On Tue, 19 May 2020 16:21:33 +0100, Bert Coules wrote:

On the subject of compression, the bulk of the files I'm working with
are m4a recordings of a male speaking voice and they have a huge and
impractical dynamic range. I was resigned to going through them (and
there are a lot) manually adjusting the levels, but could applying
compression achieve a decent quality result?

How long is a peice of string? Depends how wide a dynamic range
you're having to deal with and what the loud bits are.

If the loud bits are coughs or laughs or shouting the chance are they
can be controlled well enough with a limiter after a compressor.

If the "normal" speech has a dynamic range of 10 to 20 db a
compressor set at 2:1 to 3:1 with around 6 dB of gain reduction
happening ought to work reasonably well.

Just looked at Audacity's compressor/limiter "effects" and they
aren't realtime. Being used to realtime, ie tweak and instantly
hear/see the result, non-realtime totaly throws me.

--
Cheers
Dave.