How To Make Your Voice Sound Better in Audacity

This is how to make your voice sound better in Audacity for gameplay commentaries, when singing, performing a voice over and more. The native effects that come loaded on audacity have the power to make your voice sound great!

[rozenblaadje]

1. Equalization (High to about 6dB, Low to about 4 dB)
2. Amplify (Default values)
3. Compressor (-30dB, -50dB, 5:1, 0, 10secs, 1.0secs)
4. Amplify (-3.00dB)

[covi]

For anyone with Audacity 2.3.3 thad doesn't have Equalization:


It's called Filter curve in the effects menu!

[gerardlunow]

That is what I love about people making the effort to help us. 3 minuted of my time and an hour saved. Thank you!!!

[realjames]

1:10 Equalizer
2:21 Amplify
2:39 Compressor
3:22 Reduce Amplify

[robertdawson]

For those looking for the EQ, Audacity has been split it into two effects, the "Graphic EQ" and the "Filter Curve" effect. The "Filter Curve" effect is pretty much the same as the "Draw" mode of the old EQ effect

[JCDawghound]

*For anyone looking for comparison:*

0:39 Before Edit
3:25 After Edit

[DavidGroemping]

Getting good audio has been a big challenge for me and you solved it on 1 video. That's amazing, thank you so much.

[jrothra]

I like his points, but I would add a few notes:
1. Noise reduction - not every mic or sound recording system filters noise out, and so I'd always do that first
2. Compression sounds fine for short clips, But for longer ones, such as podcasts, I'd be wary as it can make every inhale very loud (esp. if recorded using a lapel mic), making the whole thing harder to listen to in the long run
3. It was very hard to tell the before and after with your commentary (which was edited in post-production) so closely intermixed
Overall, though, this advice is sound.

[ThisKory]

I watched probably 10 different videos showing how to correct audio in Audacity and Mike's video was the one which worked for me. Don't stop here! Everyone's mic is different, and you can keep tweaking and previewing to see what sounds best to you. Personally, I added the "Noise Reduction" filter on top of the steps in the video to get rid of background noise from my central air/computer fans.

[RexGameplayChannel]

Massive THANK YOU for making my voiceover sound better, Mr.Mike! My old ways did not sound great, so I am very happy with my new results that I got out of this video! So again, thank you very much for the big help! :D

[trublgrl]

I'm sure someone has mentioned this, but you are not normalizing, you are amplifying. Amplify adds gain, in other words raises the amplitude (volume) across the board. If you are near to distortion before adding gain, you can easily distort your recording using this method. Also, when you say "amplify to minus 3 db", you are actually lowering the amplitude by 3 db. The amplify effect is not relative to zero, it is relative to the sample's volume. Audacity does have a normalize function, and it works in the way you describe. Normalize scans the entire file, finds the highest amplitude, (volume), and changes the gain so that the highest volume is at the point you set in the query box, relative to zero, and the rest of the file changes relative to that amplitude increase or decrease.
Thanks for your video.

[teisonedwards]

Thanks for the awesome tutorial. For someone with very limited knowledge on audio, this was a huge help!

[rawunlimitedvlog]

Glad I found this! What a difference it made to my vocal recordings! Thanks, Mike!

[RyanLSink-ufjw]

Thanks Mike! It was great to see your face again in the search results ;) and the audio for my new webinar sounds much better! I wish I had a Bane-like mask with these filters to make my voice sound this cool all the time!!

[bigbadbanana]

Awesome video ! It's funny because I was looking for this EXACT type of video on youtube but there are so many, so many that comes from non professional... And I was hoping you'd make one as a professional ! I followed your videos on How to sound better with Audition, but I also was looking for Audacity, now you made it clean and simple, thanks Mike ! Keep up the good work !

[rva]

omg you have the best voice! Go you! : ) new sub

[YOURPLAYLISTS]

This is the one of the best mp3 editing software i ever used, especially for beginners.
I recommend this software 👍

[edunaijachannel]

i love this.So simple and straight forward

[Fari]

Thanks a lot for uploading this. This did magic to my voice commentary.

[RaazKumarComTelugu]

EQ Equalize (frequency vs voice)
N Normalize
C Compress (cutting edges of loud noise & boosting lower voice)
N Normalize (should be final to equal wave)