Ahh… the day has finally come where Levelator is no longer compatible with Mac OS (starting with Catalina).

This trusty application served me as a quick and dirty way to adjust the audio levels for a podcast when my guest’s voice was louder or more quiet than mind.

What are ya gonna do now? What are some Levelator alternatives out there?

I’m just as frustrated as you, so I’ve put together a few options that you can explore, as well as how I’ve been getting around this nifty application.

I hope you find this list helpful, and if you’d also like to look into improving your voice on a podcast, I have some great vocal exercises that you can look into.

1. Auphonic

When it comes to substitutes to Levelator, Auphonic is a great option! You can easily process an audio file by uploading it to the online interface.

You can run it through a few different types of algorithms to normalize the audio, level it, or use noise reduction. The Intelligent Leveler will balance any differences between speakers, music, and speech. You don’t need to know anything about audio compression.

The only downside is that after the 2 hour upload limit, this is a paid service. Then it is $11 per month for 9 hours of audio processing per month.

2. VMWare Fusion

Technically, you could use VMWare to simulate a Windows environment so that you can run Levelator. This powerful software allows you to run any operating system on a Mac. You don’t even need to restart your computer.

It comes in at the hefty price of $79, so it might work best if you also have some other Windows application that you wanted to run on a Mac. For example, if you wanted to continue to use apps like Audacity (which still isn’t good for Catalina).

Personally, I don’t think that this is the best way to solve this problem, but I wanted to include it in the list.

3. Amadeus Pro

You can use this software to simulate what Levelator did for your podcast file. You would do the “AUDynamicsProcessor” under the Effects menu in the program. You can also make use of multi-band graphic equalizers, volume normalization, pitch changes, and more.

It’s gotten some mixed reviews, but is something that you could look into as an alternative to Garageband.

This program comes in at $59 on the Mac App store.

4. Multi-track Zencaster (or Ecamm) + Garageband

For this solution, as a workaround for Levelator, you could consider using an online recording app like Zencaster in order to have audio independently recorded for two guests. Then, you could export that audio into Garageband, level the audio volumes yourself so they are even, then export that track. Lastly, you could import that edited track and work with the raw podcast file that way.

As another solution, you could use Ecamm recorder for Skype to create two split tracks of audio. Then, you’d import them into Garageband, level the audios separately so that they are around the same volume, and export that file. Then, you’d import it back in and work with the raw podcast recording that way.

This would likely be the least costly option, but would require some additional audio-editing steps unfortunately.

5. Convert Audio

As a duck tape solution, you could consider using this service and checking “normalize audio” when you output. Granted, this would only work for voice-only tracks and not be as good if you had music in the show. It’s a quick and dirty solution if you didn’t want to try something more sophisticated.

There are some also functions that you can change when you export this audio, like the bit rate, sampling rate, and trimming the audio. This is some basic audio editing functionality you can use for your track.