Audacity sound file level too low in second life

I'm having a hell of a time trying to figure this out. I record a sound file in audacity that sounds perfect (even after looking at input levels). Then I upload it into second and play it and it sounds so low ... even after zooming up to my avatar. It's driving me crazy and I don't want to keep wasting lindens. Can anybody help please set the level properly for my recorded sounds?!?!??!

Skilar Windlow (inworld)

You looked at the input levels. What about the output levels? At what level are the peaks of the waves? If they're below clipping point, boost the whole wave. If there are some very high peaks that are well above the average for most of the wave, add some compression (that's audio compression, not file compression) to flatten things out a bit, and then boost the whole thing.

Beyond that, keep in mind that sounds played in SL will almost always be lower volume than the same sounds played straight through a media player. SL's mixer is pretty low powered to begin with, plus you've got distance and rolloff factors to contend with, and the file gets highly compressed at the point of upload. It's nearly impossible to get a 1:1 reproduction.

I found this same problem when I was making sound files for a Westminster clock chime. There is something decidedly weak and watered down in how SL imports sound files from Audacity. I had to push the output levels until they were clipping about 30% to get anywhere near a reasonable sound volume after importing to SL.