[LAU] Record levels lower in Alsa than Jack

[John Murphy]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2020 08:42:28 -0700 Paul Davis wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 6:17 AM John Murphy <rosegardener at freeode.co.uk>
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > Normalisation loses nothing, but better utilises the available bit depth.
> >  
> 
> This is a bit misleading. The signal was recorded using whatever range was
> present at the time of recording. Normalisation cannot "improve" anything,
> but it does mean that the peak level is at or very close to 0 dBFS, which
> for many purposes (though definitely not all) is preferable.

You're right, of course. I suppose all it does is move the unused part
of the dynamic range from above the peak level to below the quietest level.

> You would rarely want to normalize to 0dBFS before using an audio recording
> in a mix, for example (except that sometimes you would :)

Exceptions are good. 'Normalize' doesn't sound like something one would
want to do to music, but it's certainly useful to make compilations from
different sources easier to listen to.

-- 
John.