Amplitude Adjustment in Cool Edit Pro 1.2

[Mary Rose]

Greetings all,

I have a problem I can't fix, and more importantly, I can't explain properly because I lack the proper terminology for the are I'm talking about, so bare with me please.

Amplitudes in a Wave file are measured in some unit, I don't know what it's called, but I think it's "SMPL" (That's the unit that shows next to numbers corresponding to amplitude measurement.

I want to be able open a Wave file in Cool Edit Pro 1.2 and reduce all amplitudes above a certain SMPL measurement. Basically, I don't want the amplitude peaks to be so far apart from each other in value. I want the final volume of the wave file to be about the same throughout the entire file. So far, I have been doing it manually. I just look at the wave form and pick the amplitudes that are crazy high and reduce them one by one. The wave form starts to look more uniform with the crazy amplitudes having been adjusted. Then I do the same thing again only on a finer more accurate level, but still manually. I keep re-doing the process until most amplitudes are within an acceptable range of difference in value (acceptable to me.. not too much of a difference).

As you can tell, this is insanely time-consuming. Is there a function/tool/plug-in in Cool Edit Pro 1.2 whereby I can just plug in any given amplitude measurement (SMPL) and the program would automatically select all portions of the wave file where the amplitude is greater or smaller than the value I plugged in? This would make adjusting amplitudes a whole a lot easier than eye-balling all amplitudes and matching them manually and adjusting them individually.

I hope I made my problem clear. If not, please tell me so I can include a picture of what I'm talking about.

Appreciating your help,

- MRA

 

[sikter]

Normalizing is what you are looking for.
Read this:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=329226&sliceId=2

Normalizing is one of Cool Edits effects too (I think) so you don’t need another software for that part.

 

[Mary Rose]

Thank you for the response. Your idea helped, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for. When I used "Hard Limiting", I have to amplify the wave in order to get the desired effect of evening out amplitude peaks. If I don't amplify the entire waveform, the amplitude peaks don't get evened out.

What if I just want to even out the peaks without amplifying?

What do you advise?

Warm regards,

- MR

 

[LogicDeLuxe]

When I used "Hard Limiting", I have to amplify the wave in order to get the desired effect of evening out amplitude peaks. If I don't amplify the entire waveform, the amplitude peaks don't get evened out.

You don't have to amplify when using the hard limiter. Just set "Boost Input By" to 0 and your desired peak level in the "Limit Max Amplitude to"-field. It takes dB values, so it is usually a negative number.

When your vertical scale says "smpl" it shows the sample values. You usually won't have to bother with those, so better set the scale to show "decibels" instead (right click or double click the scale, not sure how 1.2 handles it). Those values are what you see in all the amplitude effects as well.

 

[Mary Rose]

Wow... this last tip helped a lot. Thank you all very much for the help. Sorry for the late reply.. been busy with work.