“Normalized” audio

[Timothy Duncan]

There is a compressor built into Vegas, but WaveHammer is a better one. One each audio track, there is a noise gate, EQ, and Compressor by default.

td

[James_j]

Different topic, but why are those FX still all on by default? Are any of them useful?

[Edward Troxel]

They are added to all audio tracks by default but are also turned “off”. They’re just already there in case you need them. If you don’t like them there by default, you can change that too.

Edward Troxel

[Kevin Mccarthy]

One caveat when using audio comression; the noise floor of hiss and/or rumble will be perceptully increased and become much more noticeable, especially in the quite areas of the track. Too much compression will also cause your audio to “breathe or pump” (this can be helped by making your release time longer than your attack time) which can be very annoying. Comression also reduces your dynamic range. This may make a voice sound bigger but may make a music passage sound very muddy. Compression is like hot sauce… a little bit may make it better, a lot will ruin it for everyone.

[James_j]

No question – you can’t get rid of the background on the _really_ quiet stuff. But if you went to the trouble of mic’ing someone there’s a good chance you want to hear it regardless, and that’s where Wave Hammer comes in. You’re not really compressing; you want it to level out the volume with a volume maximizer. Kind of the opposite of compression.

I’ve never heard the ‘breathe and pump’ from WH, another reason to use it instead of normalizing or compressing.

I *have* heard distortion sometimes when a clip is wave hammered twice.