Is it ok to Normalize before sending tracks to studio?

[Fidget]

I'm in the process of preparing some tracks my band has recorded to be mixed and mastered at a studio, and I'm wondering if it's ok to normalize the files before sending them? Would it be better to give the unaltered waveforms? I don't want to make any other changes besides normalizing, some of the waveforms are a little small and it would make preparing them a bit easier on my part if I could normalize them first. Do producers appreciate or hate this? Thoughts?

 

[Dogbreath]

No.
I wouldn't normalize or even put any compression across the buss.

Just do your regular mixdown how you like it and leave the rest up to the ME.
oh...and make sure to give the guy some headroom. Maybe keep your mix levels at around -5 or -6. A little higher maybe but I wouldn't go much past that.
Just think headroom when ya mix it down and you'll be fine.

 

[Armistice]

"some of the waveforms are a little small"

It's audio... done mainly by listening, not looking. Leave the tracks alone.

 

[grimtraveller]

Is it ok to Normalize before sending tracks to studio?

Well, it's legal. But lots of things that are legal aren't necessarily good ideas. This is one of them. If you are sending the tracks to be mixed, leave everything from here on in to the person that's actually doing the job.

 

[Farview]

When I get normalized tracks, the first thing I have to do is turn them all down. It's pretty annoying, but not that big of a deal.

Bottom line, it doesn't hurt anything, but it serves absolutely no purpose. Don't bother.

 

[Brian Miller]

No, do not normalize your tracks. The mix engineer will have to turn the volume down on many if not all of those tracks, negating the normalizing. And absolutely do not put any compression on the master bus.

 

[Fidget]

Thanks for the advice. Normalizing would only make it easier for me to see what I'm doing while cropping the huge audio files down into individual songs (as I really don't want to waste the studio engineer's expensive time with this tedious work), but if it's ill-advised, I'll leave the amplitudes alone. Much appreciated.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Normalizing would only make it easier for me to see what I'm doing while cropping the huge audio files down into individual songs

Every DAW I use can magnify the waveform for your viewing convenience. This has no effect on the audio itself. Tell us which software you're using and someone here can tell you how to magnify the waveform.

 

[Massive Master]

^^^ That.

Otherwise, absolutely, positively NOT to normalizing.

 

[GONZO-X]

normalizing also applies ANOTHER unnecessary cycle of MATH to your tracks.....

which in short, degrades them.

 

[VomitHatSteve]

normalizing also applies ANOTHER unnecessary cycle of MATH to your tracks.....

which in short, degrades them.

That was going to be my question on this. I was under the impression that normalizing didn't "color" the audio in any meaningful way. It just amplified every sample by the same amount and was thus 100% reversible.
Sure, it's not helpful, but is it harmful?

 

[ashcat_lt]

Sure, it's not helpful, but is it harmful?

Not really. This "math" that we're talking about is a simple multiply. It will bring up any de-normal noise in the original files, but it's not going to be enough to worry about unless they're starting at absurdly low levels to begin with. It will still be cleaner, quieter, and more accurate than any similar analog process possibly could be.

On a side note, it still stupefies me that so many Normalize utilities still just slam the loudest peak up to 0dbfs without even bothering to ask where you actually want it. A real Normalize tool will let you set the loudest peak wherever you want, which might be better for this sort of situation, so you could get some consistency across the tracks without slamming them all the way to the rails.


Edit - ninja'd by farview. I like his answer better.

 

[Farview]

Normalizing louder wont degrade the tracks. Normalizing quieter will.

 

[dobro]

What if you normalized a track and then turned it back down ten times. Would that degrade it?

 

[Farview]

What if you normalized a track and then turned it back down ten times. Would that degrade it?

In theory, it shouldn't. But any errors introduced will be compounded each time you do it.

The reason it is destructive when you turn the original file down and then up is because when you turn it down, the information at the least significant bit falls off the end. When you turn t back up again, that info is no longer there.

 

[Bobbsy]

Unless there's something seriously wrong with the DAW you use, you should be able to normalise up and down all day without a single change or error to you track except for the level. Try this experiment. Make a copy of a track and spend the time it takes to drink a beer to normalise up and down constantly, making sure you arrive back at the original level on the last action.

Then invert the polarity of one of the tracks and mix them together--unless something is seriously wrong you should get silence because the tracks are still identical, just 180 degrees out of phase. If you get any other result, change your DAW 'cause it's crap.

Normalisation isn't evil or bad--it's just a useful tool sometimes.

Having said all that in defence of normalising, in this case DON'T do it. Leave it to the engineer in the studio to decide how he wants your levels set up. With multiple tracks he may NEED them to be low.

 

[Farview]

This is true, but only if you don't go below the original level. Even if you do, as long as it isn't too far, you won't notice a difference. If you drop it 40db and bring it back up, you will certainly notice a difference.

 

[dobro]

Try this experiment. Make a copy of a track and spend the time it takes to drink a beer to normalise up and down constantly, making sure you arrive back at the original level on the last action.

I like the way you add pleasure and incentive to the experiment.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Bit depth makes a huge difference to this experiment. In Reaper, Normalize us a non-destructive process that takes place in the floating point mix engine. You kind of can't normalize and then turn back down and then normalize again without rendering after each process. If you render to floating point format you'll probably get away with a whole lot of iterations before you can notice a difference. But if you render to a fixed-bit format each time, it won't take long before you hear the noise floor start to come up.

 

[Bobbsy]

Good point. I'm using Auditioin which is also a 32 bit floating point system--and it's been floating point for so long (12 years plus) I didn't realise there were still other DAWs that hadn't caught up.

This may be why I'm less down on Normalise than some of the others on the forum.