Normalising......Good or bad?

[Hollowcell]

Originally Posted by jasedee

Do we dare re-open old wounds?

Yeh, why not. I basicly use it exactly the way you have stated there Jase.

I'm over this thread now though. My shrink has informed me to say away from the normalize function.

[remix808]

I was really bewildered by the amount of uneducated postings here, just stabbing in the dark about Normalising audio.

I thought it was a well known fact, but many here have proved me wrong by saying things like 'it changes the dynmics'.

First lets get one thing straight. IT DOES NOT CHANGE THE DYNMICS IN THE SAME WAY COMPRESSION DOES, IT INCREASES THE DYNMICS OF THE WHOLE FILE SELECTED AND DOES NOT SQUASH THEM. If there is floor nosie in the file then it will also be increased. just think of it as turning the fader up in an audio file - it increases everything.
Also it does not limit the audio as stated above, it takes the highest peak of the selected file and increases the whole file until that highest peak reaches the desired level (0dB if thats what you choose).

This can be cleary seen if you render a track with only hi-hats and then add a big kick drum so the wave form looks like this - http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~xlx/cour.../costa-wav.png
If you then normalised it, the hi hats would only increase the same amount the kick drum increases.

A good use for normalising is if when you push your (old analogue) faders up and get lots of hiss from the mixer (with the gain up to) then normalise to give you more room to play on the mixer so you don't get hiss noises etc on your track for the mixer.
Always remembering signal to noise ratio.


Sorry for shouting i really had to get that out of my system. In fact the only reason i joined this forum was because i was so shocked at what people where saying Normalising is that i had to reply just to put them right,... so there we go.

"Normalizing, as far as Sound Forge or other digital audio editors are concerned, simply means to adjust the peak volume of a selection to a known value. Generally the recommended maximum is -0.5 dB" (http://www.homerecording.com/normalizing.html)

Best pro info about it online is: http://artistpro.com/index.php?modul...=20&page_id=92
Hope this helps.

I'm not a teacher just a student so sorry if i could of explained it better.
I have been studying music technology for 5 years now and have aquired alot of knowledge and equipment.
Check out the books i've read at me website.
www.sessionstudios.co.uk

[jasedee]

Ok then.....

After reading through all of the old posts again, I cant really see any reason for you to be so upset. This thread was about dispelling some myths about normalizing, and hearing peoples opinons about what they thought it does.....

Relax buddy, you'll live longer

P.S I think my words were "Normalizing is LIKE a fader with a peak limiter." Is that not correct? It pushes the audio up to whatever point you decide and doesnt let it past this point (limits)?????

Whatever.......Im just looking for a fight hehehe

I'll go now

[grs]

The main reason you should not normalise is quantisation and rounding errors.
If you recorded say 16 tracks of audio and normalised them all, then went about mixing them together in a digital mixing app using faders to get a mix, What you have done is level quantised the bits in each audio file twice!

Moving a fader in a digital mixer is just like normalising but your aim is not to turn it all the way up to zero.

More on quantisation.. (this explanation will be using a hypothetical 16bit digital mixer)
say you have recorded a cute sine wave at -12db off hitting zero. You did this in a 16bit file, for each -6db away from zero you record your using one less bit.
a 1bit file would contain 2 states, silent and loud as hell.
a 2bit file would contain 4 levels (2x2), silent, soft, medium loud and loud as hell.
a 4bit file would contain 16 levels (2x2x2x2),, and it goes on like that
...
...
...
a 14bit file would contain 16384 levels
and a 16 bit file would contain 65536 levels

now thats a 1 to 4 ratio, Your volume steps in your 14bit file are mapped out to fit into the space of 4 steps for every one step. Thats great if your little sine wave is exaclty 16384 levels loud, if its say 16001 levels loud (still a 14bit number and still -12db) there will be not exactly a 1 to 4 ratio, rather 1 to 4.0957440159990000624960939941254 ratio.
That's when rounding errors occur because the final level has to be a whole number without the .0957440159990000624960939941254, it will round it up or down, or what ever the software designer has in mind.

Then you go and turn your track down (say -12db from clip) in your mixing application so that all the tracks don't overload the stereo mix. Turning down a track is like backwards normalising, it doesn't undo the rounding errors, it just adds more. Try and map 65536 numbers of loud to 16001 numbers of soft and your kind of missing some loud loud steps by around 4 to 1. Not exacly 4 to 1 either, something nasty like with heaps of numbers after the decimal point.

So you can see that you should never normalise if your goal is to minimise rounding errors and therefore preserve as much of the loudness detail.

Of course a 32bit mixer sounds better than a 16bit one, and many people argue that you don't hear all those errors, but there will be a theoritical limit to how many times you can adjust the gain of a 32bit digital file before you will hear all those errors. My current philosophy is to capture/record/produce all sounds at the highest level and bit depth and minimise gain changes to one or two plugins and mix in the analog world.

You can quote me on any of that, I learn't most of it from 'Audio Technology' anyway. Great Ausie mag!

[Panopticon]

Well, normalizing is not like a peak limiter. A peak limiter sets a predefined limit and squashes anything that exceeds that limit. Normalizing, on the other hand, takes the highest level and DEFINES that as the peak limit. So, with a peak limiter, YOU decide what the highest level is (and it's adjustable). With normalization, the process finds the highest peak, sets it to "all bits on", and adjusts the entire level accordingly.

With a peak limiter, you could have plenty of material that was not altered in the least by the limiter; with normalization, everything is altered by the same amount.

Now, I don't think I've said anything that hasn't already been made clear; just kind of recapping. However, there are some aspects of gain staging that I'm not very well versed in, but I know they could play a part in this discussion.

I think the ultimate conclusion to draw is: improve your recording methods so that normalization is not needed; thereby keeping your noise floor at as low a level as possible.

(I'm drunk right now, by the way, so feel free to disregard any/all parts of this post that are incoherent, wrong, or simply rub you the wrong way)

((I really like making drunken posts, as well. In the future, I will try to increase my ratio of drunken:sober posts))


Lick my love pump....

[Hollowcell]

Originally Posted by remix808

In fact the only reason i joined this forum was because i was so shocked at what people where saying Normalising is that i had to reply just to put them right,... so there we go.

I admire your passion when it comes to the Normalising function.

[jasedee]

Originally Posted by grs

I learn't most of it from 'Audio Technology' anyway. Great Ausie mag!

Here here!

Originally Posted by remix808

I was really bewildered by the amount of uneducated postings here, just stabbing in the dark about Normalising audio.

I hope the preceeding posts were up to your standards of education?

Originally Posted by Panopticon

Lick my love pump....

Ummm.......No thanks! hehehehe....

[tranzash]

What happened to this thread?


So guys, should we normalize tracks? or is it the only remedy to increase the overall volume of the audio you record out of your cell phone?

[remix808]

"I think the ultimate conclusion to draw is: improve your recording methods so that normalization is not needed; thereby keeping your noise floor at as low a level as possible." thats a quote from 'Lick my love pump....' and i must agree, most of the time you should not have to normalise.... just use it when you mess up and don't get the signal you require.

and what that bloke said about all the bit crunching etc... "1 to 4 ratio, rather 1 to 4.0957440159990000624960939941254 ratio." hummmm, i'd hate to hear what he had to said about digital compression.... interesting though.

L8r,... Dave


www.sessionstudios.co.uk

[tranzash]

Remix808, Welcome to the forum.