Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

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PaulDavisThe1st

> Compressing your track to hell in an effort to get it to sound louder doesn't work anymore because every streaming service will just normalize it anyway.

This is a bit of confused remark. "Normalization" means applying some constant gain factor to the signal so that the loudest level is 0dBFS. Compression applies a varying gain factor to the signal to meet some parameters. Normalizing audio will generally make it louder (unless the loudest level is already at 0dBFS), but it does not change the dynamic range of the signal. The "loudness wars" were all about using compression, and this does change the dynamic range of the signal (you end up with less difference between the quietest and loudest parts of the signal - hence the term compression).

You can still "sound louder" by using compression, even if the peak volume is still 0dBFS.

Modern volume normalization isn't done based on the highest peak of the track. Instead they normalize based on the average perceived loudness of the whole track (to a level below 0 so there is headroom for peaks). It's intentionally designed to avoid the exact issue you describe.

If this was not done users of streaming services would have to be constantly adjusting the volume to deal with perceived volume differences between tracks due to different levels of dynamic range compression.

I don't have to change the volume between shows. But for a while, every action show required I down volume the noisy bits and up volume the talking bits.

I understand dynamic range is a thing and people with reasonable stereos and a place to use them should enjoy. But in an apartment with a sleeping toddler I simply want to hear it without waking my kid.

I now run: Windows Loudness Equalisation, Clear Voice on the sound bar, every show is subtitles on.

Sure, peak-to-N-dBFS is not what the streaming services do. But what they do is not normalization.

I'm the author of a DAW that allows normalization, compression and loudness control. The first one is more different from the last two than they are from each other.

>"Normalization" means applying some constant gain factor to the signal so that the loudest level is 0dBFS.

Not necessarily, although that has been perhaps the most common use of that term so far. But you can normalize to a lower peak level or to something else... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_normalization

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