Why You Should Usually Avoid Normalizing!

by Oracle Blog
Why You Should Usually Avoid Normalizing!

Why You Should Usually Avoid Normalizing!

A common question many engineers & producers have is whether they should normalize or not upon exporting?

The short answer is no.

We suggest avoiding normalizing because you lose all your headroom when you do this.

What normalizing is doing is taking the highest peak of your audio file & raising it to 0dB. It is also increasing everything else by the same amount.

It does make the track louder; however, it can bring issues.

One big issue it can bring is if you are sending a stereo mix to a mastering engineer, normalizing it will take away all the headroom. Mastering engineers need headroom to work.

Another issue is if you are sending track outs to your mix engineer. If you choose to normalize, each track's highest peak will be brought to 0dB & they will not have any headroom on any tracks. They can turn it down on their end, but it is just creating unnecessary work for everyone & it affects the quality too!

This brings us to our last reason to avoid normalizing your tracks. Often, raising your highest peak to 0dB with normalizing can cause quality issues such as clipping, crackling, distortion, & unwanted artifacts. Usually, tracks that have been normalized sound bad.

If you are looking to raise your track's overall loudness, we suggest using a limiter instead!

One reason why you may normalize though is if you need to raise the overall gain of a particular sample or stem. Especially when you are inside a sampler or drum machine, there are usually better ways to go about it. 

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Realistic Production - Engineer

Realistic is a Music Producer and Engineer located in the Twin Cities. He has been producing music for Hip-Hop & Pop music since 2004. In 2017 he graduated with an AAS in Music Production & Engineering. Real is the chief mixing engineer for SoundOracle.net where he mixes all loops & sounds found on the site & also provides mixing & mastering services on the site to artists & producers.

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Gone will be the days of your vocal mixes being cursed by muddiness, clipping, & lack of clarity.

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- Everything you need to know to mix your vocals professionally
- A bonus sound kit made by SoundOracle himself!

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