
Digital audio normalization
In the last decade the term digital audio normalization has become popular. You could say that most people have a vague idea of what they mean. However, it is important to understand some concepts that relate very closely to the issue of the volume gain of an audio file.
One of these issues is audio quality, so we think it is very important to start by explaining what kilobytes per second means.
It is not difficult to understand this concept, however very few people understand it and much less people manage to understand
So let’s try to understand what the subject of kilobytes per second means and how it impacts the quality of an audio file of any format.
This will allow us to have a greater vision to understand the issue of volume, digital audio normalization and loudness given that all this is closely related to audio quality.
So let’s begin to understand why at higher kilobytes per second we will usually have better audio quality.
For this it is necessary to use some examples. But first we need to understand that the greater amount of kilo bytes per second means a greater amount of information per second.
Many will ask And why more information per second synonymous with better audio or video quality?
For that it is important to keep in mind that audio or video files are capturing information and this information is usually very rich in data. For example, the amount of data per second in the performance of a musical group with five or six instruments is quite a lot. Or say the information per second in an image What is very many. So if we lower the number of bytes per second we are reducing the amount of information which impoverish our audio or video file.
The war of volume
For some years now, music recording companies have detected that people listen as a synonym for quality if there is a greater volume And then they have opted for the strategy of increasing the volume of the music they record a little more and produce.
If we had a graphic that will show us the volume and loudness that music used to have in the 70s and we were comparing by decade we could see that the loudness and volume level and volume gain have been increasing decade after decade.
This as I mentioned produces a deceptive effect of perception in the human being that confuses an increase in volume with an increase in audio quality.
And this has been called the war of volume because as we mentioned they have gradually increased the volume level of musical productions to make it appear that they have a higher sound quality.
And how does this compare to bytes per second? As it happens that the amount of information per second does really determine a higher quality and does not need an artificial increase in volume to appear to have a higher quality of digital audio.
So a modern digital audio normalization like the one offered by mp4gain is not misleading, but tries to ensure that each musical passage and each instrument have their optimum volume so that the loudness is constant and so that the quality is the best possible.






