mallcorepop - OK thanks for the big tip !
Be nice or you might find a brown-paper wrapped package on your doorstep with a BBE in it - special delivery to you! He He I might even have the postman light it first
OK then - back to normalization, not just picking on you mallcore.
The thing is a lot of technology has come and gone from the 16bit days where Bob katz put out the word that normalization was bad. Check out his article where he states:
"Do not change gain (changing gain deteriorates sound by forcing truncation of extra wordlengths in a 16-bit workstation). Do not normalize (normalization is just changing gain). Do not equalize. Do not fade in or fade out. "
http://www.digido.com/index/pmodule_id=11/pmdmode=fullscreen/pageadder_page_id=27/
Over time people build on this thru forums and folklore and after a while normalization is bad forever ! Well things are now 24/32/40 bits - times change!
Other forums besides this one are struggling with the same DAW-DSP normalization legacy, check out this thread over at the SOS forum:
http://sound-on-sound2.infopop.net/2/OpenTopic?q=Y&a=tpc&s=215094572&f=884099644&m=3303048847&p=1
But trying to give jmorris a hand - if you take a look in the masterlink manual:
http://www.alesis.com/downloads/manuals/MasterLink_Manual.pdf
This shows the masterlink block diagram indicating the limiter preceedes the normalizer, in fact the normalizer is last in the signal chain.
The Alesis normalization algorithm from the manual is:
"A Normalizer's function is to scan a Track for the highest peak value, determine the ratio between that peak value and full-scale, and multiply the Track by that ratio so that the highest peak value of the Track is equal to full-scale."
So although
the normalizer is a bit like a fader it has the additional property of never going over full scale (in the case of masterlink) - 0dBFS which is the maximum amplitude level a digital CD can reproduce without [converter] distortion. Normalization does not change the dynamic content of the music - just how close it peaks to the 'digital ceiling' which in this case is 0dB.
So after all of this, why would you use the normalizer on the masterlink - well maybe you won't want to. It depends on how hard you want to hit the limiter I think. The limiter in the masterlink is a kind of 'upward limiter' meaning that as it limits 1dB it will also automatically raise the output 1dB as a makeup gain. The output setting for the limiter is just a maximum ceiling but also throttles back the automatic makeup gain otherwise - according to the manual - the makeup gain would attempt to find 0dBFS.
It looks to me like if I want to push the limiter hard and squish my audio then I might not need the normalizer in the masterlink. If I just wanted to push the peaks down a bit then in order to block the upward [dynamic] makeup gain I would use the limiter output setting lower and then the normalizer to have the final gain set to 0dbFS on the CD.
If you're mastering your own CDR then the DSP features of the masterlink (compressor, eq, limiter, normalize) are there for you to 'finalize' your mix. If you're going to send the CDR to a mastering house ask what they need - they'll say not to put any DSP on it I'll bet !
I don't have a masterlink so it might be time for someone who owns one to chime in here !
kylen
PS (just kidding about the BBE mallcore - I'm starting to think about plugging it in again for a track or 2)