Noob-friendly "Bring all notes to the same volume" question?

[Leander]

Hello!

Another question from me: Is there a noob-friendly solution to bring all notes to the same volume or a similar one? Here's a flute recording. I am a beginner and some notes are more quiet than others. Using a channel envelope with gain and drawing everything manually takes time...normally, you use compressors etc., but I don't understand the technical side well. I only get very loud parts or distortion or nothing happens at all.

Is there a noob friendly solution to my problem? Every note should be about the same volume. Especially the second part has very low ones.

[57Gregy]

Use Normalize to kill natural dynamics.

[Leander]

But then the whole clip will be louder, everything and not juse the low-volume samples?

[57Gregy]

Normalize raises all the levels to approximately equal volumes as set by you.
You may also split your quiet parts from the rest of the clip and apply Clip Gain until they're the same level as the rest of the track.

[Chaps]

2 hours ago, Leander said:

Hello!

Another question from me: Is there a noob-friendly solution to bring all notes to the same volume or a similar one? Here's a flute recording. I am a beginner and some notes are more quiet than others. Using a channel envelope with gain and drawing everything manually takes time...normally, you use compressors etc., but I don't understand the technical side well. I only get very loud parts or distortion or nothing happens at all.

Is there a noob friendly solution to my problem? Every note should be about the same volume. Especially the second part has very low ones.
 

Splitting clips and using normalize is how I usually level-out my audio but splitting a clip can be produce annoying clicks it you don't make sure the audio is at zero where you split it. Cakewalk has a tool called Enable/Disable Automatic Crossfades which can keep that from happening. See image below on the options it has. I keep it enabled unless I have a reason to disable it.

Really, though, it would be in your best interest to learn the basics of compression because it can be very useful in the situation you describe. There are many informative videos on YouTube about it. Here is a good place to start because it covers the basics of compression. Splitting clips and adjusting the volumes through gain or normalization is a blunt-force process and can be time consuming. I think it is best to know how to use both methods so you can use the one that works best for any given situation.

https://youtu.be/B20p-G-SBLw?si=PplJ3Y8lY43zFcwP

 

[Amberwolf]

 Normalizing something only raises the clip's highest peak to the normalized level.   If you have many notes of different volumes within a single clip, it will not bring up the lower ones to the same level as the higher ones.   You'd have to split all the notes into separate clips first, then normalize each one. 

 

To do this without splitting into separate clips per note, you need to use a compressor or compander (compressor/expander).   One "easy" way to do it with these is if you have the old VX-64 that used to come with Sonar (maybe still does?) it has a number of good squashing presets you can modify to do what you want. 

 

 

[Amberwolf]

Just now, Chaps said:

splitting a clip can be produce annoying clicks it you don't make sure the audio is at zero where you split it.

If you are using mono clips, just use the snap function with only the landmark of audio zero crossings enabled, so your cuts or slipedits all end up on one.   

 

If your'e using stereo clips that rarely works out. 

[sjoens]

If you have Boost 11 it shows graphically what's happening to the sound.

[Amberwolf]

1 hour ago, sjoens said:

If you have Boost 11 it shows graphically what's happening to the sound.

 

True...

if you don't have a compressor, limiter, compander, etc.,  that has that function, then if you put it in a bus and route your track to the bus, you can turn on waveform preview for that bus and also see the results.  

 

 

[Bristol_Jonesey]

Use a combination of 2 of the methods suggested above

1. Use volume automation to roughly even out the levels. Yes it's time consuming, but so what?
2. Use a compressor to even the levels out even more.

If you use the inbuilt Sonitus compressor (It might show up as Core compressor, depending on the version you're running) this will show you graphically what's happening.

I would suggest a slow attack to retain the transients (a flute doesn't have a pronounced attack)

Set a fairly soft knee

Use a ratio of about 3:1, but you can experiment with this

Set the threshold so that you're getting 2-3dB of gain reduction

Use the makeup gain to restore the vevrall level

Edited 13 minutes ago by Bristol_Jonesey