Normalizing?

[Jose_Man]

I took this from the Glosary of terms on the site.

"Normalizing, as far as Sound Forge or other digital audio editors are concerned, simply means to adjust the peak volume of a selection to a known value. Generally the recommended maximum is -0.5 dB (I think that's 94.49% or something)."

Now, I notice that everytime I record a track with my ACID pro (Guitars, vocals, etc.)(Yeah I know it's lame, but it's the easiest shit i've seen...any suggestions?) The default volume level on the track is -0.6 dB....But It seems to me that it's too low, I can bearly hear the guitars or vocals. Thus, I blow up the volume sometimes even to +5.0 or +8.0 dB.

Now reading from the quote, does that mean that -0.5 or -0.6 dB should be default volume on EACH track??...I shouldnt lower it or crank it up???....and if I do it, what would be the result, It would be distorted??

P.S. I'm just guessing here, but The fact that the audio is normalized means that even though I Crank up the volume all the way up, the audio wouldnt be distorted??

Thanx
Peace
Jose

 

[Slackmaster2K]

0db is as loud as any digital sample may be. Thus if you have a peak level of -0.5db and you crank the volume up on the track up by 5db, then you're chopping the hell out of at least one sample. In reality you're probably chopping a whole lot of your waveform all to hell and it's distorting pretty badly.

The canned response to this question is: the compressor. A compressor automatically lowers the volume of a signal by some ratio when it goes over some threshold. Thus, you can use a compressor to kind of even out the dynamics of track, thus allowing you to turn it up a ways and end up with more RMS power. (e.g. normalizing only raises peak level, compression can raise mean level)

However, I think that something is fundamentally wrong with your setup if you're peaking that high and your track really does sound that quiet. What kind of source are you recording? What's your soundcard? etc.

OOOOOH wait, I just re-read your post. When you say that the "default level" when you record a track is at -0.6db, do you mean that's what the master volume control or track volume control in Acid is set to?? It is misleading in this case to refer to the level of the fader as the level of your track. Let's say you record a track that in reality is in the -20db to -10db range (e.g. the wave file never peaks above -10db). When its track fader is set to 0db, the track is still in that -20db to -10db range...you'd have to turn up 10db before the track would peak at 0db. When a fader is set to 0db that means "no change" to the track's volume. Turning it down to -10db would mean "decrease the track's original volume by 10db".

If that's the case, then your problem is getting good levels in to your soundcard. If you're using a 16bit consumer card, then you should shoot for peak levels in the 0 to -6db range, being very cautious to NEVER clip the signal. If you have a 24bit card you can probably get away with tracking in the -12 to -6db range without any real worries...all we're really talking about here is getting away from the noise floor and acheiving good bit resolution. In theory, the levels of your individual tracks are really unimportant as long as their mixed together well....MIXING.

Slackmaster 2000