Thank you Telephony for the quick response!
Read through the manual and have experimented with the Normalizing options you mentioned. It is definitely the right way for matching the volume of tracks together, I agree. So that does answer my question in part.
However, I am very interested in the pumping effect that occurs from too much volume increase. It happens whether using Amplify, Normalize, Dynamic Range Compressor, or any effect that has the possibility of producing too much gain. The way I understand it is if the audio gets loud enough to exceed the upper digital ceiling (the max decibel full-scale quantisable values in digital) it must either TRULY hard clip, creating nasty, flat line digital distortion (not pleasing in the least since 10 to 30 samples might get distorted in a row for example!) or go through some form of "fudge-factor" of internal processing to save the listener from such harshness. That "fudge factor" could be
implemented in various ways.
Is it a "brick-wall" limiter? Brick-wall limiters have a release time (although the release time is set very near zero but never actually zero) in order for them to know when to release their limiting effect so they are never truly a complete "brick-wall." If it was a true "brick-wall", it would just clip instead of limit like a typical limiter circuit would.
Is it a look-ahead limiter? Look-ahead limiters delay the signal to see what is coming up so that transients can be caught by the limiter but in order to prevent clipping they "contour" the approach curve.
These both would explain the pumping effect if the volume is over the digital ceiling since both do what they can to prevent actual clipping. I've tested this out by amplifying the audio to insane saturated levels. I still never experience any obvious digital clipping but a pumping effect.
It would be spectacular to be able to change the characteristics of what happens when audio hits the digital ceiling so that the user can decide whether to introduce clipping or limiting effects into the signal or not. The characteristics could have different algorithms to choose from for desirable effect. In fact, I've read that some professional mastering engineers will clip digitally slightly in order for recordings to compete in the loudness war. Even though there is digital
distortion it is more pleasing than to soften the excitement that a music mix might have with limiters.
So what is occurring behind the curtain exactly? I just would like to know more about what WavePad actually does by default when processing audio that is too loud.
Thanks in advance.