Easy way to chop off peaks at same level across entire wav file?

FilterFunk

FilterFunk

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Mar 31, 2010
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#1
I'm posting this on TB because (a)I'm not a member of any recording/music production forums, and (b)there's usually someone on TB who can answer just about anything! I'll do my best to not make this TL;DR...

Here's a screenshot of one of my music wav files:
1.jpg


As you can see, there's plenty of headroom there - no clipping, and the red light doesn't flash when played. Now, when I raise the overall volume level to match or at least reasonably approach that of commercial releases (I want to do this because I plan to sell my music), I get plenty of that nasty digital clipping. So, I have a solution that works - I go in and manually reduce all the peaks to a certain level; that way, I can easily raise the overall level and still have plenty of dynamics, but no clipping. Here's a screenshot that shows how I can hone in on a peak (I can be much more precise, but this is just for demonstration purposes):
2.jpg


The problem? If I tried to do this for all of my songs, that's all I'd be doing! It's unreasonably tedious and time-consuming. Here's one more screenshot - I drew crude linear lines to show where I'd like to automatically chop off the level along the entire file, which would still give the recording plenty of dynamics while getting rid of unwanted peaks and allowing me to raise the overall level without clipping:
3.jpg


Now for the jackpot question - is there a program/plugin that allows me to simply chop off the top and bottom of the entire waveform at a depth that I choose instead of simply reducing the overall volume, which would leave me right where I started, or instead of having to go in and reduce every peak by hand?

I tried EQ/compression/limiting/brickwall, etc.; nothing worked. I also Googled the heck out of this issue to no avail. PLEASE HELP!!!
 
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#9
You need to take off your mixing hat, and put on your mastering hat. Two very different things.
A good limiter will raise your signal. If you can use VST plug ins in your DAW try the free Antress Modern Series.
I found some of the suite had some cool features, and more than a little 'mojo.'
The Modern Deep Purple HPF & LPF filters had a little magic in them.
 
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#12
MonetBass said:
Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but does your DAW have a Normalize function?
Click to expand...
Great point!
The question is how much "flavor" to add to the process of boosting low volume info and attenuating peaks. The overall level can be raised with no change to information with normalization. With compression you could have artifacts and response curves(the flavor) from the plugin algorithm, which may or may not be desirable. I usually normalize the source, then reduce volume if needed and process on a separate bus with an fx send.
 
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#13
MonetBass said:
Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but does your DAW have a Normalize function?
Click to expand...
Normalization will raise the peak values, but won't likely increase the RMS values sufficiently for what the OP is after. Reduction of dynamic range will be required.

@FilterFunk you could try a demo of Izotope Ozone. Their 'Maximizer' limiter gets used on more material than just about any standalone mastering package. I don't know that I'd call it the industry standard as there may not be an industry standard, but it's exceedingly commonplace to see it used for this purpose. As a bonus it's easy to use and sounds great in the right hands.
 
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#16
I would do as stated above, use the Limiter plugin. If your volume level is weak, enlarge the entire Wave form track or boost the volume, then use the limiter. Don't worry too much about clipping, digital has a lot of headroom to use beyond clipping that will still sound clear.
 
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