Speech Volume Leveler

[frederickm98754315]

Hello all,

Excuse my ignorance in this matter. I have been trying to figure this out for the longest, I think I may have figured it or reading through some material. I am recording for a podcast I'll have to look when I get home, but I think the speech volume leveler effect is on when I record and when I go to Normalize to -0.1 db in post the audio is loud and hissing. Should I only be using one? I try to normalize it because even with the gain adjusted to give me levels around -10 db I get no activity on the track volume. So should I not be normalizing in post? Any help would be great.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

The speech volume leveler can't be on when you record - Audition only records dry. That's quite deliberate; it's good professional practice, simply because whatever you record with any sort of effect on it is stuck there, and you can't get rid of it afterwards.

If you are recording in Multitrack view, then it's possible to put the speech volume leveler into the effects chain, and certainly you'll hear the effect of it, but that's only because it's in the monitoring chain. If you make a recording with it present, and afterwards remove it from the chain, you'll hear your recording as it actually is - without the effect added.

If you are just recording yourself, then this effect really isn't relevant; it's generally used to even up contributions at different levels in a track, and if you are making a recording in controlled conditions, you really don't need it. Much better to normalize to 0dB, and then use something like the Dynamics processor to get the sound you want.

You'd have to show us a recording, but probably the reason that you don't see much track activity is because you've got a lot of short peaks, and most of the sound is at a lower level. You can reduce this significantly by using something like the Single Band Compresser with the Brick Wall Limiter preset - might well be worth trying that - but you need to normalize to 0dB first, otherwise the settings won't work as intended.