Sort of. In fact, you're gaining up the entire signal, so yes, you're
also bringing up the noise. But it's no different than simply turning
up or down the knob on your stereo, there you are also bringing up
the noise and turning it down. Normalize will not change the dynamic
range at all. So everything becomes louder. This still might be
useful if you have a lower level signal, and you want to apply
filtering and other 'processing'.
But just don't confused normalizing with compressing or limiting,
which DO affect the dynamic range, reducing it. That might be useful
as well in certain cases, but requires a bit more care.
On May 19, 2007, at 2:10 PM, Marc Myers wrote:
> Normalizing brings up the sound floor (the noise in the recording)
> and so increases the "hiss" of the recording. Because digital
> recording clips completely, most recordists tend to be conservative
> and record at -6 to -12 db to give themselves enough headroom.
> Normalize and you end up with loudest sounds at 0 and the noise
> pulled up along with it.
|