Originally Posted By: GaryL
Ok, I guess I need to use something in Studio One to master or should I say compress/turn up the BIAB files. I tried normalize but still too much between the 2.

Thanks


I use WavePad... not to be confused with WaveLab.... to do final edits and such on my exported waves. It's simply a wave editor and mp3 converter. My last step is to NORMALIZE the track to whatever level I want. Normalization is NOT compression.

With normalization, you are simply increasing the volume of everything in a track in a linear fashion using the highest musical peak as the reference point. So if you have a track with good average peaks through out, and set -4dB as the point, the entire track with those peaks comes up in volume. You are amplifying the peaks as well as the noise floor gets raised which is why a fair number of people speak poorly of normalizing. If you have a song with one large spike that's pretty loud, normalization will hardly be noticeable on that track.

You want to be careful with compression. Compression does more to the music than to simply raise the level, which is what a lot of folks use it for. It reduces the peaks while at the same time bringing up the lower program material.

I don't mess around with the karaoke tracks, but it doesn't surprise me one bit that they are super compressed. Trying to match your material to them would, I imagine, be difficult, for more than a few reasons.

MY THOUGHTS: If I was trying to do what you are attempting.... I would first, lightly compress (perhaps a bit more than "lightly" but error on the side of caution) the original WAVE file with a good DAW compressor to get it looking something like this:



Notice the head room in WavePad? That's the remaining distance between the peaks and the top and bottom of the window. Also notice that the peaks are pretty much all around the same point. This file can now easily be normalized to give a nice volume bump without further compression. Normalizing it will give a noticeable volume increase.

This file is not so easy to bump smoothly in volume due to it's "spikey" appearance. Those spikes will prevent it from seeing much of an increase in volume from a normalizing process. I would need to compress it first if I wanted to get the levels up. Notice that the peaks in this wave ARE touching the top and bottom of the screen. It has already been normalized to 100% in this case. Any further increase in volume would need to be through compression which would start to alter the sonic quality of the music in subtle ways. This song is on my web site and this is the version you will hear. 100% normalized level, no further compression. http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11386873



The important part of this entire equation is the file you start with should be full and well recorded with strong levels. Start with a weak wave and you will have issues.

Trying to match your original music to that of some that was recorded in some sort of "professional setting" and compressed by that studio, is going to be an interesting project. Not impossible, but it will teach you some things along the way.

Hope this info is useful and educational to you.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 02/10/16 03:12 AM.
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