I think most of us can agree that current music does not need additional compression. However, I play a lot of older music that was recorded prior to the "Loudness Wars". These songs can benefit from compression when being played in a noisy environment , i.e., a bar. Rather than using a hardware compressor that compresses everything, I've chosen to compress individual files, as needed. Audacity has one built in, but there is an even better one by Chris Capel (unfortunately deceased). The current version 1.2.6 is free, and works as an Audacity plugin, or even better, as a stand alone program that can batch process ! It is available here -
https://github.com/theDanielJLewis/dynamic-compressor-for-audacity/releases
If you're on Windows, download the zip file, unzip, and navigate to the standalone-windows Directory. The program "Compressor.exe" will run without installing.
You simply drag and drop the files you want to compress. I've used Compression levels as high as 0.75. Two caveats. It will only handle 44,100 files (standard CD) not 48,000. Also, if encoding back to mp3, you must specify the location in your system where the LAME encoder is located. Frankly, besides Mix, I don't know how you could be a DJ in 2021 and not already have a LAME encoder in your system. The default LAME arguments work fine, but produce a VBR file.
If anyone actually tries this, please share your results.
https://github.com/theDanielJLewis/dynamic-compressor-for-audacity/releases
If you're on Windows, download the zip file, unzip, and navigate to the standalone-windows Directory. The program "Compressor.exe" will run without installing.
You simply drag and drop the files you want to compress. I've used Compression levels as high as 0.75. Two caveats. It will only handle 44,100 files (standard CD) not 48,000. Also, if encoding back to mp3, you must specify the location in your system where the LAME encoder is located. Frankly, besides Mix, I don't know how you could be a DJ in 2021 and not already have a LAME encoder in your system. The default LAME arguments work fine, but produce a VBR file.
If anyone actually tries this, please share your results.