{"id":708,"date":"2001-03-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-03-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sweetwater.com\/sweetcare\/?p=708"},"modified":"2007-04-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-27T00:00:00","slug":"more-normalizing","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.sweetwater.com\/sweetcare\/articles\/more-normalizing\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Normalizing"},"content":{"rendered":"

More on normalizing and Maximizing. “A recent issue of inSync (10\/11\/99) gave a nice summary of maximizing digital audio including how this differs from normalizing. I have a question regarding the latter. I am using Digital Performer 2.6 recording mostly acoustic guitars and vocals through a Korg 1212 card and using only modest analog compression (between the mic pre and the 1212.) I typically have 8 – 12 audio tracks in a given project. Is it better to normalize individual tracks in the mix or wait until the final mastering stage to normalize the stereo “master?” Or, should one normalize the audio in both stages? Is it possible to “overuse” normalization?” There is no harm in normalizing at every step if you want to. It’s a process that doesn’t “change” the relative content of the audio in any way. It merely turns it up digitally. You don’t add any distortion, compression, or noise, or any other attributes that can come back to haunt you later. But it’s generally a waste of time unless you have some tracks where the level is significantly lower than it should be. You aren’t going to recover anything that isn’t already there. It’s a waste because when you mix in a digital audio system the numbers all get re-crunched anyway. You may have normalized your bass track up to its maximum level, but when you put it in the mix with other instruments you’re potentially undoing that. It’s usually best to wait until after you have your stereo master to normalize. Even if you did normalize tracks prior to mixing you would still want to normalize your stereo mixed tracks as well.This is all true for a system in which the individual tracks stay digital until after the mix. If you happen to be working in a system where you bring individual tracks out to do some analog process on them then it can be wise to have them normalized beforehand so you can utilize the full dynamic range of your D\/A converters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[],"storecat":[],"itemids":[],"manufacturers":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n