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Hi all
I'm sure this question has been asked before but I couldn't find anything regarding this particular problem.
When converting tracks to wave or MP3 is there a way to equalize the volume so they are all the same? I just finished a bunch of backing tracks & some where way too loud. I'm working with RB 13. ...Hank
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Edit-Gain Change- Normalize preset.
Before everybody starts with the 'you shouldn't Normalize' comments; you can Normalize to -6 dB if you want .. just check the box for adjust gain and select a value.
Highlight a Track from beginning to end (Select All)
Then select the tracks you want to Normalize (you can do many at once if you want).
Afterwards use 'Save As' so you don't lose your original copy .. in case you don't like the results.
Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
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I normalize everything to -3db. Makes it much easier to mix and apply effects.
I never heard you shouldn't normalize. Why shouldn't you?
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Thanks rharv
When you say check the box for adjust gain, do you mean that you go to " Audio Effects" and open "Gain Change"?...Hank
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Yes, but this 'hard writes' the change, so use Save As if you have time invested in the mix.
Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
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This leads me to another question. Frank, You prefer -3db & Rharv you use -6 db. What are these decisions based on?....Hank
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I don't prefer -6 .. I prefer a track recorded with the correct levels (relative to the mix).
The reference was simply that; a reference.
-6 or -3 or -12 .. it's all possible, and I needed an example.
Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
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I normalize everything to -3db. Makes it much easier to mix and apply effects.
I never heard you shouldn't normalize. Why shouldn't you? Best case scenario has the tracks recorded in volumes that are 'relative' to the next. Normalizing (often) raises noise floor level for one ..
Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
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3dB change = aprox 1.2 times Amplitude increase or decrease. 6dB = aprox 1.5 times 12dB = about 2.3 X It is important to understand the difference between the terms, "Amplitude" and "Volume" or "Loudness". Twice the Amplitude is not twice as loud. That is because of the way the human ear hears things, favoring midrange frequencies over the other two extremes of low and high. Fletcher-Munson curve. I'm going to post a link here that may seem daunting, try to wade through it anyway. And, since the deciBel thing is log10, good idea to memorize the following mantra: "It takes 10 times the Power to make a signal twice as loud." Remember that for the next time that other guy informs you that his 200W amplifier is twice as loud as your 100W amp and just look at him and say, "okay" - and proceed to drown him out anyway by hiking your mids a bit. http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm --Mac
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Rutabago wrote: "This leads me to another question. Frank, You prefer -3db & Rharv you use -6 db. What are these decisions based on?....Hank"
My choice of -3db is fairly arbitrary. When I choose normalize Reaper would default to 0db. Adding a bunch of tracks together would result in me having to lower the 'Master' volume (not a big deal but I didn't care for it). At -3db that doesn't happen much (I usually only have around 6 tracks).
What I like, is my compressor and my reverb bus and my reverb sends are set in my templete. Because I always have about the same levels on my tracks (-3db) my sends and compressor and master limiter are already in the ballpark of where I want them. I just tweek from there. This just helps an old persons memory like mine.
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I normalize everything to -3db. Makes it much easier to mix and apply effects.
I never heard you shouldn't normalize. Why shouldn't you? Best case scenario has the tracks recorded in volumes that are 'relative' to the next. Normalizing (often) raises noise floor level for one .. In the digital world I heard it was pretty normal to record at around -6db to -12db and raise the volumes at mix down. I got this information from this guy who really seems to know what he talks about and has garnered a lot of respect from me and others: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=29283I know we used to record at real high levels to keep the tape hiss to a minimum. Does that still make sense with digital recording where there isn't any tape hiss?
Last edited by Frankp; 11/10/13 06:49 PM.
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the thing is that most plugins are optimized to produce best results with an input of around -17db & this is the volume you should be looking at hitting them. Proper gain staging will make all of your work sound better
Last edited by bupper; 11/11/13 05:45 AM.
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There is only one way to get all of your tunes to sound the way you want. Listen over & over and tweak over & over.It's a lot of work to get a show balanced the way you want. No real easy tricks.JMO
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Normalize.....
Why you should or shouldn't use it....? Use it to raise levels in a track with low levels. It's really handy to bring up a mic'd acoustic guitar track.
The down side is that when you normalize the track, the process of normalization brings everything up to a predetermined level. Say you choose -3db as the level. Normalize will look at the entire track, find the highest peak in the wave and bring THAT point to -3db. It amplifies everything else in that wave on a linear scale as well so that the music retains the exact same dynamic range but just louder with the highest peak not exceeding -3db. What that means is any noise in the track also gets that same boost. That's the downside and the why not.
-3db and -6db are not magical numbers someone picked out of the air. The common number is -6db as peaks and -12 as RMS levels on a mix for a wave that has NOT been mastered yet. This allows the mastering house engineer to work with sufficient headroom to add compression and limiting without exceeding the 0db level which in the digital world is clipping. Adhering to those levels also allows for the conversion to MP3 without the clipping as well.
Most of the -6 db thing is applicable if you are having the track mastered by a pro mastering house. If you do your own, the -3db level is a good rule of thumb to use on the final mix.
As for me, my rule of thumb is to keep the meters out of the red (clipping) and mix by that measure and what it sounds like. It's totally possible to have an acoustic guitar based tune quite loud (in relative db's in the wave) and still retain the dynamic range of the music when it's done right.
I do also tend to use normalize in a track only when the levels are low. BB will render some low level tracks at times and I'll bump them with normalize. I always use normalize in the mastering/polishing process after I have exported the finished mix.... it gets trimmed and normalized in my audio editor generally to that -3db level.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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The down side is that when you normalize the track, the process of normalization brings everything up to a predetermined level. Say you choose -3db as the level. Normalize will look at the entire track, find the highest peak in the wave and bring THAT point to -3db. It amplifies everything else in that wave on a linear scale as well so that the music retains the exact same dynamic range but just louder with the highest peak not exceeding -3db. What that means is any noise in the track also gets that same boost. That's the downside and the why not.
I understand it raises everything including the noise. But it raises everything, so doesn't the noise level stay relative. I always increase the volume on my mix as much as I can without clipping. Does it make any difference in the noise level of the final mix whether I, 1) raised the volume with the master fader or, 2) raised the volume by first normalizing individual tracks and then still adjusting the volume with the master fader? Or for that matter, I keep the volume low on the mix and the final listener just raises the volume on their stereo, any difference in that noise level? It's all digital, I don't understand how it would make a difference in the noise levels in any of those scenarios.
Last edited by Frankp; 11/11/13 07:43 AM.
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the thing is that most plugins are optimized to produce best results with an input of around -17db & this is the volume you should be looking at hitting them. Proper gain staging will make all of your work sound better
I never heard that. That will change how I set all my levels. Do you go for -17db peaks or some sort of average?
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I know we used to record at real high levels to keep the tape hiss to a minimum. Does that still make sense with digital recording where there isn't any tape hiss?
In a word, no. The two methods are entirely different. With analog magnetic tape recording, Saturation of the magnetic media was desirable in most cases. But the modern PCM Digital recording is recording a digital number that corresponds to the amplitude of the signal measwured for each sample in time, according to the sample rate. In this method, we are not going to gain anything by increasing those numbers, and may even get into the bad territory of raising those numbers so high as to create distortion or clipping problems at the digital level. The advent of the 32-bit PCM digital recording "engine" has greatly alleviated the problem though, previously, when all we had for PC recording was the 16-bit engine, there was the problem of digital clipping that was caused due to forcing those numbers to the top of the available bits and thus they would suddenly wrap around to the bottom, creating a nasty sound that we called, "Digital Thwack" or just "Thwack". All that aside, there are still places around the web to be found where some explanations of digital recording tout setting the recording level for as high as possible before reaching the 0dBFS mark on the recording VU meter. I do not recommend that procedure. It can lead to ruining an otherwise good take because a section of the music performance could easily exceed 0dBFS mark due to the dynamic abilities of the performer. I try to set my levels for recording where the VU meters in the recording program are hovering below 0dB for the peaks, somewhere around the -6dBFS mark or so, sometimes lower than that if the instrument is drums, or a very dynamic singer. When setting levels for someone, there is also the human factor to consider. If you ask the performer to sing or play "as loud as they can" they will attempt to do so but typically will always hold back for some reason. Then, when actually performing and recording the track, the emotion of the thing may come out and they will easily exceed the amount of amplitude they generated during level-set testing. So I allow for that when setting the level. I'd much rather have to perform a Gain Change on a track, or even resort to Normalization of that particular track if it contains Strong Performance rather than risk losing the section where they got too loud to the ravages of digital overshoot or clipping, even with today's 32-bit engine, which is very hard to force into digital clipping but doing so can indeed make for some distortion at playback sometimes. --Mac
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the thing is that most plugins are optimized to produce best results with an input of around -17db & this is the volume you should be looking at hitting them. Proper gain staging will make all of your work sound better
Can you cite a source for that claim? Doesn't sound right. Also, just throwing out a dB figure without a reference is meaningless information. dB must always be referenced to something. Sometimes it can stand alone like that if the reference is the *previous* audio level, but that is not the case here. I'm going to assume you mean, -17dBFS, the "FS" in this case standing for "Full Scale" reference on the typical digital recording program's VU meter. The math says: -17dBFS signal translates to a Loudness of approximately 0.307786 of the reference, which in this case is the 0dB mark on the VU. That's like one third of the VU travel. That is pretty doggone low and likely wouldn't drive the input of an audio plugin very well, surely they are designed to handle much more input than this. Don't go with a rule of thumb setting in the case of plugins anyway, for different tracks will have differing amounts of energy as compared to time on them. Most of the time, I use my ears. In particular cases where my ears detect anomaly, I might resort to use of good quality Real Time Analyzer software or plugin to see visually what the heck's going on and thus be able to make intelligent correction decisions. For example, if it is found that a detected audio anomaly is happening in a certain frequency band, the analyzer shows the band, inserting an instance of EQ before the effect and tweaking that band can alleviate the problem. --Mac
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The down side is that when you normalize the track, the process of normalization brings everything up to a predetermined level. Say you choose -3db as the level. Normalize will look at the entire track, find the highest peak in the wave and bring THAT point to -3db. It amplifies everything else in that wave on a linear scale as well so that the music retains the exact same dynamic range but just louder with the highest peak not exceeding -3db. What that means is any noise in the track also gets that same boost. That's the downside and the why not.
I understand it raises everything including the noise. But it raises everything, so doesn't the noise level stay relative. I always increase the volume on my mix as much as I can without clipping. Does it make any difference in the noise level of the final mix whether I, 1) raised the volume with the master fader or, 2) raised the volume by first normalizing individual tracks and then still adjusting the volume with the master fader? Or for that matter, I keep the volume low on the mix and the final listener just raises the volume on their stereo, any difference in that noise level? It's all digital, I don't understand how it would make a difference in the noise levels in any of those scenarios. pretty much correct. If the track is a midi track and digital, there should be no noise in it to speak of. The silence in a midi track should be (for all practical purposes) total silence. we know that is not possible but it is so low you can't hear it and even amplifying it 100% or more still leaves it below the threshold of hearing. The problem comes in when you record an audio track such as a guitar amp with a certain amount of hum. That hum is boosted, as you said, relative to the track, or as I said, in a linear manner.... so as the track volume goes up so does the noise. So even though the audio track is digital, the hum is part of the material and regardless if it's digital, it gets boosted. Then, you also have the phenomenon of masking. This is where there is other sound sources (instruments in the other tracks) that, due to their presence, mask, quite effectively, the noise in the target track to the point it's not heard. So even if the noise is boosted and not edited out in the silent parts, the other sources keep it well hidden in the mix. Any time you turn it up, whether in the track, the sub-bus, the master output or after with normalization you will raise the noise level. The only time this would really matter is if that instrument track was solo at the time. Such as a guitar intro to a song... however, the amp hum/noise can also be an asset by giving that "live" and personal feel to the recording.... so it may not always be a bad thing to have noise in a track. If it is an issue, gating or envelope editing will work but you also risk the loss of the reverb tails making the part sound very unnatural as a result.
Last edited by Guitarhacker; 11/11/13 10:49 AM.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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WOW. Where to begin this note. First, I'd like to thank all of you for your interest. It has turned into a great discussion. I have spent about 40 years in one aspect or another of the music business but, no time in the recording side. Therefore db's, mixing & mixers, effect settings etc. are avoided .At this point, I'd like to blushingly point that my misspelling of volume on my original heading was simply a typo. I can spell voloom! Back to db's. A lot of what I have read here leaves me scratching my head But! I have understood enough to move ahead & I intend to learn more! One last thing. Frank, you mentioned being an older person, well I'm up there too. 84 as of Oct. 24th, but still doing the odd gig, duo's trio's, all using backing tracks created in P G products. I am trying to do a better job using "Real Tracks". Thanks again...Hank
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