Q: What is audio normalization and why do I need it?
A: We have all experienced this nightmare: You’re listening to a podcast. One person is quietly mumbling, so you turn your volume way up. Then the other person suddenly laughs insanely loudly and blows your eardrums out.
A normalizer basically scans the entire audio file, finds the single loudest peak, and then mathematically turns the *entire* file up evenly until that peak safely hits the absolute maximum digital limit (0dB).
Q: Is this the same thing as audio compression?
A: No! Totally different. Normalization turns the whole recording up by the exact same amount. If someone coughed super loud in the middle of a quiet recording, the normalizer hits that loud cough and just stops. The rest of the recording stays super quiet.
Compression actively squashes the loud peaks down so the quiet stuff can be brought up. If your audio constantly jumps between loud laughing and quiet whispering, do not use a normalizer. Use a Compressor tool instead.
Q: When should I actually use a normalizer then?
A: Perfect use cases: A super quiet college lecture recording you took on your phone. Or if you're making a playlist with old 80s songs and modern pop songs. The old ones are always way quieter. Normalizing brings them all up so you don't have to keep violently adjusting the volume knob.