NOT normalizing?

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bauer.cc
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Joined: Sun Oct 08, 2006 5:00 pm

NOT normalizing?

Post by bauer.cc » Tue Mar 13, 2007 8:52 pm

Call me a rookie, and you'd be an honest person. But I, as I hear most producers do, want my music to be loud. I posted before about getting that loud full sound, playing with the EQ and compression and what not, and it sounds GREAT... until I render it to disk.

I've found that when I DON'T normalize, it sounds just fine and loud. I compare it to professionally mastered songs and it matches up great! So I guess my question is: What's the catch? There's gotta be some reason it is default to normalize. What's the worst that's going to happen when I don't Normalize. Is it a consistency thing?

Thanks so much for your help

particle
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Post by particle » Tue Mar 13, 2007 8:59 pm

thats a good question..id be curious to know too...i used to not use normalize like a year ago becasue it always made somethings louder than other things but i had no idea what i was doing then as far as eq goes...these days i have not rendered a track un-normallized in a long time...i think it makes the quality sound alot better when you normallize as long as you know what you are doing with the eq and all that stuff..but i am curious now too

Tarekith
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Post by Tarekith » Tue Mar 13, 2007 9:01 pm


mikemc
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Post by mikemc » Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:06 pm

"Normalize If this is activated, the sample resulting from the render process will be normalized (i.e., the le will be amplied so that the highest peak attains the maximum available headroom)."

And I think this means "without clipping". So it may already be that your highest peaks attain the maximum available headroom.

If you want to try an experiment, render 20 seconds of something mixed the way you normally would, then turn the master down so that it never gets near zero, then render that same thing normalized and see the difference.
UTENZIL a tool... of the muse.

bauer.cc
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun Oct 08, 2006 5:00 pm

Post by bauer.cc » Fri Mar 16, 2007 1:54 am

That sounds like a good experiment! I'll try that when I get back from out of town and let you know how it turns out. I definately run things into red alot.


Should I EQ all the tracks seperately for good mastering? I'm not doing that right now which may be my problem.

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