Ableton Forum

Hi,
as the subject says: How can I normalize non destructive a recorded audio to lets say - 3 dB?
horst

Ok, seems not to be possible. yes, I have found lots of requests on this, but I hoped: as time goes by.
Till now I have used live mainly for clip based things, my main DAW is reaper for live and band recording. But at the moment I am doing my songs on me alone using live as DAW and am suprised in positive and negative.
How can it be, that such a basic feature ist not available?
Ableton is investing so much efforts in incredible items forgetting a little bread or butter thing.
horst

Add a compressor and limiter?

Consolidating an audio clip normalises it. Live then reduces the volume of the normalised clip back to where it was before normalisation. There’s a slider in the clip view controls that can then be used to set the clip level wherever you want it, e.g.to 0dB if that’s what you want.

Hi,

jestermgee wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:43 pm

Add a compressor and limiter?

both methods are altering the audio.

Good morning,

TLW wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 04, 2020 6:24 am

Consolidating an audio clip normalises it.

yes, I know, and that is my workaround at the moment. But that method is semi destructive, creating a new file.
reaper is so comfortable in that way: selecting one clip, hit a command, type the dB of my desire in a popping box. Ready. If I select several clips I can decide wether every clip will be regarded on its own or all together in combination.
But I will learn to accept Ctrl+J

Yes, a “normalise to....” command or function would be a lot simpler.

You can feed audio from one track into another. Go crazy on track 2 with volume faders, compressors, whatever.

Push the gain up, use your eyes.

In lieu of Live adding a normalize function in the future, here are two ideas.

First is to use an external audio editor. Set the external editor to the program of your choice in Live’s options and open the clip in it. Then normalize it there. However, I think that is destructive. Izotope RX7 Elements is excellent and can do this. It’s on sale right now for a very low price. Others to look at are Ocen Audio and Audacity. I think both have a normalize function, and both are free.

Second is to do something similar to the above, but only analyze the audio in the external editor, and then make the actual adjustment inside Live. Izotope RX has a menu item called Waveform Statistics, and it looks at the entire audio file and displays the peak level. Look at the True Peak value there. Then make an adjustment inside Live using the clip’s gain control to increase by the amount needed to reach the normalization target level. For example, if RX reports the peak as being -4.8dB, and you want the peak to be at 0dB, go back inside Live and adjust the clip’s gain to be +4.8dB.

The waveform statistics window is on this page at the time of this writing.
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx ... kflow.html

gbert wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 05, 2020 4:42 pm

go back inside Live and adjust the clip’s gain to be +4.8dB.

Since there are two different pieces of software involved I’d adjust the clip gain to a little less than that just in case either slightly miscalculates.

If I absolutely feel I must normalise I usually use the consolidate and adjust gain method, but it’s rare I need to bring tracks up to 0dB. If anything I usually have to keep an eye on the master meter as the track count builds up to check it’s not going into the red - so reducing gain, usually using the utility plugin after any effects processing so compressors etc. aren’t influenced by the audio’s gain drop.