure you subscribe to the
Buzzsprout YouTube channel. Every single week we're putting
out new gear review videos, new software tutorials like this one, and even podcast strategy videos to really help you on
your podcasting journey. Well thanks for watching and until next time, keep podcasting. (upbeat music)
