Looking back over this thread, the first thing to do would be to switch from Audacity to Reaper which is harder to learn but has countless advantages and is not very expensive. Definitely back away from the mic when belting out the loud bits....no compressor can substitute for mic technique. Then place a decent compressor plug-in on the recorded track. I use T-racks but the one that comes with Reaper is fine. Set the attack pretty fast, the threshold down to where it starts to work when the loud bits come in, and the ratio around 4:1. The test of whether you have it right is to see the needle moving down around 3 - 4 db when it is compressing the louder parts and returning to zero during the soft bits. Adjust the threshold to make that happen. And with digital recording, never let the volume get in the red. Turn the whole track down if that happens or you will get nasty distortion above 0db.

Colin

I try to critique as if you mean business.....

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