Normalize - Amateur question

OpChiasm wrote on 11/5/2007, 3:46 AM

Thanks in advance for any help. I have read other postings, but am confused.

I have Vegas 8 and Sound Forge 9. I'm working on a high school sports banquet presentation consisting of mutliple audio sources and would like the final presentation to be at roughly the same volume throughout.

I'm hoping for suggestions on the best compromise between ease and quality? Should I do this in Sound Forge? What should I use for the normalization settings? Ideally, I'd like to use the same settings for everything.

Thanks very much.

Comments

farss wrote on 11/5/2007, 4:02 AM

Normalization does only one thing. It increases the peak level of the audio being normalized to a defined value, typically around -0.5 to -0.1dB ( you can define the value), which is not going to help much in your case. It'll just make everything louder but will not change the relative loudness.

Applying the one fix to everything is rarely a good option. If you have music and speech in your sound track you'll get a better result handing them differently and this is pretty easy to do in Vegas, with a little work. Duplicate your sound track. Label one track "Speech" and the other one say "Music". Add volume envelopes to each. Apply compression in the track header of your Speech track, maybe roll off the bottom end below 120Hz using equalisation. The FXs for this are already in the track header's FX chain. The 1.5:1 or 2:1 preset should suffice for the compression settings

Now adjust your envelopes so when someone is talking your Music track is muted and vice versa.

Bob.

Chienworks wrote on 11/5/2007, 4:03 AM

Normalize doesn't really help a whole lot in these situations as it will key off the loudest peak in each clip. Say you have a clip in which someone drones on at -12dB the whole time, and another clip in which someone whispers at -27, but halfway through someone clearing tables drops a plate and causes a -2dB spike. Normalizing will increase the first clip about 12dB but the second clip only 2dB. That means that while before normalization the difference between the two was 15dB and afterwards it will be 25dB. Not exactly the effect you wanted to achieve.

For pure ease of use take a look at Wave Hammer. I like using it in Sound Forge because it's a bit easier to see what you're doing, but it works just as well in Vegas too. Set it for Peak scan mode and Auto gain compensate. Choose a threshold level that represents the overall volume of the quieter parts of the clip. Try a mid-range ratio to begin with, maybe 8:1 or so. Set the output gain to -3dB to leave yourself a little headroom for later processing. What this will do is squeeze anything above the threshold level flatter before normalizing so that the peaks don't interfere with the process. You'll get a much more consistant volume this way.

Use the Preview button a lot and tweak the sliders to hear what they do and choose what sounds best to you. A lower threshold or a higher ratio will squish the dynamics more. It's easy to go to far though and end up making the sound very muddy and flat. This is a case where often, less is more, so start sparingly and experiment.

OpChiasm wrote on 11/5/2007, 4:40 AM

Thanks very, very much for the explanations. I obviously had no idea what normalization really is; now, I do.

Thanks again.

TorS wrote on 11/5/2007, 6:35 AM

Normalization is really a bad word for what that effect does. And I think many people use it because they are being mislead by the term. Like Bob and Kelly said it just turns up the volume eually for everything. And there is nothing normal about that. In Sound Forge you can normalize using not the peak levels but the apparent loudness of a track - which looks a little like compression. But compression - like they both said - is what you really want to use. Either the default or the graphic dynamics effect. play around with it. Hear what it does. Get used to it. It is the one effect I use most.
Tor

kentwolf wrote on 11/5/2007, 9:09 AM

>>Normalization...it just turns up the volume eually for everything...

I believe, by definition, normalization ensure you are using the full frequency spectrum available. Yeah, the net effect is it pretty much it makes everything louder, but I am pretty sure the goal is to address availability of the full frequency spectrum.

John_Cline wrote on 11/5/2007, 12:21 PM

Normalizing is absolutely useless in matching the apparent loudness of various clips. See my post in this thread:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=406093

Since you already have Sound Forge, you can fix this easily.

John