How do I normalize volumes?

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leavings

leavings

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What should I do to set the volume of my finished songs to something close to that of professionally mixed and mastered tracks? I find that frequently my songs end up a lot lower in amplitude and I don't want to just resign myself to turning the volume up. I'm curious what the professional methodology is for solving this (aside from re-recording tracks with higher gains). Can someone help me out?

- Peter
 
You can normalize your tracks, but this just brings up the highest peak to the maximum and everything else in proportion to that. So, your tracks will still probably be quiter than "pro" tracks.

You can also use compression, which will compress the dynamic range by squashing the peaks and bringing up everything else.

That is the very simple answer to your question I think. It's not that easy though; I haven't really figured out the "how" yet, just the "what." Do a search on this board for "mastering" or "compression" to get started. It's a whole different process that's mysterious as hell to me.
(aside from re-recording tracks with higher gains).
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Oh yeah, and you can't always just raise the gains. Once you get past 0 db the signal clips.
 
Use compression. In my newbie days I was insistant on normalizing, and then I realized how bad it makes everything sound.
 
Compression and/or limiting depending on the condition of the source material.
 
In an ideal situation you would have your material mastered by a professional. This would add the final "polish" to your recording, as well as boosting the overall volume level.

If budget dictates otherwise, or if you're simply doing this for fun, you could try your hand at doing you own mastering. There are a number of mastering tools out there at different pricepoints. Some people use Wavelab, Waves (Masters), T-RackS, and other plugins and stand-alone programs. I've used T-RackS that I personally find very use to use (and effective).

I'm not an expert by any stretch, but in simple terms, mastering suites typically consist of a multi-band EQ, compressor, and limiter.

You could do a search here and come up with a wealth of knowledge. Good luck!
 
I believe squashing 1's and 0's to the max in a digital system is not the way to master a project (when it comes to overall loudness). I would recomend saving the money up and use analog gear, or going to a ME.
 
Digidude824 said:
I believe squashing 1's and 0's to the max in a digital system is not the way to master a project (when it comes to overall loudness). I would recomend saving the money up and use analog gear, or going to a ME.
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Which analog equipment does this? Anything in a reasonable price range? (Reasonable being less than $500).

Thanks,
Bill
 
Fleaflicker said:
Which analog equipment does this? Anything in a reasonable price range? (Reasonable being less than $500).
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Not a chance!
 
Just to get that straight:

What you want is limiting (and/or compression), NOT normalizing.

David
 
For someone who has no idea what they're doing, I suggest using a limiter to bring the overall db level up to where commercial records are. I started using compressors before I knew how and totally ruined a record because I didn't know what I was listening for. Too many tools can definately ruin everything if you don't take the time to learn how to use them first.
 
What I do is use Waves C4 compressor then Waves L2 limiter on all my tracks.

Seems to do the trick. Of course the Waves package is expensive, but you will never have to but another mastering package ever.

-Scott
 
This comes up so often everywhere it would seem to deserve a post-it or sticky or whatever.

Solving the problem of normalizing a collection of songs or trying to adjust the loudness of a song to 'current commercial standards' involves characterizing what you have, where you want to go and adjusting the balance of both EQ and Dynamics. There are many plugs, settings and harware options to choose from so that increases the list of variables. There are also definitions and semantics so that everyone is talking the same lingo. It gets quite confusing sometimes especially in the context of a forum where there are different experience levels and a sentance or 2 carrying assumptions based on years of experiences might leave someone else scratching their head for a while.

Actually it's fairly easy to adjust loudness and 'normalize' a set of songs and make them as loud as you want given a good mix, equipment you know how to use and sounds reasonable, and a good monitoring situation.

If anyone wants to work on a post-it I'm in. At the bottom it should say 'make sure to keep a safety copy of your final mix prior to making any mastering adjustments'. Then if you need to re-master stuff later you always have the highest quality mix to work from.

Actually there's a 'mastering contest' thread that fenix started around here somewhere - I would expect most of the folks that worked on that could contribute a few minutes to the topic ! :)

kylen
 
A great book to really learn about this stuff in some detail is "Mastering Audio" by Bob Katz. It's available on amazon for $40.

If you want to master, some education is essential.
 
leavings said:
What should I do to set the volume of my finished songs to something close to that of professionally mixed and mastered tracks? I find that frequently my songs end up a lot lower in amplitude and I don't want to just resign myself to turning the volume up. I'm curious what the professional methodology is for solving this (aside from re-recording tracks with higher gains). Can someone help me out?

- Peter
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For Beginners: Limiting

Adjust the level of the whole mix until it is TOO LOUD and clips a lot of the time. Now place a limiter in the output chain to prevent it from clipping. If it sound like shit, ease off the volume until it sounds decent.

For Intermediate: Same basic story, just use a compressor instead. Try to use a compression curve that gets shallower as the volume gets higher instead of a linear compression.

For Advanced: Multi-band compression. I love it.

There are about a dozen other tricks.. for example, adding 2nd and 3rd harmonics to the mix adds the perception of additional volume. Mastering is considered a black art for a reason.
 
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