Quote:
If I leave the "normalise" options unchecked everything is fine, but the waveforms do not use the full dynamic range available. If I check "normalise" all the tracks are amplified up to greater than digital FSD, i.e they are "clipped".

Seems like the BIAB software guys don't understand what "normalise" means or am I missing something?


You are missing something. Any multitrack session will behave exactly as yours if every track is normalized first.

Mixing involves summing the results of those tracks. If they’re already at peak before you combine, they will clip. 1+1+1+1+1+1 does not = 1 but that’s what you are expecting. The more tracks, the worse it gets.

For the last 3 years, I have been making virtual choirs for churches. The tracks I get sometimes require Normalization — but then I back off. -3dB if under 8 tracks, -6dB if under 12 tracks and so on… Gotta give the mix some headroom. You aren’t doing that.

Stop normalizing tracks that don’t need it (never seen a BIAB track that did).

A couple things that helped me were to convert all tracks to 32 bit float on import (a huge improvement in headroom) and find a musical limiter, the bx_limiter True Peak from BrainWorx.
bx_limiter True Peak
They often have it on sale. Yesterday, it was $24.95. Most limiters cannot handle what I need for various reasons.

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