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Audio low after export
Hi all, I have a question. I am working on an Avid Adrenaline Media Composer, I work at a Production company, sometimes I have to make audio files which are played on the radio.
When I export audio from my Avid as a WAV, I hear back from the webcast people that the levels are low. I know I have excellent levels for broadcast, but somehow when they import the file I make into their system it is low.I level out at -20 to -14. I am following their guidelines and outputting at 44, Mono, 16 bit
I work is 48, Stereo- could that be the problem?
Any ideas
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1 Reply
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Cybele, I noticed this about the Avid when I first began using it too. This differs from other NLEs I’ve used. I’m not an audio engineer but I think it’s basically to do with the fact that Avid’s “0” reference is (typically) -20 on the digital scale. With digital audio, your output can be clean (undistorted) right up to the “0” level. If you’ve ever ripped a CD track into an audio program that displays waveforms you know what I mean. For years it was common practice for analog audio guys to push the signal to that point. This used the headroom of the recording medium and minimized “tape hiss”. Zero in the analog world was pretty well understood and duplicatable. Zero in the digital world is less agreed upon, hence the confusion over playback levels. It even plagues the broadcast world.
Basically, for audio playback or multimedia (web files, WMVs, movs, etc.), you’ll need to increase the level until you’re approaching the 0 on the digital (left side) audio scale in the Avid. I suggest duplicating your sequence and working from the copy. You can try a combination of compression (to tame peaks and bring up overall level) and normalize (to boost loudness). Or, you can export a wav or aiff like I often do and sweeten audio in a third-party program like Audition or Sonar. Sorry to ramble on, hope this helps and maybe someone else can polish up my layman’s explanation 🙂
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