When to normalize?

  • Thread starter Thread starter 5stringer
  • Start date Start date
TimOBrien said:
The best thing daw manufacturers could do is to take out the 'Normalize' button in their code...
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Or users could actually realize that "DAW" software is also used for a lot of other purposes that have nothing to do with home recording or even making music, therefore they can expect to find functions that may not be relevant to home recording or making music in general. Apps like Sound Forge and Audition are found all over the place from CSI and forensic science labs to talk radio stations to acoustic science laboratories to information theory classrooms to satellite and data transmission labs and more; and peak normalization can be a handy tool for many of those disciplines.

Just because it's available in digital audio editing software doesn't necessarily mean it's applicable to us making music; at the same time, just because we don't much need it in music production doesn't meant that others don't appreciate having it for their purposes.
poor_boy_record said:
Hmmmm. Just wondering. Anyone have a button that could normalize me ? I have never been normal !
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Look for little white buttons labeled either Xanax, Lithium or Ritilan, depending upon the nature of your abnormality ;)

G.
 
Supercreep said:
What about as a last-ditch effort to bring a track that is too quiet, but otherwise good, up to a useable level?
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In Sonar I use 'Gain Process - very much the same in that it's permanent- and either way you can choose not to go to full scale'. But with 'gain you're picking the amount of level you want to add rather than picking some point below zero based on some random single peak.

Ethan said:
..Sure, you could play the song all the way through in real time to note the highest level ever reached on the output bus, then adjust the master fader so peaks just hit -1 or whatever. In theory that's better (lower distortion) than rendering and normalizing. But I'm pretty sure the difference in quality would not be audible.
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I think it just comes down to work style. In virtually all cases in final mix mode or master, I'll have a comp+limiter setting there where I'm well aware (at that point in the process) whether I'm driving into either threshold, and by how much. (.. 'limiter is set -.5dbfs so that targeting is done.
The interplay of these two are (partly) defining tone', density, and the track's relative level in the project.
I guess the distinction I'm making is that to me these are final attributes of the mix, not to then be handed to a function of 'peak.
:)
 
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