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Razgo
04-09-2002, 08:05 AM
Normalizing a bunch of audio files is done to make them all sound the same volume, imagine if you have just made up a CD and for each song you have to adjust the volume either higher or lower to get the right effect, not good.

It works by searching the audio file for the maximum sound level and if this is less than 86% of maximum allowed, it is increased to 86%. That is all the normalizer does, it will not reduce the volume of a louder file.

Obviously there is a slight flaw in this, for if the audio file has a loud section, or a 'pop' (a click of unwanted sound) the standard normalizer will not do anything to the file. To fix this the Power Pack has more advanced normalizing options, something called Adaptive Normalization, this will smartly increase the volume based on small rolling sections. The Power Pack can also be used to set the desired final volume percentage.

For normalize to work correctly a compressed file, such as Mp3 is firstly uncompressed, normalize is acted on, then the file is re-compressed. Uncompressing and recompressing an audio file can lead to slight audio degradation.

Spoon
01-31-2007, 04:36 AM
A different type of Normalizing uses ReplayGain, ReplyGain is non destructive the normalizing values are written to tag values, it is then upto a player to use those values and adjust the volume.