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BijanK
BijanK
Participant
March 12, 2026
Question

How to normalize speech properly

  • March 12, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 30 views

I know I am doing something wrong here (I am fairly new to this), but I don’t know what. I am frequently editing +1-hour videos containing speech by several individuals and groups. The raw material I get often contain multiple individuals speaking at wildly different intensity levels (men, women, big vs. tiny voices etc.) plus other individuals scattered across a big room, again, speaking at different levels, al interspersed with laughter, clapping of hands and sudden outbursts of enthusiasm that send my levels deep into the red.

I have tried to normalize these audio tracks using different functions of Premiere, but nothing produced an actually normalized audio track, e.g. one with a single mostly consistent level. While getting somewhat attenuated, the level usually retains its wildly different sections and I have to compartmentalize individual sections and reduce/increase their levels by hand.

What am I doing wrong? Is there an automated way that will produce an audio track in which a person speaking is not drowned out completing by twenty people frenetically clapping their hands?

Many thanks!

Bijan

    2 replies

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    March 13, 2026

    If they are all on the same mic, you can’t normalize one track to a bunch of different levels. You can only level a track to one setup.

     

    So it this is one mic, I can about guarantee from plenty of experience it’s a difficult slog manually. Mulitple mics would be a great help.

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
      BijanK
      BijanKAuthor
      Participant
      March 13, 2026

      Thank you. I should have been clearer on this. The speaker has a headset mic while the audience voices are getting picked up by a Sennheiser cealing microphone (it’s a conference setup). However, both tracks get spliced into one in the recording that we have to use for post production (either local or Zoom). So, I do not have access to individual tracks, unfortunately.

      Through trial and error, I have found that the function “Speech volume leveler” in Audition helps me out here quite nicely. Using this I am able to roughly get everything to approximate levels -- I just need to be careful with “Increase low levels” switch as it can increase backgroud noise and hum to the level of the voice itself.

        R
        Community Expert
        RobShultzCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        March 13, 2026

        Even though you may be able to clean up some minor audio problems, if the clapping and other noise is the same “Frequency/Key” as the speaker there is not much that can be done. I’d look into options in Audition but most importantly I would never rely on a camera mic and always be sure that the speaker has a mic on them or a shotgun mic pointed at  them.

          BijanK
          BijanKAuthor
          Participant
          March 13, 2026

          Thanks for your hint. See my comment to the preceding comment for some clarification.

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