"NORMALIZING"

  • Thread starter Thread starter RecordingMaster
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RecordingMaster

RecordingMaster

A Sarcastic Statement
I recently realized the "Normalize" Feature under the Amplify tab, and what it does. For those of you who may not know, or never bothered to try it out, apparently it amplifies the whole track (in proportion) so that the loudest waves in your given track will be as naturally loud as possible just before it starts to clip (leaving the perfect amount of headroom).
So, I've been using it somewhat, but I'm not sure if I should be using it on every single track that I record. For example, say I record a drum track, guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals, etc., and normalize every single wave on their own, then adjust individual volumes manually during mastering (as usual). After that, normalize the whole mix.

Should I do be doing this? Or only on the things that are really weak? Or just at the final step on the whole track?


Anyone who knows about this and uses it (or has), your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Jay
 
Normalizing is intended to bring up the entire mix, even though you can use it on individual tracks. The problem with using it on tracks is that you can easily send the mix into distortion when several "maxed-out" tracks are summed into a mix. I use the volume envelopes in Multitrack View to get the mix right. Then if I need to make the mix louder (which is not often necessary, IMO) I can normalize.
 
Thanks, lpdeluxe, for your advice, it makes sense.

Anyone else have other oppiinions on this?
 
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keep away from normalizing if you can.
as you said, normalizing finds the loudest point and then pulls up the volume using that as a reference of how much headroom you have. Problem with that is say you use it on a track that most of the volume is down around -10dBFS....but you have ONE spike that goes to about -1dBFS. And you tell the normalizer to bring up the volume to -.5dBFS...well the volume of the entire track is just going to go up .5dB....a waste of time.

also, normalizing brings up the noise floor. it's best to set your levels correctly BEFORE recording.
 
Normalising should -in theory- only be done as the last step, just before bit-depth conversion when going to the final medium (mostly before burning the cd).
 
Havoc said:
Normalising should -in theory- only be done as the last step, just before bit-depth conversion when going to the final medium (mostly before burning the cd).
Click to expand...
Why? What makes you think that??
 
Normalization is something that is only really useful for creating samples. It is *NOT* in the pallette of tools of any professional mixer that I have heard of.
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
Normalization is something that is only really useful for creating samples. It is *NOT* in the pallette of tools of any professional mixer that I have heard of.
Click to expand...

Nice post! :)
 
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