Audio Normalization, understand what it is about


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Audio Normalization, understand what it is about

Difference between Peak level and RMS in Audio

Something that is mentioned a lot, for example when audio recordings are produced, is about the so-called Peak Level and RMS, Peak and RMS (Root Mean Square), which are detected by meters (software, or hardware) But… What are they exactly these values?

Tube Compressor-Limiter

It is important that someone who does not record audio but simply listens to understands these differences.
This will make you a true expert, even if you are just someone who has a good collection of music, but knows how to distinguish who is normalizing and understands the subject.

DIFFERENCES

The Peak value will inform us of all those maximum values ​​that occur in our music in real time. To understand us … If we have, for example, a recorded song where a drummer emphasizes playing the tarola or a cymbal, we will see that our peak meter will show a higher value for a moment, because it is the one that is sounding louder in that instant. This meter will work with fast attack times, to be able to immediately measure these peaks and maybe use a limiter to avoid them.

What is RMS?

The RMS value, however, will mark the average value of the loudness or volume of our music … how does that do it? , for this it will use attack times, much longer longer. To be clearer … This value will give a reference of the energy level or volume (how high or low is the volume that is playing) but will not be affected by the peaks.

When we say that it has a slower attack value, this means that it does not measure variations so quickly, but rather that it is “slow” to react and therefore shows us something that could be an “average” volume level.

In any case, the suitable normalizer must be a mixture of limiter (that device that prevents the music from distorting because it has exceeded the maximum possible level) and a compressor, which is the one that prevents the peaks from exceeding a level and also prevents them from Volume drops drop more than a preset value.

In this way the music always remains within a medium range, without exceeding a limit neither up nor down.

Professionally recorded or broadcast music is always limited and compressed to keep it playing its best within a suitable range.

The only software that does exactly this is the Mp4Gain. That is why it has been accepted not only by amateurs, but by professionals.


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Digital audio normalization

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.