Using Chris’s Dynamic Compressor With Suggested Settngs

Easy Guide to Chris’s Dynamic Compressor

It is the perfect tool for leveling audio level and adding punch to voiceovers and podcasts. Like almost everything else in Audacity world, it’s completely, really, free, and equals insanely expensive hardware or software in versatility

Chris’s Dynamic Compressor is listed in the Effects menu as “Compress dynamics 1.2.6”after installation, which in windows is basically dragging the file to Programs>Audacity>Plugins. My intallations always make a Nyquist folder but Audacity seems to find them only in "plugins"

You can download the zip under the "assets" label at https://github.com/theDanielJLewis/dynamic-compressor-for-audacity

Here are two versions of Chris's Compressor Nyquist plugin that seem to have been updated in 2021

And a link to the online readme.

Remember these cautions before you start:

Keep an unedited copy safe in a different folder, in WAV or AIFF format would with the file bame and “Master” or UNEDITED as the file name.
Turn off all audio enhancements to your computer audio.
Make small changes, and remember too much “fixing”can leave detectably weird sounding adio with artifacts
Audacity will only maintain your compressor settings while Audacity is still running. If you restart it, the compressor settings revert to their defaults
First step:
It’s a good idea to select all audio and run Normalize with just the “temove DC bias” box selected.

Noise gate falloff is how aggressively the compressor will reduce sound that is lower in gain (volume, basically, for us) than the floor. Low level sound is usually mostly noise.

Set your floor at -32.00 dB, so anything under -32.00 dB will have falloff applied. The floor is the point at which the compressor will treat sound as unwanted. -32.00 dB is a good starting point. A higher number, like -24.00 dB, may cause the compressor to accidentally getm rid of soft speaking, or desirable organic sounds like breath-taking. A lower number, like -48.00 dB, may result in an excess amount of leftover noise.

For voice recordings, use a compression and maximum amplitude of 1.000.

Compression ratio at 1.000 will keep levels consistent and maximum amplitude means at 1.000 means that the clip will be loud. Don't make the mistake of letting your finished audio levels play below the normal volume of most broadcasts, podcasts or voiceovers. These finishing touches brand your product as professional and your content as authorative. (is that a word?)

A compression hardness of 0.650 retains a small amount of dynamic range. Anything between 0.250 and 0.750 is usually too low and soft speaking may not become loud enough, while too high a number can make breathing and mouth sounds loud.

For voice recordings, use a compression and maximum amplitude of 1.000. Compression ratio at 1.000 will keep levels consistent and maximum amplitude means at 1.000 means that the clip will be loud.

The waveform shoild have all peaks around -5 dB, which is a great volume, and that the vast majority of peaks occur at between -20 and -5 dB, which is a nice, tight range.

Or you could just set it like this: