Original Message                 Date: 18-Feb-02  @  02:40 PM   -   Normalisation vs. compression

krom303

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hi, its some time i make sounds myself (not only farts) using a pc running cakewalk sonar. i use it mainly for recording.

the line level of the outputs of some of my gear (especially the prophecy or the 777) is quite low, and i dont have a decent hardware compressor or preamp or whatever. so sometimes what i record into sonar through my midiman delta 66 has quite a low volume (less than 24db).

i was wondering what i should use to maximize the volume of the single tracks: compression (i have different plug in compressors\limiters - waves, timeworks, tcnative), or normalisation? im talking about maximizing the signal of each track , not of the whole mix. i heard that normalisation can ruin the mix, is this true also if you apply it to one single track?

is it really necessary to maximize the volume of each track? i make mainly slower detroitish technoish stuff and my drums are usually loud, but some of the other sounds cut through without them being LOUD. maybe its just a matter of taste... i also have to say that i often use the aforementioned plug-ins to influence some the sounds i record (snares, kicks, hats mainly).

any input appreciated!

David

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Message 11/11                 Date: 21-Feb-02  @  01:54 AM   -   RE: Normalisation vs. compression

k

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by the way, normalisation DOESN'T mess up audio... the pc just seeks the highest peak and brings it up to 0 dBFS ... so relatively, all the rest of the track get's raised too. perhaps you'd be better using the increase/decrease volume command which again will update the actual file's max peak by the inserted amount (cake has the +3db -3db commands too for example. if you normalise it, it wont it up, but you'll prolly end up dropping it's fader to get it to sit in the mix cos it'll blast everything else to shreds  

the other thing about normalisation is only relevent to non-dance genre's mostly, & it's where an album has quite marked differences in volume between tracks - rock tracks to gentle ballads with acoustic's etc, all mixed together on a CD for example - if you normalise ALL the tracks individualy in an editor to get peak's up, they will all be raised to a peak of 0 dBFS, so the ballad will sound like crap cos it'll be blasting out as loud as the rock tracks. So in that case, you'd create your single album file by pasting all the tracks end to end (order doesnt matter at this point), and select ALL & normalise THE LOT - that way it's find the loudest peak of the loudest track, and raise it, and everything else, RELATIVE to it's highest peak raise in level... the ballad will sound in context, less loud than the rock tracks.

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