Diff between peak normalization & vol envelope?

nolonemo wrote on 9/14/2007, 9:55 AM
Please pardon my audio ignorance. . . .

Let's say that I have audio that's a little too quiet, when I playback from the timeline, it peaks at -12dB, and I would like to get it higher, say a peak of -3dB. I could:

a) do an "Open in Sound Forge" and do peak normalization to my target peak level in Sound Forge, or

b) do an "Open in Sound Forge" and do RMS normalization so my peak was -3dB (though I don't know how I'd determine the amount of normalization required to do this)

c) insert a volume envelope in Vegas and drag it up until my peak level in playback is -3dB.

Are these different approaches doing the same thing or something different to the audio (ignore the fact that inserting a volume envelope does not change the original media unlike editing in SF).

Thanks,

Nolo

Comments

farss wrote on 9/14/2007, 3:05 PM
Simple answer. They're all doing the same thing, increasing the level. How they determine how much to increase the level is different. Only exception is using SF to do a RMS normalize. If you also tick the Apply Dynamic Compression, then you may also be altering the dynamics of the audio. Probably not a good thing to do until you have finished mixing.

Bob.
Chienworks wrote on 9/14/2007, 3:06 PM
The overall effect will be the same no matter how you achieve it. The advantage of the volume envelope is that it allows you to adjust the volume over time, in case you want to raise it more in some spots than in others.

There's also no need to open the file in Sound Forge for normalization as you can do this directly in Vegas. If it was me doing it, i'd right-mouse-button click on the audio event, choose Switches / Normalize, then drag the top of the event box down to -3dB.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/14/2007, 5:59 PM
if you've got a file with one loud part (hit a camera mic, for example) you'll need to do some cutting to get it to normalize the way you want. SF's RMS normalize works pretty good around this.
jbolley wrote on 9/17/2007, 7:59 AM
there is a difference in these as far as where in the chain of processing they occur.
If you affect the clip (normalize somehow) it is before the track processing. If you use the volume envelope it applies the gain after the track processing.

Also, when using the vegas normalize funciton you can set the headroom in the preferences, so if you want -3 you can have that be your default. Also you can map a hotkey to the clip normalize function (I use alt-n) if it's a function you use a lot.

Jesse