Should you NORMALIZE in the MPC standalone? Clip, Limit, Compress or Maximize for LOUDNESS?

[@saulgood2548]

If nobody has not told you these tutorials are priceless and go in depth about what mpc is capable of doing. Respect!

[@TheCratesMotel]

Thanks mate, I appreciate that.

[@BigMuff520]

These are continually the best MPC tutorial videos on KZbin.

[@TheCratesMotel]

Thanks mate

[@ceetronic]

Another banging educational video. Thanks Conan!

[@TheCratesMotel]

My pleasure mate.

[@saintvoleur]

Perfect timing sir

[@TheCratesMotel]

Timing is my forte lol

[@shaun2977]

Another excellent video, thanks Conan!

[@TheCratesMotel]

You’re welcome mate.

[@beatsandsamples]

We were literally chatting about this the other day. Thank you.

[@TheCratesMotel]

Happy to help as always mate

[@lleevveell66]

Man, thank you again! I *thought* I understood them all, but you are absolutely correct in that some people convolute it, and then I begin to doubt that I understood it. This is finally so clear of definitive. MOST importantly (to me) is that you took the time to... do what I should have done. :) There's just no time. hehheh. The evenings/weekends I can break away to do anything on MPC, I always feel like I cannot "waste" the precious time to experiment at this level to figure it out. Cannot describe well enough how much this helps for someone in my particular situation. Some day I'll retire and have all day and night to do these things. Of course, by then I won't be able to hear any of it. :D You rock, man. \m/

[@TheCratesMotel]

All I ask is you pay it forward mate. Share the knowledge. And look after those ears. 👂🏼

[@forsale313]

My best guess is that if said person thinks "Normalizing" is crushing the material, what that person was there before the Normalization was done and now He/She can really hear it. Thanks for another Gem. "Crates Motel Myth buster Series", LOL,

[@TheCratesMotel]

Haha don’t get me started. Hold my beer…

[@djantix1200]

I've heard this argument before on some forums. LOL Thanks for clearing it all up!

[@TheCratesMotel]

You’re welcome mate.

[@BareRareBeats]

Fantastic explanation dude thank you

[@TheCratesMotel]

You're welcome mate

[@sierragold]

Great content!

[@TheCratesMotel]

Thanks mate and thank you for watching.

[@0mgwtfsrsly]

This content is the best. Thank you!

[@TheCratesMotel]

You’re welcome mate, thanks for watching.

[@gabrock55]

As an artist that both mixes music in one genre but also has someone else work on mixes of songs for my live band I usually always looked at it like normalizing each individual track before I send them all to the mix engineer is almost like setting all the faders to unity for the person whos mixing on a console after you, its an amazing place for the mix engineer to start from square one and not needing to level everything out before they start the balance process. I use samples in the music I write and mix myself and its super helpful to have those samples be normalized because then that way I know they all come into my project at the same exact volume and Ill need to attenuate them to get them to sit right. Like Crates said normalizing has absolutely NO effect to your sound IN THE DIGITAL DOMAIN, its a bit of a different story though if you're using an analog preamp or any outboard gear to simply boost an entire signal to sit at unity only because some preamps can start to impart colour, change phase of certain frequencies a bit based off of the signal's amplitude because its raw living voltage being boosted thanks to the filters built into transformer circuits. It can have some kind of effect on increasing cross talk/RF interference or if you're maybe unknowingly driving your AD converters with inaudible frequencies you don't even know are there, like if you're studio has dirty power, and that's all just the nature of the beast that is the analogue world. If you're dealing with any of that type of equipment then you mostly use it specifically for those artifacts because they can be a bit musical and add character to a sound. When in doubt if I want to keep complete tonal integrity of my tracks when normalizing I just do it after converting the signal to digital and try to make sure I have some kind of passive spectrum analysis going prior to sending it to my converters :P. I feel like a lot of these people are just confusing the effect analog normalization can have on your sound based on the tools you would need to use to do it and they're just unknowingly applying that science to a world it doesnt matter because of how sterile digital audio is, no need for smith charts for your MPC's DSP chips to avoid interference because everything is binary and not pure unquantized waveforms!

[@TheCratesMotel]

Exactly, to all of the above!! Thinking of it as setting everything to unity gain is a great way of looking at it.

[@loopwax]

Exactly, pretty wild there's a debate over normalizing. I guess you could argue when they up the gain via midi channel and then have peaks over zero with vst's or synths? but that's not normalising.🙃

[@TheCratesMotel]

You could still normalize a source that is over 0db. It will just reduce the volume instead of raising it although obviously there is the danger there is distortion in the source.

[@loopwax]

@TheCratesMotel I know. Was just thinking out loud why or how people would argue over this. Wasn´t even aware people are debating this lol.

[@TheCratesMotel]

@ Yeh neither was I until I got into a debate the other day where a guy told me all normalizing crushes the transients and ruins the sample and that I was wrong to even suggest normalizing could ever be a good idea and “the pros never do it”! I was like “Hold my beer…”

[@loopwax]

@@TheCratesMotel LMAO. Normalising is also an "In the Box" thing. I could see people trying to recreate it on all analog gear having alot more noise when pushing gains. But pushing ones and zeros to 0db that is some crazy stuff. Maybe faulty software coding could do it? LOL

[@jonesconrad1]

Lets Jump In!

[@TheCratesMotel]

Haha even my wife says it to me now

[@dustyaudio]

So I should stop normalizing then using my Maximizer/Compressor/Limiter/Soft Clipper FX chain? Kidding, thanks for the run thru. Well explained!

[@TheCratesMotel]

Haha, no, feel free, go for it. If it's creative and it works for you...

[@AeonHorus]

How many times can on say "zero db" in 15 minutes 🤣 I've just called Norris Mcwhirter and I'm waiting on the call back mate... On a more serious note though... Exceptional informative material man. Loved it!

[@TheCratesMotel]

It’s the only way to drill it in lol. Repetition.

[@eliaszerano3510]

normalising always, simply to see better whats going on :) normalizing do not touch the transients ....

[@TheCratesMotel]

Exactly mate

[@AeonHorus]

Hahahhaa Nice one 😆

[@TheCratesMotel]

People asked. I obliged haha

[@jimmyhatz]

Akai needs to implement some utility tools / plug-ins: Phase/polarity flip Metering (numerical) PPM, VU, LUFS Pretty crazy that in the box (MPC) metering is non-existent.

[@TheCratesMotel]

I totally agree.

[@spikerzombie]

If you’re sampling in the red you shouldn’t need to normalize imo

[@TheCratesMotel]

Yup there are no rules. As I said in the video, you don't need to normalize at all if you don't want to. My aim was to set some misinformation straight, to be honest, and ensure that if people do normalize, they know why they are doing it and what effect it does have and does not have.