[linux-audio-user] Fwd: [Jamin] Re: soft clip: Achieving Gain, inconsequential overloads

[Jan Depner]

On Sun, 2004-04-11 at 22:43, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-04-11 at 19:03, R Parker wrote:
> >  
> > >    My first step, which doesn't effect sound if it's
> > > done right, was to
> > > simply normalize the tracks up a bit. (I told the
> > > normalizer to make the
> > > highest peak -1db)
> > 
> > I've never normalized a track. Can normalization hold
> > a -0.5db peak to -0.5 while it pushes a -12db valley
> > up to -6db?
> 
> No, normalization only scales the data points so that relative amplitude
> is maintained. The WHOLE file is scaled so that -3db becomes -1db, -6db
> becomes -5db, -9db becomes -7db, etc. This does raise the overall volume
> by 2db, but it won't normally get you all that much volume if there are
> a lot of dynamics in the file or else you'll clip those peaks.

That's "peak" normalization.  There is also "RMS" normalization which
doesn't scale everything equally.

Jan