Volumes from normalizing

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Joejoe

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I recorded 3 songs different sessions and mastered each of them with different tastes..I normalized them to 100%.Problem is the 2nd song is a couple of decibels lower and so is the 3rd but they all sound nice and clear..Is it becuase every song was mastered seperately?Should i have everything miced the same way in every session?How can i get track 2 to sound the same as 1. Anything i can do to boost up loudness after 100%.Appreciate your help.
 
Normalizing has nothing to do with RMS level. It has to do with Peak Level. If you don't know the difference, do a little research on the two. This is very relevent stuff. A little study on the Fletcher/Munson Relative Loudness Curves would yield a bit of insight into this too.

If you were to properly master those three songs, you would just turn down track 1 to match the level of 2 and 3. No brainer....;)

Hey, it don't ALL have to be LOUD!!! :D

Ed
 
I would wait on that untill you get some 5 more songs done unless if you are cutting an EP. Good advice Ed.
 
Tell u the truth i dont know what RMS really is..do i need something else for that..thanx
 
Root Means Square

About 70.3% of peak which is half of peak to peak. that should mean nothing to you unless if you are looking at a power rating.
 
Actually not true. Most VU meters use RMS to display.

RMS also represents much closer "appearent" loudness. Normalizing deals with "Peak" loudness. Two very different things altogether.

Normalizing tracks WILL NOT make them sound the same volume. All's normalizing does is raise the overall track volume up so that the loudest "Peak" volume is 0dBu on a digital Peak meter. You can have peaks that are many decibels higher than the Average, or RMS level of the song. So, normalizing may not bring up the volume of a mix that has very wide Peak to Average levels. In fact, Normalizing MAY not raise the level of a track at all because the track could very have peaks that are too close to 0dBu for you to hear the difference a few tenth of a dB boost would give as a result of Normalizing.

Normalizing is an unneccesary step in the "mastering" process of compiling songs together that will be on the same disk. If you are "mastering" effectively, you will use POSSIBLY Eq, Compresssion, and Limiting to achieve higher average levels and after all that, you will STILL probably have to adjust the overall volume of a song or two from the rest to make them all have the same "appearent" volume.

Ed
 
Squash them peaks...

Just to put this into visual terms. If you have a song who's waveform looks straight as a ruler but happens to have one or two volume spikes/peaks that reach up to close to 0db a normalization isn't going to raise the volume of the track significantly. You'd have to squash those peaks first and then do a normalization. I believe that Ed refers to this problem in one of his posts in his huge mixing secrets thread on the Mixing / Mastering forum. Joejoe you may want to check that out, it's impossible to miss.
 
How do u get your waveform to look like a ruler(really flat).I'f i use heavy compression it'll do that but sound terrible.Im using Db-audioware for compression..Magneto by Steinberg.Cooledit pro eq and normalizing.Some mixes look flat some dont..Thanx for the links.
 
Well, I think most of the users on this forum would agree you don't want your track to look straight like a ruler, I was just exaggerating to make the visual clearer. Normally a song has more dynamic range than that, but yeah if you use enough compression it'll probably get straight as a ruler.

Let's say you really had spikes as mentioned, you could find the offending intrument and frequency of the spike and squash it with careful eqing. You could also edit/cut out the note and place another in. Then you should be able to raise the volume of the whole track to match the others.
 
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