Problem With Audacity Compressor(Appears Solved)

[sdkhalsa]

In the recent version of audacity 2.0.2, when I apply the compressor  the volume level increases rather than compresses. Also having distortion in the delay effect. Any thoughts? Any way of installing the previous version?

[horusfalcon]

What sort of compression scheme did you set up in the compression dialog?  The default looks something like:



With those settings, yeah, the whole thing will be boosted to 0dB after compression is applied. (Note the checkbox in the lower left?)

The help feature in Audacity is actually pretty good, and covers the compression effect well.  You should consider reading that before trying to use compression.  (It's like Brylcreem - a little dab'll do ya.  That is:  a little compression goes a long way.)

What were you trying to accomplish with compression, anyhow?

Distortion in the delay effect is probably being caused by excessive pitch change effect or number of echoes.  Either that, or by the overall signal level being overdriven into clipping.

What audio hardware are you using?

Later On,
D

[sdkhalsa]

Thanks for the reply. I have been using audacity for quite a while and very much enjoy it. Your comment about the left check box solved the amplification issue. Unchecking both boxes solved the problem. This was an installation on a new computer, and it has been a long time since I have have dealt with these check marks, so I had forgotten about them. My reason for using the compressor is to reduce the volume on some of the peaks so as to avoid clipping.

About the distortion on the delay.  My values are 3 echoes with a delay of .07, just enough to take the dryness out of the voice of the lead singer. What seems to have changed in the 2.0.2 edition is that the echoes seem more exaggerated. If you look at Delay level per echo, near the top of delay settings, the range on 2.0.2 is -30 to 1(a standard setting of -6 is 3/4 of the way to the right on the slider). On the old 1.3.13, the range is -1 to 24(a standard setting of 6 is 3/4 of the way to the left on the slider). If I put the sliders of both in about the same position(3/4 to the left)  the sound results are the same, but the numbers would read 6 on the older version and about -22 on the 2.0.2. I assume that they switched positive values for negative ones, but it seems that the same number in 2.0.2 gives a huge boost to the echo effect.

[horusfalcon]

Thanks for the reply. I have been using audacity for quite a while and very much enjoy it. Your comment about the left check box solved the amplification issue. Unchecking both boxes solved the problem. This was an installation on a new computer, and it has been a long time since I have have dealt with these check marks, so I had forgotten about them. My reason for using the compressor is to reduce the volume on some of the peaks so as to avoid clipping.

It sounds like you have the right idea.  A lot changed with 2.0.2, and with 2.0.x in general, most of it for very good reasons (mainly to make Audacity more like other "professional grade" software with respect to how signal levels and other parameters are expressed and measured).

About the distortion on the delay.  My values are 3 echoes with a delay of .07, just enough to take the dryness out of the voice of the lead singer. What seems to have changed in the 2.0.2 edition is that the echoes seem more exaggerated. If you look at Delay level per echo, near the top of delay settings, the range on 2.0.2 is -30 to 1(a standard setting of -6 is 3/4 of the way to the right on the slider). On the old 1.3.13, the range is -1 to 24(a standard setting of 6 is 3/4 of the way to the left on the slider). If I put the sliders of both in about the same position(3/4 to the left)  the sound results are the same, but the numbers would read 6 on the older version and about -22 on the 2.0.2. I assume that they switched positive values for negative ones, but it seems that the same number in 2.0.2 gives a huge boost to the echo effect.

Yep.  This is not an uncommon occurrence, and part of getting used to the new version.  If you ever have occasion to use Ardour or ProTools or another DAW product, you'll appreciate the changes made to Audacity to get closer to how they view and measure things.  What they did here is replaced a more arbitrary unit scale with a scale reading in db.  It makes more sense that way, really.

Glad you got this sorted out!  Audacity is a really cool audio editor for small projects, and ya can't beat the price!

Later On,
D