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Participant
June 11, 2024

Normalize Isn't Doing Anything

  • June 11, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 558 views

I record audio narration for YouTube videos, and over the last few years I've developed a standard sound setup to make all the videos sound the same, including the steps of my editing process. The order of processes is;

1. Capture Noise Print

2. Noise Reduction, 50%

3. Normalize

4. Dynamics Processor, Vocal Limiter

5. Single Band Compressor, 4:1 Ratio

6. Hard Limiter, -12DB

 

After that I cut the audio in Premiere. But over the last couple months I've noticed that step 3, Normalize, isn't doing anything to the audio anymore. Steps 1 and 2 would clean the audio up, normalize would raise the volume, and then steps 3-6 would lower it in a clean way. But this process has been thrown into chaos since Normalize stopped doing what it normally did, and just raising base DB while recording, or just raising the DB in post doesn't work the same. 

But here's the weird thing. When I highlight the entire waveform, Normalize does nothing. But when I highlight a smaller portion of it (just a minute or two) it has the desired effect. Why is this? What has changed in Audition to not make it work like it used to? 

1 reply

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 11, 2024

Nothing's changed - at least not on the PC version. It works exactly the way it always has. But it only takes a single peak that's already at whatever level you've set Normalize to work at to prevent it appearing to work.

 

If Normalize wasn't working correctly, I would have expected the entire world to have reported it by now. They don't appear to have...