Levelator is a free cross-platform app from The Conversations Network that works magic on your audio recordings. This hybrid utility is perfect for podcasters, and works wonders on spoken word recordings and interviews. It includes a little normalization, some dynamic compression, a touch of limiter, and a lot of magic. The bottom line? Drag and drop an audio file to this app, and a few minutes later it will spit out a file with consistent levels and superior sound. I’ve been playing with it all weekend, and it’s my new favorite toy to run on files before I bring them into Soundtrack Pro for further sweetening.

“So what is The Levelator? It’s software that runs on Windows, OS X (universal binary), or Linux (Ubuntu) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It’s not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. It’s much more than those tools, and it’s much simpler to use. The UI is dirt-simple: Drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler’s application window, and a few moments later you’ll find a new version which just sounds better.

Have you ever recorded an interview in which you and your guest ended up at different volumes? How about a panel discussion where some people were close to microphones and others were not? These are the problems the post-production engineers of Team ITC here at The Conversations Network solve every day, and it used to take them hours of painstaking work with expensive and complex tools like SoundTrack Pro, Audacity, Sound Forge or Audition to solve them. Now it takes mere seconds. Seriously. The Levelator is unlike any other audio tool you’ve ever seen, heard or used. It’s magic. And it’s free.”

(Thanks to Rick Henshaw for the tip!)