Should I Normalize all my tracks?

hi, if you mean using logic's normalise function in the sample editor, i would say yes with certain conditions.
be aware that if you normalize to 0db or just under you won't have any headroom left. therefore you will easily overload that channel by adding an eq boost for example.
for drums and such it might be ok to do the above, but on sustained sounds, like pads, it's not desirable.

you can set the normalize to less than 0db. mine is -6db, and this is high enough for percussion.
pads, etc: anywhere from -18db to -12db is enough.
also useful is the change gain function which can scan to file and give a peak readout. you can then take the gain up or down.
use pre fader metering so you can see the gain of any channel prior to processing.
even at these settings my channel faders are way down: ~ -30db to -12db, typical.
if you have monitoring level problems at these settings, you will need to think about a more powerful monitoring system.
the whole thing with audio recording/production is "how low you can go" not how high.
your master bus should be dancing between ~ -6db and -20db, typical.
try not to use comp/lim on the master bus, or at least do a mix without any for archiving.

actually a really good test for one's monitoring capability is to see how low you can do a mix whilst still producing 86db spl by turning your monitor gain up instead of your DAW's master out. this is very revealing.

(ol' granny)G4 450DP. 1.5 G ram. and an optimistic outlook Mac OS X (10.4.8) digidesign, motu, apogee, alembic, oberheim, tannoy, mesa boogie.

I disagree with David. if you do not normalise you audio tracks, you will not get the best possible signal-to-noise ration and use all your bits (whatever bit-rate you're using). In other words, you will not get the best-sounding audio out of your recordings. To check this out, take one audio recording file and make a copy so that you have two identical audio files. Normalise one, and reduce digitally the other file's level by a substantial amount, say -30dB. Now, bring them both to the same relative level, and see which one sounds cleaner!
I agree though that you could overload your tracks. But that is only if you have your mix already finished. Then, of course, if you boost your levels, you're going to overload, assuming that you've done a good job mixing and are already sitting as close to 0 dB as possible to start with.

The idea is to normalise - to boost your audio - after you have recorded them, but before you start mixing. I always do normalise. It's a way to have the best "raw" material possible to start to work with.

A.

G'day, ant1.
if you don't believe me, check out the many other posts on this and other forums about the same thing. Bob Katz has great info on this.

after you've read 'em including a beauty by Bruce Swedien on gearslutz, re: compression/limiting/mastering.

i do agree that you won't use all the bits available @24, and, @16 you could compromise some signals, by not using "hotter" levels.

bare in mind that a norminal signal of -18dbfs on a DAW is equal to 0VU in the analog world. most analog systems have ~ 14db headroom above this for transients. any hotter than this will clip the analog output driver in most cases.

anyway, i wish you luck with your over-recording.

the thing is, it's not as simple as just maximising everything at all times to use the maximum bits possible at all times to guarantee the best fidelity... ideally you should be attentive with you recording levels so as to use your dynamic range as best as possible as you record. boosting the recorded data later to fill up the bits is not necessarily going to improve things later, you'll bring your noise floor up to as loud as possible on every single take, and if some of your takes have been recorded at too low a level, you'll end up hearing a lot more noise than otherwise. plus, don't forget that maximising is a digital mathematical operation that is being performed on your audio files, it's not as simple as the dumbed-down charts you see in reference manuals to explain the principle of how maximising works... all sorts of data averaging and rounding will happen when you maximise, different depending on what software does it, what audio engine is in play etc etc.
also, don't forget that the recorded audio in logic is then translated internally to the 32 bit float of the audio engine, so the mixing and effects processing of your audio at that level is on a different scale to the recording format. this means that even if you have say 24 bit audio files that were recorded at a conservative level in the first instance, they are not going to be penalised too much in further plug in processing with plug ins etc because it's a whole different ballgame inside the box.

that said, there's certainly a place for maximising, I do it reasonably often myself. but at the end of the day, the old-school recording principles still apply: set your levels carefully and dutifully for every source that you are recording to get as good, clean and hot a signal into your DAW as you can. also the other best advice for ideal dynamic range in this day and age is - always work at 24 bit, the benefits completely eclipse the drawback of ever so slight extra CPU and disk resources and the slightly larger filesizes.

if you do not normalise you audio tracks, you will not get the best
possible signal-to-noise ration

That's a flawed idea there - normalising does not change your signal-to-noise ratio at at - everything just gets louder, including your noise floor.

There really are very few reasons to ever need to normalise audio these days - that was not true back in the late 80's/early-90's early digital days, but we've come a long way since then.

I always do normalise. It's a way to have the best "raw" material
possible to start to work with.

The "best" raw material is the original recorded audio before it has been processed at all. As long as you are making decent recordings at 24-bit with plenty of headroom, your recordings will be fine. Normalising is almost never done these days in studios in my experience.

In Logic's mixer, you can add gain to the signal way above the digital file's clipping point at 32-bit resolution - why on each you'd want to destructively, irreversibly process each file at the 16 or 24-bit fixed resolution of your audio file is beyond me...

guys, you must excuse Ant1, as he lives in Canberra, Australia's seat of government.
Canberra is the home of many a politician, and as we all know, they can make very bad decisions....a lot!
i think Ant1 has maybe been infected by them, living down there as he does.

Logic uses a floating point mixer.

This means that the audio is scalable (you can change the magnitude i.e. level without affecting the resolution).

At the end of the day the signal will need to come out of a 16 or 24 bit converter. If you nomalize all your tracks you will end up with a combined signal level well beyond the output capability of the final D/A converter, or 16bit CD format. In this case you will need to reduce the level considerably to ensure that you do not distort or clip the output converter.

I would recommend using the "Gain" plugin if you need to increase the signal level of a track or two., especially if the project is shared, for example if someone has sent you their project for an overdub or to mix, you dont want to permanently alter one of the copies.

In closing, my answer is NO. It is simply unnecessary when using a floating point DAW.

Yikes.

Tele, care to elaborate?

R

efrog, allways keep in mind that we are musicians and the fun thing about art is that it reflects what you feel. Only you and your ears can get you where your mind wants to go.
For example I like Trent Reznor's music, and even though a lot of "professional engineers" would find his music "noizy", there is beauty in noise when it is accomplishing something.

P.S. What I am trying to say is to judge your music with your ears, and remember that rules are written to be broken, specially when it comes to art.

As a policy no. And never normalize to 0db. If you want to normalize I'd suggest going to -6db, but with live stuff I'd be inclined to say leave at where it was when recorded and use gain if you need to turn something up.

apostol13, I appreciate the reminder that at the end of the day it's about the music and the art. but, it's not really useful to come in and wipe away important points about a technical concern such as audio engineering by saying that basically everything is right as long as it feels right.

sure, a creative and ingenious musician/audio engineer might find a reason for say, recording a live instrument with the microphone facing the wrong way. it could provide them with just the sound they are looking for, and they are creatively going against using something technically correctly to achieve an effect. but, this is not the same as someone recording with a mic facing the wrong way because they didn't know any better, and had no idea that the mic had a front or a back.

oh and also, dave: wow. canberra bashing. I didn't think people still did that in australia.

people do a lot of things in australia, except of artists of all types. we do nothing of importance any more. why don't you get off that high horse of yours and come live here. i'd like to see how far you'd get.
canberra bashing is very allowed.
listen mate, we don't even have a tangable "bill of rights" here.

i've lived here long enough to know the difference, and although i'm well established, there are a lot of artists who are suffering under John Howard.
i feel very sorry for them, and that's more than i can say for you.

uh.. ok. *backs into corner away from the scary guy*

I totally agree about the howard government and the state of affairs of the arts, I can see that clearly from the high horse I am not riding on. my point was that a personal attack on someone on a forum - poking fun of the fact that they wouldn't know anything because of where they live. that is not on, mate.

..and you know what? i re-read your last post, didn't quite realise just how rude and out of line you were.


"i feel very sorry for them, and that's more than i can say for you."

sure, whatever mate.