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Audio normalization for beginners

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What’s more annoying when listening to music is that you have to manipulate the volume control for every song that plays. If you have a computer, a tool allows you to uniformize the atmosphere from track to track while the songs are playing. This is called normalization. Three main means are used to achieve this result more or less effectively.

Audio normalization

Normalization through detection of maximum volume

The player or audio processing software analyzes the sound of the track and detects the highest amplitude. If it is less than the maximum gain value that is imposed, the signal is automatically boosted by the number of decibels required to reach and reach this value in all samples on the track. If the highest amplitude is equal to or greater than the maximum gain value, nothing is done.

Normalization

This method has only one advantage: the avoidance of saturation. However, the drawbacks are many.

This form of normalization cannot be applied in real time, as it is assumed that the maximum signal value is known in advance, which is hardly the case with live audio sources (playback or recording). Also, this type of normalization turns out to be totally ineffective when the overall sound of the song is low, but interrupted by small ridges that can be parasitic. When these peaks reach or exceed the maximum gain value, nothing happens and the overall sound is always reduced, especially if these peaks last only a few fractions of a second.

Normalization in detecting maximum volume is almost never used by reading software. Many audio processing software or even audio CD burning offers this option, such as Audacity and Nero.

Normalization by medium volume detection

Here, the player or audio processing software analyzes the sound of the track and does not detect the highest amplitude, but the average amplitude of the signal. Thus, the volume of the song will automatically increase or decrease by the number of decibels required to reach the imposed value, as appropriate.

Also known as RMS, this method has the advantage that the sound is fairly accurately balanced from one song to another, even if there are sharp peaks in the volume.

However, normal normalization of volume detection, like the previous method, cannot be applied in real time and is ipso facto unsuitable for live audio sources. In addition, saturation can occur if the imposed value to be achieved is not sufficient. It is recommended to use normalization values small enough to avoid this problem as much as possible.

Many reading software programs use this normalization mode, but they all work better or worse than the others. .

Sound compression / modern normalization

The mp4gain audio processing software performs the audio signal analysis, analysis that will lead to increase or decrease the volume of certain areas of the signal according to a complete set of fairly complex parameters inherent in the signal itself. Ultimately, the loud sounds will be attenuated, the weak sounds will improve when multiple presets are reached.

This is the best normalization method if the sound processing values are well established, in which case the sound volume becomes very constant and without saturation, regardless of the source and signal type, in real time or No

However, this type of normalization requires some processing power from the processor. Although the results achieved are much more professional and the only ones that really achieve what the 2020 ear is looking for. Mp4Gain has the most efficient response to normalize audio, either from audio files of the most popular formats or from video files, including the most commonly used formats.

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What exactly is normalizing?

Music is distinguished by what is often called “dynamic” and which refers to the changes (more or less abrupt) of the “effort” with which certain notes or passages are interpreted.
Whether it is an instrument or the voice.

singer

Any vocal performance that has been considered virtuous, in general terms, will have a dynamic that goes from very soft passages, almost whispered, to intense passages, with a high volume, singing at full voice.

At the time when vinyl existed as the option to listen to music, it was not felt (at least it went almost unnoticed) the fact of noticeable differences between the loudness or the volume of a song.

It was with the advent of digitization and the possibility of its variants (opting for different bitrates, sample rates, bitdepths, etc.) that this difference became very evident.

And with the appearance of mp3 and its distribution or exchange, at the same time that winamp and distribution lists arose, when it was inevitable and it was even started to look for solutions.

Napster

These first ones were based on the sound peaks and their results were very inefficient.

Returning to the mention of the mp3, situations such as masking (where information is removed) further marked the problem of differences in volume.

Then began to use the RMS that rather mediates the average power that the song had, more than the peaks.

Initially, it was enough to put a slower reaction level to the volume meter, to have a more general idea and less impacted by the volume peaks.

And so, the way of listening to music and considering what normalization was evolved.

Finally it appears to be somewhat closer to a mixture of a volume limiter and a compressor.

What is a volume limiter? It is a hardware (although lately there are also limiters in software version) that ensures that no peak exceeds a maximum limit.

A compressor, on the other hand, is a device or software that is used to “compact” the volume, preventing the parts with the lowest volume from being too low and at the same time preventing the high parts from exceeding a range that has been assigned. We would say that the compressor dampens the increases and decreases in volume.

To this we can add an equalization that differentiates the bands and treats them differently both in the limitation and in the compression. Each frequency band has a different treatment in the Mp4gain and that produces a very efficient result. It is NOT the only improvement offered by Mp4Gain, but this is described here. In other articles we will deal with other differences.

Mp4Gain is the best normalizer of 2020 and this is clear when using it.

What does it mean to normalize the audio volume

Normalize audio volume is the constant application of a gain to an average peak amplitude audio recording to what might be called a target level. It seems very complicated but it really is very easy to understand.

we are speaking the level of the audio at an average amplitude during the whole recording which will mean that when playing it back it will have a very loud loudness or loudness during the whole song or recording.
This political problem seems really acidic for a challenge for decades, people get to have a file but faces the problem loudness is not what makes reproduction quite uncomfortable.

That is why for many years the algorithms that allow the loudness of the different sound files have been perfected before similar ones, which will allow if one after another song, maybe hundreds of songs have to manipulate the sound knob to raise or lower Increased volume gain.

This is popularly called normalizing earning volume, which has become a real necessity that takes seriously the art of collecting songs on your computer, on your phone or on any audio player.