Normalise Option (why does it exist)

[DWS]

What's the deal with the normalise option?

Does it change the sound? If not why wouldn't you want to use it always, in other words, why is it even an option?

I have been advised by a mastering engineer to not use it.

Scott

[Mr. Tingle]

Tracktion normalisation has been unreliable for me and I use a separate program to finalise levels.

[NAS]

Yeah all mastering engineers will tell you not to use normalise ,I think it stems from a time when recordings actually contained a lot of noise and using normalisation would seriously raise the noise floor ,Nowadays with the quality of recordings you can use normalisation as much as you want and the best mastering engineers in the world wouldn't be able to tell ,Oh i master at Loud mastering (Known as the best mastering house in europe) and they can never tell weather something has been normalised thats if i did it directly out of T or used my waveditor.

[simondsouza]

All that normalisation does, as far as I am aware, is increase the volume level of the audio to it's maximum before any digital distorition is introduced - this means that the audio, when recorded onto a CD is as 'loud' as it can be. (though of course there is a whole EQing and mastering process that will increase the percieved loudness of a piece of music beyond that of normalising it)

As regards Tracktion, I have mastered a number of my jazz quartet pieces using the excellent final mix that comes bundled with tracktiona nd then using the normalise funcitojn. It sounds great to me!

Simon

[valley]

Yeah all mastering engineers will tell you not to use normalise ,I think it stems from a time when recordings actually contained a lot of noise and using normalisation would seriously raise the noise floor

I think it stems from the old belief that domestic CD players couldn't cope with -0dB samples. I dunno whether that was actually ever the case, but it certainly isn't now, and as such there is no good reason not to normalise audio before dropping it down to 16 bit.

[DWS]

Tracktion normalisation has been unreliable for me and I use a separate program to finalise levels.

What did you experience?

[Id Lab]

It's best to avoid resampling as much as possible, since each time you do it it degrades the sound. Maybe you'd need golden ears to hear the difference, though. My strategy is to mix everything to get close to 0dB, keep the master gain on 0, and use a mastering limiter on the main bus to get a normalised level. Maybe that's just as bad.

[valley]

Not just as bad, just no different.

Bit reduction from 32bit to 16bit is resampling, just the same as normalising.

You say you set levels as close to 0dB ads you can. Well the level controls are resampling also.

When normalising you are not adding an extra step, there is still only one resample, it is just by a scaling factor other than 0.5.

Now whilst it is true that 32bit to 16bit is a mathematically cleaner calculation than say 30bit to 16bit, the nature of floating point to integer conversion offsets that single advantage of not normalising.

In short, I'd really doubt anyone could hear the effect of normalisation on audio that has peaks anywhere about 24bit, I can guarantee that most people could hear the effect of *not* normalising audio that has peaks anywhere below 28bit.

[Karbon L. Forms]

whats normal?

god im fik

NAS! you use what!?

you not loud enough?

[AndrewSimon]

I use it all the time when I do quick temp render.
But when I do a final master I don't, cause I do not want to change anything that has been just worked on and perfected for hours.

[Mr. Tingle]

Tracktion normalisation has been unreliable for me and I use a separate program to finalise levels.

What did you experience?

It didn't make the loudest point 0db. It didn't even get close on occasion. I didn't want the hassle of checking each export by hand so I just don't bother unless its just a rough cut.

My main grip with auto normalise would be that Tracktion is doing something behind the scenes that I've not told it to.

If I set the voloume, the volume should stay set.