You will see red warnings in the meters if the sound hit the 0dBįor beginners, this could be the end of the story, as normalizing is only a matter of several clicks in audio editing software. A step further, let's say you have both voiceovers, intros & outros in the sound design, you can normalize voiceovers to -3db, and background music (intros & outros) to another level below -3dB.With normalizing tool, now you can set the volume level of each clip to an identical value, -3dB for instance. It could be very disturbing for the audience when the sound suddenly goes up or down. When you merge several audio files into one, you might find each of them was recorded in different loudness.You can boost the volume to a target value, as long as it sounds louder, while at the same time not exceeding 0dB, thus avoid audio clipping. It is not necessarily a change to the maximum though.Normalizing help you to increase its volume proportionally right up to 0dB (-6dB to -3dB is recommended), resulting in a louder sound without changing the dynamic range of the original file. This is the most common case when you have a single audio clip.Boost volume to the maximum without clipping: Why you need to normalize audio? What does this function do? There are 2 main situations when you want to normalize: 1. If normalization is the last step, you can set it to 0dB, though -3dB to -6dB is recommended. Rules of thumb: Audio levels must not exceed 0dB before exporting. dBFS is usually written as dB, as in 0bB, -3dB, -10 dB, etc. If anything tends to go above the ceiling, it will be chopped off, resulting in audio distortion or clipping. Full Scale = 0dB, and you can consider it as the ceiling of your room.

An audio signal is measured in decibels.ĭBFS: Decibles relative to Full Scale. Here is a screenshot of sound waves before normalizing:Ībbreviations you will meet in this post:ĭB: short for decibels. Most audio editing software come baked with audio normalizing tools, with which you can adjust the volume to a standard level, ensuring that the loudest part won't hit through the ceiling. Now the ceiling is 0dB, below you have -1dB, -2dB, etc. In digital audio, however, things are measured from ceiling down. We measure things in real life from ground up, like how tall you are or how many floors there are in a building. Audio normalization can boost your audio to a target level by altering the amplitude of the overall recording by the same amount, while at the same time ensuring that the peak won't exceed 0dB to avoid clipping and distortion.

What is spotify audio normalization