- In this brief tutorial,
I'm gonna show you how to apply compression to
your audio files in Audacity. (driving music) Compression is a useful tool to reduce the dynamic
range in your audio files. Essentially, you take the
loudest portions of your audio, and you make them softer,
so they're not as loud compared to the quieter parts
of your audio recordings. And so, when you do this right, it'll give your podcast episodes a more warm, round, and
pleasant sound quality. So it's a very useful tool, and Audacity makes it pretty easy to do. (funky music) Now, in order to use
the compressor effect, you first have to select the audio that you want to apply the effect to. So you can either press the Select button over here on the left
to select this track, or, if you're selecting everything, you can use something
like Control or Command-A to select all the audio tracks. From there, you would just go up to the Effect tab on
the top of your screen, and then go down to Compressor. Now here, Audacity is gonna give you several levers that you can pull to really hone in your compression. And so I'm just gonna break down what every single one of these does so you have a basic
understanding of how this works, so you know what to adjust when your audio doesn't sound exactly the way that you want it to. (funky music) So the first selection here, the first bar that you can
move, is called Threshold. And so that is the point at which you want Audacity to apply compression. 'Cause remember, compression happens to the loudest parts of your audio, so you don't want the
softer parts of your audio to get compressed, only the loud part. So by selecting -12
decibels, that means that any parts of your audio
that are louder than -12 will get compressed, that
Audacity will actively compress those parts of your audio. This is actually a good figure, so you can just leave it here. (funky music) Now, the second thing that you can adjust is the Noise Floor, and the Noise Floor is
what allows Audacity to tell the difference
between when you're speaking and when there's either gaps in your words or silent parts of your audio. 'Cause you don't want
Audacity to take that audio and actually boost it by accident. So that's what the Noise Floor does. (funky music) Now, the next selection, the Ratio, is how much you want Audacity
to compress your audio. Too much, and it'll sound
over-compressed and monotone, but then not enough, and
it won't actually sound like you did very much of anything. So that's what this Ratio does. The higher the Ratio,
the more it's compressed; the lower the Ratio, the
less it's compressed. (funky music) Now, the Attack and Release Time refer to how quickly you want Audacity to respond to changes in volume. So Attack Time is, let's say that you're speaking
kind of in a normal voice, and then you laugh, or
you have a loud outburst. How quickly do you want Audacity to identify that peak in
your volume and compress it? So if you want it to react very quickly, then you lower the Attack Time. And if you want it to
take a little bit longer to start applying that compression, then you would use a longer Attack Time. And the Release Time is the
same, but it's on the back end. So after your audio has
gone below your Threshold, so let's say that you're
speaking very loudly for two to three seconds, and then you go back to a normal tone that's beneath the Threshold, which here we have set at -12 decibels, how long until you want Audacity to stop compressing that audio? And so that's what those two levers do. And with all of these, it's really best to just leave them at the default setting, listen to what it sounds like applied to your particular audio file, and then make tweaks from there. You can very quickly get into a situation where you've messed up your audio and you aren't really
sure how to get it back. So always start with the default, and then make small tweaks
to really dial it in. (funky music) Now, there's two checkboxes down here that you can apply as well. The first one is Make-up gain
for 0 dB after compressing. So when you apply compression
to an audio track, the volume is gonna be lower, because those latter
portions have been softened and the soft portions are
left basically by themselves. And so selecting this box means that Audacity is gonna amplify your audio, bring it back up to a good level, so that when you go to play it later, not only has your audio been compressed, but it's been amplified to a
listenable, editable level. The other option you have is
to compress based on the peaks, so Audacity looking at
the peaks in your audio and using that to compress,
versus your Threshold floor. But I wouldn't worry about that, I would leave that box unchecked. And if you wanna preview
what this would sound like, you can click the Preview button, and the default is six seconds, that'll let you listen to
six seconds of this audio with compression applied. And if you like what you hear, then you just simply click Okay. (smooth jazz) So there you saw Audacity analyze my file, and then apply those compression settings, so now it's taken those loud
parts and made them softer, and then raised the volume level overall to fill in that space. So now I have a really
well-rounded audio file. (funky music) Now, you can also pair the
Audacity Compressor effect with the Limiter effect, which basically serves as
a hard brick wall, saying anything that's louder than
this particular decibel level, just cut it off at the knees. But you really don't wanna use that unless you're having issues
with distortion or clipping. So I wouldn't worry about that, but just know that that's available to you if you need to really continue to fine tune your compression settings. Now, if you wanna continue to learn how to edit podcast episodes in Audacity, I would encourage you to check out our Audacity Tutorial playlist
here on our YouTube channel, where we talk about how to
cut and move audio tracks, how to remove background noise, how to amplify your volume and
apply fades and crossfades. And then if you're new here, make sure you subscribe to the
Buzzsprout YouTube channel. Every single week we put out new gear review videos,
podcast strategy videos, and software tutorials like
the one that you just watched. Well, thanks for watching, and until next time, keep podcasting. (upbeat music)
Thanks for posting, first time I’ve heard of this. Excited to try this out since I’m recording a phone interview via Ringr with my mic. Hoping this will help balance out any sound quality mismatch.
Nice