There is a serious reason not to normalize. Once a track is normalized, you can no longer destructive apply effects to it without almost certainly clipping the track permanently. Why - because there is not even one bit of headroom left in the track.

As long as effects aren't applied destructive or bounced, its not a problem, but.... the recommended workaround for the Sonar envelope problem requires destructively applying effects.

Bottom line, normalize is a bad idea, unless you are creating Homer Simpson sounds to replace your Windows default sounds.

Eric

Personally, I would have ketp Sonar and other 'apps' on the C: drive, and use the new (hopefully big) hard drive for all your projects, audio, etc.

Also, you'll want to create a folder on your main drive called something like VSTPLUGINS and put all your vst stuff there. That way you only have to "point" the VST adapter to one folder and it will scan anything in that folder plus subfolders below it.

ORIGINAL: IamUncleMikey

I am thankful for everyone's advice. I have learned a ton just in the last 24 hours. I did finally put the file in the correct place. Since I have been doing a lot of 24 bit recording, It was using tons of my hard drive space. So I bought another hard drive as a dedicated "music" drive. I uninstalled Sonar from the "C" drive and reinstalled it to my "G" drive.
But for some reason, (probably a windows reason) sonar defaulted my VST Adapter to the "C" drive instead of my new "G" drive. After thinking that through, I put the file in the C drive VST folder and whola! Thanks to everyone for this discussion group!

That's funny Eric

Bottom line, normalize is a bad idea, unless you are creating Homer Simpson sounds to replace your Windows default sounds.

Eric

There is a serious reason not to normalize. Once a track is normalized, you can no longer destructive apply effects to it without almost certainly clipping the track permanently. Why - because there is not even one bit of headroom left in the track.

In Sonar, you can't choose what to normalize to. Some other apps allow it. Also in Sonar, normalizing is always a destructive edit, which makes normalizing in Sonar, usually a bad idea. That said, I wouldn't say that one should never normalize anything.

creating Homer Simpson sounds to replace your Windows default sounds

lol , funny

but.... the recommended workaround for the Sonar envelope problem requires destructively applying effects.

funny too ... or is it ?

ORIGINAL: daverich

Forget about normalize,- if you need to normalize then you need to re-record your audio and check your levels better.

Of course, if you've managed to record Michael jaskon in the next room confessing then you can use a compressor and a gate/noise reduction software or an expander.

Kind regards

Dave Rich.

Normalizing is good when you import an audio file that was recorded with low levels, or too wide of a dynamic range for a comp/limit to be used. If you know what you're doing, normalizing is a very handy tool--although I never use it on an entire mix.

IMO--

Stephen

Best advice I have ever been given on this forum:

Duplicate and archive anything before destructive editing. Always...more than a feminine product...it's good advice.

I have not got into plugin yet. Is plugin a general term?
Is anything that can be applied to a wave form is called a plugin?
are Chorus/Reverb/Delay plugins? Thanks.

Can anyone explain to me what is dynamic range? is it a distance from the lowest point to the highest point of a wave form?

I could not see a track that is a mix of all other tracks in SONAR. Does mixing simply add all tracks together applying nondestructive FX? If this is the case, the mix must come to distortion(above 0db) ?

Thanks

I tend to try stay away from normalizing and agree that if you really need to do it you might have needed to record the track a little hotter in the first place. But I am very glad it is in the process->audio menu because I DO use it! If your files are 24bit you aren't losing too much... it's just another way to increase volume. If your files are 16 bit you are losing accurate bitdepth resolution.

cAPS

A plugin is basically an addon, application that can be loaded into a host such as Sonar and perform various functions - which can be almost anything: FX (delays, echos, whatever) of SoftSynths, and so on.
Sonar comes wth a bunch of plugins already. There are DXi and VSTi plugins (different formats) that Sonar can host.


Dynamic range is basically the range of level over the entire audio spectrum. FOr example, in a typical classical music piece, there will be a wide/large dynamic range - meaning there will be many low level (softer) moments and many high level (louder) moments. In a lot of 'commercial' music, there has been a tendency to keep the dynamic range limited - meaning it sounds as if every moment is as loud as it can be. In other words a small dynamic range. A wide dymanic range will have low and high peaks. This is not a technical explanation, but I hope you get the concept.

Mixing is basically when you put all the separate elements in a project together to form a stereo (or other type) of 'final' composite - including any FX or other processing (EQ, compression, and so forth). For example, if you want to create an MP3 of your project, you would mix down to a stereo track and then export that to an MP3 format using either the Sonar mp3 encoder or some 3rd party one.

As for levels, of course one should be careful not to go above 0dB to avoid clipping (though some people DO!), but getting good level isn't just a matter of getting tracks and mixes close to / near to "0" ... some digital sounds don't need to be that 'hot'. Analog sounds should be recorded at 'good' levels (and that is subjective, frankly).

My approach is to record tracks at levels which do not introduce noise (usually because they are too low), but not such hot levels that the recording gets "saturated". Though sometimes that "saturated" quality is a sound of its own (grin). It's tricky stuff and takes some experience, skill, and good ears. But there are some basic guidelines most people follow. Use your ears, though - that's usually the best approach.

HOpe that helps a bit ... this is just my understanding of it all based on my own experience. There are others around here that can offer much better and more technical explanations, though, I'm sure.

ORIGINAL: dave_music

I have not got into plugin yet. Is plugin a general term?
Is anything that can be applied to a wave form is called a plugin?
are Chorus/Reverb/Delay plugins? Thanks.

Can anyone explain to me what is dynamic range? is it a distance from the lowest point to the highest point of a wave form?

I could not see a track that is a mix of all other tracks in SONAR. Does mixing simply add all tracks together applying nondestructive FX? If this is the case, the mix must come to distortion(above 0db) ?

Thanks