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So is it normal to normalize, or would that be a abnormality, normally speaking of course?!?!?

Sorry it had to be said! Is there a neophyte button, and is it near the talent plugin?


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Quote:

You'll find this in every text book in Bold




Can you provide a source? I've been researching this for a couple of days and I can't find anything truly authoritative. The consensus of what I have found definately disagrees with your claims.

Quote:

Nomralization degrades the quality of audio by adding degrading calculation and quantization distortion.




Everything I've found suggests the degradation will be minimal. No worse than any other digital manipulation.

Quote:

Normalization should never be used to regulate song Levels in an Album.




According to everything I've read this is a common process during the mastering of an album. Probably necessary if the audio comes from different sources. The listener isn't going to be happy if there are sudden changes in volume.


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For anyone interested here's a couple of articles regarding normalization in BiaB.

Rendering to an Audio File

Audio Normalization


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Quote:

Quote:

You'll find this in every text book in Bold




Can you provide a source? I've been researching this for a couple of days and I can't find anything truly authoritative. The consensus of what I have found definately disagrees with your claims.

Quote:

Nomralization degrades the quality of audio by adding degrading calculation and quantization distortion.




Everything I've found suggests the degradation will be minimal. No worse than any other digital manipulation.

Quote:

Normalization should never be used to regulate song Levels in an Album.




According to everything I've read this is a common process during the mastering of an album . Probably necessary if the audio comes from different sources. The listener isn't going to be happy if there are sudden changes in volume.





I've seen this in just about any ligitimate Audio mastering and mixing book,master class..etc

Direct quote from :
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-Se...3376&sr=8-1

In fact he's got a nice example for it too. If you throw all the song of an album in whatever sequencer you're using, and normalize all of them thinking you're getting them to a nice loud level, it's very much possible that a Ballad will sound louder than a rock song in the same album...other surprises could happen too, that's why he says Normalization should never be used to regulate song levels in an album.

By the way, I never said "normalization" should never be used. Always it's a combination of factors that lead to a pleasant convincing result. Too much of something never works, no matter what the definition is.

Last edited by tritonkorg; 01/04/10 12:39 PM.
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That stuff went the way of the Dodo bird with the advent of the 32 bit audio engine...

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Quote:

That stuff went the way of the Dodo bird with the advent of the 32 bit audio engine...





Most people are still recording at 24 bit.

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Then you don't know what it is that you don't know about this subject.


They are recording files at 24 bit depth using the 32 bit audio engine.

Before that, the audio engine was 16 bit.


Ever wonder where the THWACK went?


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Quote:

Then you don't know what it is that you don't know about this subject.




ok, great!

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Citaat:


In fact he's got a nice example for it too. If you throw all the song of an album in whatever sequencer you're using, and normalize all of them thinking you're getting them to a nice loud level, it's very much possible that a Ballad will sound louder than a rock song in the same album...other surprises could happen too, that's why he says Normalization should never be used to regulate song levels in an album.





There is a big difference in normalizing tracks of a song still to be mixed (as I assume we were discussing here) and the final tracks for an album. What you talk about is mastering. And well in that case it most of the times makes no sense to use normalization. At least not peak normalization, because that can indeed give bad level balances amongst the tracks. If used already in that case (which I wouldn't) you would use RMS normalization, since this is more like an average energy level to accomplish. Still however I would not recommend it, since mastering is not like you throw all tracks through a boosting and limiting piece of software in order to get the same average level, but on the hearing and feeling. In that way every track has to get it's own special treatment while still in good balance with all the other tracks on the album. But again, this is about mastering and the type of normalisation discussed here is merely for peakboosting and lifting the whole track into workable levels, before mixing down...


I'll be back...
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