The Logic Off Topic list

Sorry to tell you Sascha: wrong, see my other post. if you don't believe me
check out Ken C Pohlmann, Principles of Digital Audio. You might not hear
the mistake, but it comes up & you will see it when you analyse it. More
steps & you will start to hear the mistake (I speak about A LOT MORE
PROCESSES).  It becomes eventually audible in Fade outs or low volume
passages.

OK. Imagine this: you have a 3 bit soundfile, which gives you 8 steps. The
volume of your sine tone is "7". You reduce the volume by -6 dB (normalizing
does nothing else than changing volume), though half as loud. 7/2 = 3.5, but
how will it be showed, as 3.5 does not exist? It is either 3 or 4 in the
digital domain & voila our rounding error & quantization noise. Well with 16
bit & 24 bit, the resulting noise is of course of much lower volume, because
the steps are far smaller. Of course you are also working with a complex
wavefile & the result will be different for every cycle & at very low
volume, but believe me, it has a reason why Mastering Engineers do not
normalize!
Sorry, I don't have time to get more into this, but If anybody has a
question, they are welcome to contact me privately (i have to unsubscribe
for a while, I am too busy).
Hope this helps (although my explanation might be a bit confusing, in the
morning my english is not that great :-))
Gilles

Gilles Ruppert
gilles@...
www.latower.com
ICQ: 113166277


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sascha Franck [mailto:saschafranck@...]
> Sent: 16 November 2001 06:41
> To: logic-ot@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [L-OT] normalize before mastering or not
>
>
> <texture444@...> wrote:
> > maybe i'm wrong, but i thought that was only true in cases wherein
> dithering
> > and/or noise-shaping processes were repeatedly applied.
> > ?
>
> You're completely right.
> Normalizing doesn't harm the sound quality in the slightest way (well, it
> brings your peaks up to 0dB and that might harm your ears when they were
> at -30 or wherever before, but that's got nothing to do with the sound
> quality per se...).
>
> Everybody can do a test by themselves (can be done completely
> inside Logic):
> - Take a loop or whatever soundfile. Peaks should be pretty much
> below 0dB.
> If not, reduce the level, let's say to -5dB.
> - Copy the file and phase invert it.
> - Play them against each other.
> => Until now the playback result should be (digital) silence.
>
> - Take the inverted file and add 3dB (normalizing doesn't do anything else
> but adding some level).
> - Reduce the level by 3dB.
> - Add 3dB.
> - Reduce...
> - Add...
> - Do that as often as you like, just make sure to finish with reducing so
> you have the same level as in the beginning.
> - Play the files against each other.
> => Still silence!
>
> This is the defenite mathematical prove that normalizing doesn't
> alter your
> sound quality at all (unless your normalization algorhythm is a bad/wrong
> one).
>
> However, some people allways only normalize after any mastering
> was applied.
> It seems to me that some people even tend to finish their mixes a
> bit lower
> than 0dB to keep a bit of headroom for mastering (some mastering effects
> apparently might sound different).
> I'm the last one to tell if this is a good or bad idea (I'm allways trying
> to bounce down my final mixes as hot as possible to keep the maximum
> resolution, but that's just because I don't have a clue), but in
> the end it
> defenitely shouldn't matter at which stage you normalize (proper mastering
> effects should have some input control in case they need some headroom to
> work properly).
> Maybe someone with a bit more of mastering experience could jump
> in and give
> an explanation, sound quality reduction while normalizing defenitely isn't
> it.
>
> Regards,
> Sascha