Originally Posted By: NeilC
Hi Experts,
Just to continue getting my money's worth in the PG forums this holiday period,and further develop some audio skills...

Is the use of audio Normalisation routine at any point in the mixing>mastering process?

I've been routinely normalising all my audio tracks relative to 0dB up to now,and while it doesn't appear to have degraded any work,I'm just wondering if the more experienced community use this technique?

If not,when and where is the best time to use this?

Cheers,

Neil C
Warrington
UK


Good question. So.... yeah I tend to use it on everything as my LAST step. What it does is pretty simply. You select the level. As most have said they choose 0dB as the reference level. So, normalization looks at the file you are wanting to normalize and it finds the highest peak in the song. It moves that peak to 0dB. It amplifies everything else by the same amount. Nothing is amplified more than anything else, like would happen in a compression level to 0dB for example.

As I understand it, this is how it works. It's never given me any issues. They recommend -3dB for MP3. and Waves can go to 0dB..... BUT.... if you plan to have a mastering house master your song, they normally want around -6dB so they have room to work without squashing anything.

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