Need advice for audacity

[Improv to Saga]

Hello

I was told I need to keep my recordings

• "measure between -23dB and -18dB RMS and have -3dB peak values and a maximum -60dB noise floor"
  

Now I know this is isn't much to do with youtube per say but I'm learning to edit my audio for better quality and I'm eventually now idea what I'm doing. I assume I can adjust these things with the compressor, leveler and equalizer but it's more so i need to understand what these things are and what they do, and why I'm doing it

 

[SimbaHD_]

I am also new to audacity but all the problems I had were easily solved by a quick search on google and youtube, im sure if you do this you will find your answer quickly

 

[ShuriBear]

Just like Simba said, these things are easy to find with google/youtube search.
But in brief:
- Compressor: compresses the sound, imho you should avoid this, because too much compression on your voice will result in worse sound quality.
- Leveler: levels all audio levels, so the peaks in your audience (i.e. when you scream) will be just as loud as the rest of your stuff (i.e. talking)
- Equalizer: Handy to cut off unwanted rumble or high pitch sounds. Every voice has a different audio range, so you have to play around for your voice till it's top notch.

 

[DragoNate]

Personally, all I ever do with Audacity (literally use it always) is just the noise reduction to get rid of unwanted background noise and maybe increase gain if needed. I don't know if it's just the microphone I have, but I don't seem to need to do anything else. I also tend not to yell a lot so yeah.
I have tried using the compressor before, but when I use it, it seems to increase the peaks and overall volume/loudness of the audio, no matter what settings I choose. So i just avoid it.

 

[Ikerot]

Here's a video of Audacity that I used back when I was using Audacity lol