Normalizing track volumes in ST4

MickJames

Forgive me if this has been discussed. I see previous mentions of normalization in ST4, but I simply cannot figure out where the setting is located. I have (I think) gone through every setting and cannot find it. Can someone help please? Thank you.

Riff

There's a normalize setting here: Song detail, audio tab, and click on the track. You should see "Normalize Loudness" there.

I'm not sure how useful this is if you're using multitracks.

MickJames

Riff AHA! "...and click on the track" is what I was missing. Thank you mate.

I have tried it on 10 or so songs, and afterward the signal is pretty hot on the VU meter for the track (red blinking intermittently) but it seems to sound good, so I guess it's working. It's added up to 5 dB on some songs, only a couple has it reduced a tiny bit.

Damir

Riff I'm not sure how useful this is if you're using multitracks.

Same here, I just discovered this as I was setting up my new iPad Air, I decided to reset all EQ and volume settings to zero and start from scratch as I noticed the normalising tool , so I started to use it towards the end of my song list it seems to simply adjust the song level fader on some songs , I don’t know how it analyses the songs and what it does to them , perhaps Peter might be able to explain, I do the normalising in the DAW so I’m not sure how this works.

TimRyland

Also, didn’t know this existed. Had a look and I can see it’s set to 0db. Is it set on by default? I’ve been through one of my small playlists setting the song volumes to try to get them sounding equal, would I benefit from going through and adjusting the normalization to these values?

peter

Normalizing is never run automatically. You always need to trigger it manually. In short it will analyze the average RMS volume in the song and adjust the track volume to keep an overall unified RMS volume for all songs. If you see the track afterwards running into the red it means that it has a low RMS volume with loud peaks. That's an edge case the app can't handle. It is not possible to boost such a track to the unified volume without running into a too hot signal. The only solution would be to make the target volume configurable and lower it in that case.

TimRyland

peter , how do you trigger it?

Damir

peter Normalizing is never run automatically. You always need to trigger it manually. In short it will analyze the average RMS volume in the song and adjust the track volume to keep an overall unified RMS volume for all songs. If you see the track afterwards running into the red it means that it has a low RMS volume with loud peaks. That's an edge case the app can't handle. It is not possible to boost such a track to the unified volume without running into a too hot signal. The only solution would be to make the target volume configurable and lower it in that case.

So who is this function aimed at? I normalise all my stereo songs in the DAW, but they do sound different levels depending on the song dynamics and content, does this process try and make these songs sound the same levels to the listeners?

Damir

peter Normalizing is never run automatically. You always need to trigger it manually

Thanks for the explanation, all good!

peter

Song Details > Audio Tab > Select a track > Normalize Loudness.

AnthonyB

Damir So who is this function aimed at?

I was always of the assumption it is more targeted at folks (solo/duo type musicians) who download complete stereo backing tracks from various sources (and/or make their own) and want all audio output to be at a similar loudness.

TimRyland

AnthonyB , exactly. I just busk using downloaded backing tracks. I really don’t want to spend hours in front of a DAW sorting volumes out.

peter

Exactly, it is a simplified version of the Replay Gain algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain). It does not normalize in the classical sense but tries to normalize the perceived loudness.

That obviously only makes sense for full stereo mixes and therefore it is never applied automatically.

John

To be honest, normalizing by loudness has never given me a satisfactory result. Intense dance tracks tend to be too quiet, while gentle ballads are too loud - mathematical loudness doesn't take into account the character or emotion of the song.

Damir

John To be honest, normalizing by loudness has never given me a satisfactory result. Intense dance tracks tend to be too quiet, while gentle ballads are too loud - mathematical loudness doesn't take into account the character or emotion of the song.

That’s why i have my little mixer with a big knob near me.

ElishaJSchlaegel

I was really hoping that this would work for us. But from what I can tell all it does is make every track louder that I use it on, when I need them to get quieter. I want to assume that this is made to be used more with the headphone jack out into mixing consoles.

In our case, we go out of our Mac over USB to our PreSonus board, which unfortunately has no digital trim feature. So, I pretty much have to set each track from either -6 db to -15 db to not clip our channels on the board.

Over USB, if the app is in the red, then our board is in the red.

peter

Volume normalisation only works on full stereo backing tracks, not on multitrack files.