Normalize or Noise Reduction First?

[Ty Ford]

Hello Corbin and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

It sort of depends on what you’re after. If you like the way things are sounding, fine.

Do you need noise reduction? What sort of noise?

Are you recording too low thereby incurring system noise that you then need to get rid of?

How far below zero is the loudest peak of your un normalized, un compressed audio?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow AUdio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Corbin Gross]

So this particular video was recorded pretty low. I was using a H4N for the first time and must have forgotten to push some button because my peaks are at about -15. The audio sounds real good though except for HVAC noise. There is no system noise, artifacting, or hum. Well, maybe a tiny bit of system noise. The HVAC is really what I’m working on though.

But I was just wondering in general too though. Is it better to clean it up then raise the volume or the other way around? Generally speaking, of course.

And I guess I pretty much always use a little noise reduction as a matter of course, unless I’ve recorded some VO in an extremely controlled environment. Most of what I do is in an office building and I have limited control over HVAC. And sometimes it’s just too hot to turn it off after I’ve lit the poor person on camera.

Corbin Gross | SANMAR
Photographer/Videographer | Marketing
22833 SE Black Nugget Road | Issaquah, WA 98029
206.727.5501 x5237
http://www.sanmar.com

[Ty Ford]

Corbin,

-15 peaks with HVAC could call for normalization and NR. I’d probably normalize to -6dB if there was music and nat sound that would also be added then do NR .

Regards,

Ty Ford

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Corbin Gross]

And just ’cause I’m still learning, do I normalize first, then “hard limit” to -6…? Or am I normalizing to -6?

I wish there was a hard limiter dialog that worked like the curves adjustment layer in photoshop. Where you could grab the middle of a line on a graph and just drag it up until the wave form looked about right. That would be awesome.

Corbin Gross | SANMAR
Photographer/Videographer | Marketing
22833 SE Black Nugget Road | Issaquah, WA 98029
206.727.5501 x5237
http://www.sanmar.com

[Ty Ford]

We are all learning on every job, hopefully.

I’d normalize peaks to -6dB.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Eddie Justo]

I normalise first before doing noise reduction

Benefits and advantages of corporate video production

[Dali Sternisa]

Well. normalize is actually a quite dump process and can mislead you. What is does it simple find loudest peak and match it to desired dB value. That means if there’s one loud spike inside all other material will be quieter because of it. Normalize can save some time, but you have to use it with great care and manually inspect it afterwards.

Regarding what comes first. Depends what Noise Reduction you use. The ones you tell them what the noise it. (Ozone RX or other Denoisers) works best is there’s constant noise. If you split track and normalize sentence by sentence also noise volume will be different. I would say do noise reduction first and then anything else.

Multi-band compressors are great as long you exactly know what you’re doing, but that’s a tool for audio engineers anyway.

Br,
Dali

———-
dBStudio – Post production studio in Slovenia.
Broadcast services incl. Voice Over, Overdub, ADR, IVR, ISDN and Skype remote workflow, Re-Recording, Sound Supervision, Sound Design & Editorial, Game Audio, Audio Restoration, DVD Audio Mastering, TV and Radio commercial recordings, Corporate presentations. Slovenian and international voice talent bank.
https://www.dbstudio.si | https://www.post-production-slovenia.si | https://www.voiceover-slovenia.si | https://www.overdub-slovenia.si | https://www.dbrecordings.com