Volume Normalization

[boleary]

Sorry for being slow, but I'm not sure I get what Volume Normalization is supposed to do. I'm using 9z-4-1. If I set a loud song from a particularly loud album in a playlist of songs as the reference "album" are all the songs in the playlist "equalized" or, in other words, will all the songs in the list play at the same volume??? This of course would be great, but I cannot get it to work. If I pick an album from the loudest song in the playlist and hit set I get a message that it has been set. I then tick "use per track" expecting to have all the songs in the playlist play at the same level but they don't. What am I missing here???

[PeterSt]

Well, that they do ? haha

So that's my guess ... that they just do, but you are fooled by looking at the received volume in -dBFS. This *changes* per track because of this, so the net output will be the same(ish).

Similarly it goes per album. When the Normalized Volume is used, each album will receive a different attenuation, because the one is louder than the other.

Also don't be fooled by just listening and not agreeing with the attenuation, because it's all an average. Mathematically it should be correct though.

Btw, it is sufficient to click 3 times on a track to check it. Then in the right -dBFS (digital) window the net volume shows up. That is, if the album (or track) has been subject to Normalization, which means that it must have played at least once (well, must have been Normalized, which happens right before playing).

Never use Per Track on the tracks of one album. Or maybe better said : only use it on mixed tracks from mixed albums, because then it is allowed to have the tracks really as loud relatievely amongst them. When you apply Per Track to a whole album, the created relative difference (by the recording engineer) will be molested. The softer the lady sings because she needs that on a track, the louder it will be and the emotion is torn out (I hope I'm clear ?).

For those coincidentally reading this and want to try : in 0.9z-5 this is broken (unless you could use a (set) Reference album from an earlier version). Maybe today a fix will be put up.

Peter