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Originally Posted by dkatz42  Using compressors and EQ to bring up level is a very different beast (and far more destructive, though hopefully in a good way) than normalizing or any simple gain reduction. If your question was "is it different than bringing up the input gain on my compressor plug" or "is it any different than putting a gainer plug in front of the compressor" the answer would be "no."
The minor quibbling we're having is over whether sticking a gain change in while the numbers are in the floating point realm is any different than normalizing the file (which does it in the fixed point realm.) For all intents and purposes, the answer is "no." While it is true that the floating point representation has much higher dynamic range (making it essentially unclippable) it does *not* add any bit depth; the data part of the representation is still 24 bits.
And given that the point of the question was to raise the level without clipping, the wider range of the floating point representation does exactly nothing for you.
But regardless of all this complexity, the bottom line is this: If you're *boosting* levels with normalizing (which is normally what happens) and you're not clipping (which is easy to control with normalization) then the amount of "damage" is the same as putting a gain plug into the track or boosting the fader--a single multiplication that has no audible impact.
So no, not only is all not lost, but essentially nothing is.
FWIW, my default template in Logic when mixing has a gain plugin inserted into each channel. This lets me bring the levels to where I want them and still get the sweet spot of the fader. The net effect is the same as normalizing each track, but it's faster and impermanent. |
False! For one thing, I understand most of these systems actually use a 25 bit mantissa. But you are confusing dynamic range and level/headroom. In the floating point realm, you can alter level without loss of dynamic range. YOU CANNOT DO SO IN FIXED POINT. Nossir, you cannot.
Do I need to piece it apart as to why?