[Arny Krueger]

"jtougas" wrote in message

Hi folks -

In my pursuit of improving my recordings, I've taken a
few of my mixes to a friend of mine, to see what he
thinks, and I mentioned I'd normalized one or two of the
channels in the tracks since they were a little quieter
than the others.

He looked at me with a fairly shocked expression and said
"Oh, man, you should never normalize!"

I shrugged and said "Okay" (I was after, going to him for
advice). But I should have asked him why not.

So I'm asking y'all: why not?

The problem with normalizing is that it is simplistic, arithmetical (not
even mathematical!) and arbitrary, while music is about managing complex
relationships in a subjective way. Normalizing takes one simplistic
characteristic of music, its peak level, and uses it as the one and only
iron rule for setting levels.

If the last thing you do to your music before distribution is to normalize
it, you've probably ruined it. You've certainly removed a lot of art and
subjectivity.