It's not that I'm stretching the meaning, it's that the marketing whizzos at the software companies have crushed and straightjacketed the real meaning into one little tiny specific example of what the term and the process really means.
I have the advantage (or maybe you might call it a disadvantage, I guess that's more perspective than anything) of having become familiar with the concept of "normalization" in a couple of different fields long before I even first saw the term used in audio software back in the days of Sound Forge v2 (i think). Back then the only time I ever heard of "normalization" in audio has to do with things like radio transmitter signal normaization, which indeed had much to do with limiting the signal to conform to FCC rules, while at the same time boosting average modulation levels as much as possible without breaking those rules (an early front in the long-existing volume wars). It bore a superficial resemblance to what we now know today as peak normalization, but it also included elements of what we would today call limiting and RMS normalization as well.
So right away, when I saw that "normalize" button in that first copy of SF, and what it did, I immediately realized, "well, that's different than the 'typical' use of the term 'normalize' I'm used to thinking of in audio". And I saw that it was only one specific type of normalization of many that I was already familiar with - and that's not even including the usages of the term that I had already learned in my nascent IT career, not to mention my high school science, math and biology classes.
Why not just accept the current use of "normalize" in audio as meaning digital peak normalization, and never mind the extraneous stuff I'm dredging up? First, because as I explained in an earlier post, that's only how it's currently used maybe about 95% of the time. It's NOT a universal definition, even in digital audio. There are an increasing number of RMS normalizers, volume balancers, etc. that do other stuff to normalize the signal than just peak normalization, and they properly *call* them normalizers as well. We teach here that "normalize" only means an overall volume gain by x dB until the loudest peak is 0dBFS, and we're not teaching them anything about the other - far more useful - types of normalizers out there.
Second, Understanding the general concept of "normalization" and not the the one specific button, can lead to a whole new level of comprehension and understanding of how to manipulate our music to better advantage.
It would be a lot easier to just say that "normalize" means boost the peak to 0dBFS, but it would be incomplete at best, and just plain wrong at worst.
And when have you ever known me to just take the easier route?
G.
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