Increasing Gain - the best solution on Mac

[airwise]

Hi All

 

I have inherited a number of lovely vinyl rips that unfortunately peak at between -5db and -12db.

 

I use Pure Music and have downloaded Audacity. What is the best way to listen to these? Is it best to normalize them in something like Audacity (not having much luck with that) or to use the Pure Music volume control and simply set it to say +7 db for the affected albums?

 

I don't have the gain in the system as I run a fairly low powered tube amp.

 

Thanks for any suggestions

[wgb113]

Rather than use the Normalize effect in Audacity which squashes the dynamic range, use the Amplify effect under the same menu. This preserves much of the dynamic range in the recording while making the files loud enough to be listenable alongside non-vinyl rips.

 

Be sure to do all de-clicking and pop removal BEFORE using the amplify effect for the best results and then save them as new files.

 

Bill

[MajorFubar]

Unless Audacity has got its features in a knot (and I don't think it has), Normalising should most definitely NOT compress any file's DR. The Normalising process scans the file, finds the loudest peak and raises the volume of the whole file to a level where that peak just hits 0db (or -0.1db, or whatever level you specify). No compression. On the other hand, Amplify will compress the file if you overdo it, by lopping the top off the loudest peaks.

[wgb113]

I stand corrected! Thanks for your post Major Fubar it led me to do more research. It seems that Amplify bumps both channels by the same amount, preserving the balance while Normalize allows you to bump the levels of each channel independently.

 

Audacity's manual suggests using the Normalize feature to first correct DC offset and to then adjust the amplitude of the transfer.

 

Bill

[MajorFubar]

No problem Bill. Just to add though, unless there was a pronounced channel imbalance that you wanted to correct, you wouldn't as a rule normalise the two channels separately in case one channel ended up louder than the other.

 

John