If you can, place the microphone so that you are talking past it - think David Letterman and that microphone he has on his desk: he's always talking over it. When speaking into the microphone, point the microphone at your mouth but do not point your mouth at the microphone. Try to place it so that it picks up a minimum of computer noise (hard drives, fan). If the final track sounds too loud, tweak this.Consider where your microphone is going to be in relation to everything else in the room. Normalize adjusts the volume center around the loudest peak.Default settings are generally good, usually just need to tweak the threshold. Compressor adjusts volume up and down to be more consistently in the middle.This is ideal listening volume (corresponds to about -6db final volume).

After Amplify you want the light blue part of the track (RSM) to be at exactly -0.5 and 0.5.

Normalize -1db (this should ALWAYS be your last step).

Use the Envelope tool to soften music volume.

If background noise is getting amplified, you need to raise the noise floor. To set the perfect threshold, listen to 30 seconds of your softest track while watching the dB meter. Threshold needs to go lower (more negative) if the resulting track is jumping to different volumes.

Compressor = Threshold -24db, Noise Floor -50db, Ratio 3:1, Attack Time 0.2s, Release Time 1.0s, check both 'Make up gain' and 'Compress based on peaks'.

Equalization 200Hz 6db boost, 4,000MHz -3db loss.

Reduces low hums (like a fridge) and gravely voice grumbles.

Reduces 'Ssssss' and other high pitched sounds.

Low Pass Filter 10,000Hz 24 db roll off.

(Low Pass and High Pass should happen AFTER the Compressor)

Save this copy to Google Drive, or another backup spot.

Save the Project BEFORE recording live :D (prevents quality issues).

Play it back and tweak levels until it sounds good 60% speaker volume.

so just settle for as close as you can get, without the bars going off the scale :) You want the lighter part of the meter bar (the green or red bar at the top) to bounce between -12db and -6db while people are talking.

Do a sound check, record everyone in the room speaking.

Ensure you're recording in 16-bit PCM + 44100Hz.

The audacity podcast