So, I’ve received these 2 CD’s with a concert registration, which i imported into WL7
Today i started with putting in markers on the files (CD Start <> CD End) and track divider markers
I’ve deleted the parts between tracks with long pauzes or presenters speaking and i am now at the point where i need to make fades / cuts and get all tracks to a decent level.
what’s the best way to approach this just select a “track” (space between 2 markers) do what i need to do with the master section and apply for the region? then on to the next track ect etc?
or should i normalize each “track” and apply the same master section for the whole CD?
Also are the track dividers seamless when i burn the CD? (so no skipping on CD players?)
for me this is the first time i am authoring a live registration into a CD, so it’s a bit of a learning curve.
Welcome your thoughts
I assume you are using the Audio window for this? In that case you’d work as suggested I suppose… But the montage is really the way to go for such projects. Each track can be a clip there and have clip effects applied to it for individual treatment. Also you can place certain clips together in one track, giving them the same (track) effects collectively. Then you put the plugins you want for the whole CD in the Master section and render in one go to file or CD. Everything done this way is non-destructive, so your source file remains untouched, and you can easily try different versions by saving to different montage files.
With live CDs I’ve done, I mostly used CD track end and start markers inbetween tracks, by the way. That way, CD players indicate the real duration of the songs, with crowd cheering and artist talk between the end and start markers. Also, when ‘random play’ is selected in a player, these parts are skipped. Obviously you have to select ‘audio in pauses’ on for this. Whichever track marker you use - provided it’s a good burn - there will be no skipping.
ThnX guys, good tips on the markers, might do some rework and leave some of the inbetween talking bits in.
What I’ve done now is basically leave about 6secs of applause being lineair faded for the last 4 secs. which sounds natural enough, then a -2sec countdown for the next track. This gives a nice consistent fluent flow to the whole CD. without sounding to chopped up / snipped
I clearly need to experiement more with the markers an how to manipulate clips when editting.
For now i’ve chosen to normalize each induvidual clip first and have applied my chain on the normalized clips all in one go. (external gear, so everything needed to be run realtime)
Why normalize this at all?
All you’re really doing is adding an extra layer of DSP to no good use, complete with all the errors & quantization distortion this implies.
The levels between the songs are quite different, some are -6dbfs while others are already 0dbfs.
That means that applynig a chain on the whole concert would have either some tracks being overcompressed/limited while others still don’t reach full scale. or have very different dynamic range.
Ofcourse 1 could also just dial and apply my chain for each induvidual clip (20 clips) but since i’ve got an extensive outboard chain that would be a lot more work. as everything needs to be rendered realtime and i need to adapt compressor and outher outboard gear settings for each song. Bringing then all unprocessed clips to the same level before applying my chain then works easier.
I am not sure I fully understand your needs, nevertheless I do believe that it is not peak level of the files you should worry about, instead you should focus on the loudness. Even if you normalize all the files to zero, they might (and very probably will) play back with a different perceived volume and THIS is what you should worry about when combining several clips / songs in order to make an “album”.
Meta Normalizer is a good start.
the normalizing was purely to get all files to the same peak value, so applying the same mastering chain to all give would give more consistent results than without normalizing.
what is the function of “meta” normalizing compared to the other 2 options?