Normalizing

[rickwaugh]

I'm having trouble understanding how this works. I thought I did.

I have an acoustic guitar track, it seems kind of quiet. I scan with normalize, it tells me my peaks are -20db. So, I assume if I normalize up to -10, or 0, it will boost the volume. I pick limit for clipping modeI, set db to -5, tell it to go ahead.

My meters are now pinned at max. A little crackling at points, not bad. But the odd thing is, the track is quieter. I undo the normalization, and everything goes back to how it was.

I changed mode and clipping mode around, tried pretty much every possible combo, and it's all the same.

Am I misunderstanding how this is supposed to work? This is just a simple guitar track, that I'll use for backing in my next conservatory test, to improv over. I wanted to get the extra volume, and the iPad is quite enough as it is. I'll probably use an external speaker anyway, but now I want to understand how this is actually supposed to work.

[Matt W]

Hello,

Hmm, not sure exactly what might be going wrong. It sounds like the gain is being raised (which is what's supposed to happen when normalizing), as you see the meters showing hotter signal. I guess the question is what is the track quieter in relation to? Other existing tracks? The previous version of that track? What I am thinking is that your part is actually getting louder, but it is simply being monitored more quietly. If you bounced both versions as .wav files and played them back on a different systems my guess is the normalized version would be "louder".

But, looking at what you wrote, I am going to suggest that normalizing isn't really the best option here, and instead you should use a compressor on that track to do what you want. If I understand you, you have a pre-recorded guitar part that you want to play live over, and your playback system just isn't playing back the recorded part loudly enough.

I'd try enabling the ChannelStrip on your guitar track and loading the "Acc Guitar" preset, which sets up the Compressor section with some ballpark settings, and then adjusting the Compressor's Threshold setting downward (towards -24) until the gain reduction meter shows around 3dB of reduction, then turn up the Compressor Output till your track is where you want it. And keep well clear of "pegging" the meters if you want to keep out unwanted distortion.

[Tarekith]

Do you have the compressor or limiter on already for that track? Maybe when you're normalizing you're crossing the threshold of one of those devices and it's pulling things down. Just a guess.

[rickwaugh]

I'll check that, it's quite possible. I have done that. I'll also try messing with just the compressor. Thanks guys.

[rickwaugh]

I was definitely compressing at the same time, and that did make a difference, but still tough to get much volume. My tracks seem to tend to be on the quiet side most of the time.This particular time, its tough to hear the backing track over the live acoustic guitar. iPad is not the loudest device, but I can certainly play recorded music louder than that. I certainly have a lot more to learn about compression and gain, that's for sure.

[Tarekith]

Maybe this will help some:

http://innerportalstudio.com/articles/D ... ontrol.pdf