Hi.
Tell me a plugin that increases the volume of quiet sounds in audio, but at the same time decreases the volume of loud sounds? If there are other methods to do this, then please tell me.
It rather depends on the difference between the audio levels of the lower and higher audio levels but start off with a compressor. Vegas Pro 22 has eFX Compressor - but there are dozens upon dozens of 3rd party compressors available on the internet.
If you want to spend a small fortune, have a look at iZotope's RX 11 Advanced which features volume levelling as well as loudness control.
,Hi @ryan-hall34
See the recent topic, which deals with a similar issue or erratic levels. In this case, I recommended the legacy Wave Hammer plug-in which is a two-stage comp/limiter with an auto gain option in the first stage which is controlled by the threshold setting, so it does not have the typical AGC behavior, The second stage is basically a brick wall peak limiter.
@ryan-hall34 There's also a standard audio fx in Vegas called Graphic Dynamics that allows independent adjustment of loud and soft sounds. For instance, it has a preset to limit loud sounds to -12db with auto gain adjustment checked so that it compensates by boosting everything including soft sounds by +12 db. You might want to play with the break points for less drastic effect and maybe add a break point on the downward side for better control. I usually uncheck auto gain adjustment and follow Graphic Dynamics with Wave Hammer Surround, activating only the Volume Maximizer tab, to get the exact maximum levels I want.
@ryan-hall34 There's also a standard audio fx in Vegas called Graphic Dynamics that allows independent adjustment of loud and soft sounds. For instance, it has a preset to limit loud sounds to -12db with auto gain adjustment checked so that it compensates by boosting everything including soft sounds by +12 db. You might want to play with the break points for less drastic effect and maybe add a break point on the downward side for better control. I usually uncheck auto gain adjustment and follow Graphic Dynamics with Wave Hammer Surround, activating only the Volume Maximizer tab, to get the exact maximum levels I want.
Can you send screenshots of the settings of the Graphic Dynamics and Wave hammer plugins that you use?
Yes, Graphic Dynamics is a great tool. I started using it many years ago in Sound Forge. It can also be used to expand (soft gate), upward compress and limit all at the same time.
@ryan-hall34 Here's some screen shots of how I would approach it...
I would start off with a system preset like 3:1 compression:
Then customize it to 5:1 compression, for example:
Next, add a little gating since the compression will boost background noise, uncheck auto-gain since I want to control that with wave-hammer, and save my custom preset in case I need to tweak it some more:
I introduced gating, which is actually expansion, by adding a point and dragging it down along the bottom axis. If I was after raising the low level sounds more than the next stage would, I would drag that extra point upwards along the left axis.
At this point I see that according to the graphic that output passed down the fx chain should be at around -12db relative to the input. Attack and release might affect that, however. The nice thing about using wave-hammer after this, is that it can adapt if doesn't come out exactly -12db. But I usually do a test render here and examine the result with Sound Forge to see what actually happens. And maybe tweak my saved preset some more if it's not what I expect.
But assuming it's on the money, I would next go to wave-hammer and shut off the compressor tab... note that wave-hammer compression could have done everything I did with graphic-dynamics except level focused gating or boosting.
And then on the volume maximizer tab, set the amount of boost (12db) and the amount of headroom (1db) I want.
And finally check the output again with Sound Forge, which is quicker than just bringing it back into Vegas and playing the whole track while watching the meters.
Btw, if you want to do upward expansion of the peaks, just add a point near the top and drag it upwards. But I find that the top end is very sensitive to small adjustments and often needs tweaking. But I find it useful dealing with limited dynamics recordings from the olden days. As well as some camera audio captured with auto-gain.