Question regarding the normalize setting when rendering

tom b. · Post by **tom b.** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 8:17 am

Hi,

I know that the normalise setting raises the level of audio to the maximum level possible without distortion. However, the Ableton Live 4 Power book recommends leaving this setting off for full songs and regulating all mastering/normalising tasks to a wave editor.

Why is this? I have Soundforge 6.0 myself but dont really know how i would go about mastering or normalising a track in it. Can anyone give me any insights on it?

Thanks,
Tom

BENBLEASE · Post by **BENBLEASE** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 10:02 pm

Normalising only takes the highest peak to zero dbfs. so this could be a freak bass drum hit 12db above the whole track for eg.

reasons it recomends you should avoid normalising are prob because;
a) some people think this automatically 'evens out' there tracks, not true because of the above, so produces unpredictable results.

b) from a serious mastering guys point of view, every digital process degrades the orig recorded audio, yes this includes simple processes like gain changes and panning. this is ten times worse when applied to a whole mix obviously, and live doesn't have the best processing!

better to leave it 'till the mastering, where the level will raised anyway by 'better' processing (hopefully!)

tom b. · Post by **tom b.** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 1:37 pm

BENBLEASE wrote:Normalising only takes the highest peak to zero dbfs. so this could be a freak bass drum hit 12db above the whole track for eg.

reasons it recomends you should avoid normalising are prob because;
a) some people think this automatically 'evens out' there tracks, not true because of the above, so produces unpredictable results.

b) from a serious mastering guys point of view, every digital process degrades the orig recorded audio, yes this includes simple processes like gain changes and panning. this is ten times worse when applied to a whole mix obviously, and live doesn't have the best processing!

better to leave it 'till the mastering, where the level will raised anyway by 'better' processing (hopefully!)

cheers for that Ben.

yeah i can do the mastering & normalising in Soundforge then.

I will figure out how i do it using the online manual........i suppose at a basic level i wasn't sure what exactly mastering and normalising are.

AndrewDuke · Post by **AndrewDuke** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 2:38 am

examine the diffferences between normalizing and limiting,too. andrew

AndrewDuke · Post by **AndrewDuke** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 5:47 pm

an addendum: if you normalize your original than it's always going to be normalized, so best to save your original as is from ableton and then if you want to normalize, do this later in a separately saved file. andrew