Normalise -> master volume?

[Antimon]

I'm doing my own simple version of "mastering", putting some tracks together to make an album of sorts. I've exported all tracks with normalise=on, so I get them at an ok volume. This made one track a bit too loud in comparison with the others, so I want to make the wav have a lower volume.

What I would like to do is go back to Live, somehow make the master volume fader position itself at a "normalised" spot, where it is as high as possible without clipping occuring, and then move it down a bit. Thing is, I don't know where this position is, since Live found it for me when it was "looking for max volume" or whatever it says when I exported it. I guess consolidating won't help me here, since it's the master volume I want to fix. Is there some way to accomplish this?

The alternative is to do it by trial-and-error, or open the exported wav in an audio editor, which will work. It would be nice to get some help from Live though, since this functionality clearly is there in the render to file function.

/Stefan

[Rave]

Use lives limiter to get a consistent volume. Normalize is a waste of time.

[Antimon]

Yeah well... a limiter will deform the dynamics - I want them to stay the way they are. Normalize is a nice way to set a kind of reference volume, from which I can lower the volume on tracks that sound too loud. Or am I misunderstanding what you use a limiter for in Live?

/Stefan

[Rave]

Amongst other things a limiter is used in mastering for this reason. How u use it though takes skill and patience to get the balance right