Normalizing in general and with vinyl records.

I want to get my mp3s to be as loud as my store bought cds and mp3s. I'm doing both audio for cartoons and turning my vinyl records into mp3. I don't like the volume change when I go from a store bought mp3 to my vinyl mp3s. In the past I've noticed that if I normalize something too loud The music gets squashed in the wrong way and I lose some sound. Anything else anyone can think of about doing vinyl would be cool too. I'm running X1 Studio on a Win7 64bit 8G Ram, Steinberg CI1, Technics sl-230...
 
Thank You

OK. Compress before I normalize. So, I control the squash.

Compressing is a sub set of normalizing.

You can do it all at once if you want... use the make up gain function built into the compressor.




Many people only speak of normalizing TO some targeted level... which is a very specific subset of normalizing processes.

The term normalize was traditionally used to describe any change in levels... until Sound Forge coined the term for the specific use where an adjustment is made to set the peaks to some target level.


all the best,
mike

I mostly agree with these guys. If you must get hotter levels I would record the albums at 24/96 and use a limiter like the Waves L1 Ultramaximizer.
FWIW: I found it more convenient and a huge time saver just to buy the mp3's or listen to my album cuts on Grooveshark if I'm not near my turntable.

Thanks, I'll use these bitrates. This info is for my other projects as well. Eventually uploding to youtube, where things don't have to be cd loud anyway.

Slowly working on buying the mp3s. Still have a couple vinyl not available on other media. A couple vinyl I don't need to buy on mp3 if I have a clean copy. Came to the same conclusion with the vhs, especially with netflix.

First,  Normalizing and Compressing are two different things unless the definitions have changed since I was in school...

Get a program like SoundForge, Wavelab, etc. and normalize the tracks.  DO NOT COMPRESS them unless you want them to sound like the crap on the radio today.  If you are patient enough you can use a compressor to normalize them, but I'd just let the software do it unless you want to constantly watch the gain reduction. There should be none.  If you "squash" your vinyl, then you are ruining its beautiful, natural sonic structure.  Compression is the main cause why music today sucks.

Each component in the turntable chain is very important of course and it starts with the pickup cartridge and then tone arm and RIAA pre amp etc. But if you are lucky enough to get all these things at a high quality level then you will get very good results.

One of things that I have always found when transferring vinyl to digital is that once you find the loudest point on the record the music will never or rarely go above that so you can actually record at quite a high level (eg hitting -2 db or so) and be confident it won't clip as well. They maintained very strict levels on records because of the possibility of the stylus jumping out or grooves interfering with adjacent grooves etc..

Then level wise you don't really need to do anything much more than that other than doing what Lanceindastudio has suggested and that might be a few fixes here and there.

Dont forget this too if you have got some very bad records noise wise etc..

http://recordrevirginizer.com/

This is an amazing Australian invention and it does a fantastic job of cleaning up very bad records. Basically you paint it on the night before and overnight it dries into a rubber like film and then in the morning you peel it off and all the dust and stuff in the groove comes out. Better to pull the dust out rather than digitally trying to remove it although there are some great software that can do wonders with this sort of thing.