It bakes, it grills, it sautees, and it slow-cooks! It’s the amazing…wait, I’m not selling a revolutionary cooking appliance. But what I do have is a fantastic software that combines many tools in your “audio kitchen” into one, breakthrough audio processing software.
No more loading up multiple plugins, figuring out all the little buttons and settings, and especially no more sliding all the way up and then down to try and find a happy middle (that’s never really that happy).
Man, I really feel like there should be some black-and-white frustrated B-roll here. But this audio processing software is free so there’s nothing to sell or upsell. So I guess I can just get into it…
Introducing Levelator for Mac & Windows
Levelator was made by a couple of podcasters who were doing a whole bunch of shows and didn’t have time to do serious audio processing.
So they took their most used audio processing needs and created a program to do the heavy lifting for them (and you).
All you have to do is render your audio, drop it into Levelator, and it will do the work for you. Compress, EQ, normalize, loudness maximizing…and when it’s done it’ll give you a processed and polished audio file you can drop back into your final video.
How I use Levelator
Levelator is perfect for quick and easy processing of spoken word vocals. When I’m editing a service, I render out the Pastor’s sermon audio – his speech – as a single audio track. I make sure to mute any additional audio tracks in my edit that contain music so it won’t confuse the app. I drop that wav audio file on the Levelator app so it can work it’s magic.
I then take the resulting audio file and insert it in to fresh audio track in my edit. NOTE: make sure to line up the audio track with the existing vocal track. Once it’s in there, I mute the Pastor’s original vocal audio and the new one is used.
Generally, Levelator will do a GREAT job. The only time I’ve ever encountered odd results is when audio or sound effect tracks are rendered with the vocal audio. Usually, the levels for those tracks are set lower as a part of the edit and when ‘mushed together’ with the vocal audio in levelator, it can sound weird. So be sure to mute everything BUT the vocal audio you want to clean up.
What Levelator Won’t Do
Levelator won’t fix bad audio. The old adage holds true: Garbage in –> Garbage out. If you audio has buzz or hum, or popping or crackling, Levelator will simply not remove that. It’s designed to even out the volume and dynamic levels – not fix glitches.
If you’re audio has other problems, you really need to open it up in a proper editing app like Adobe Audition or Audacity and use the tools or special plugins to properly fix those issues, once fixed though, you can use levelator to do what it does best, or use the editor’s tools to normalize, maximize etc.
Conclusion
Levelator is another tool that I always keep handy for my audio editing and processing. It combines multiple audio processing tools in one, and it doesn’t take up any counter space either!
NOTE: Levelator is NOT being developed any further. The creators have not made any plans to add features or anything. The only updates that they have and I’m guessing will ever do, is update if an operating system update on Mac OS or Windows breaks the way Levelator works. For now, all seems to be dandy.
Grab your free copy of Levelator
Have you used Levelator before? If not, what are you looking forward to using it with?
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