Limiter or normalization

[Farshad]

Hi Mastering fellows:

Here is my question: say you have got a mixe and its average RMS is around -24 db and peaks around -16 db. It sounds good, balanced and dynamic.

If you slap a limiter (in my case PSP Xenon) on the mix (after EQ, etc ...) and bring up the mix for 8 db, will it be different than normalizing the mix?

Is one of these solutions a better thing to do in this case? Given the only purpose of this is to bring up the mix level without any gain reduction.

Thanks in advance

[Waltz Mastering]

Originally Posted by Farshad

If you slap a limiter (in my case PSP Xenon) on the mix (after EQ, etc ...) and bring up the mix for 8 db, will it be different than normalizing the mix?

Yes, if you have gain reduction going on at all, it is different than normalizing.
Normalizing will apply a constant amount of gain so that your highest peak matches the ceiling you set. Limiting will apply varying levels of gain to the signal.

Originally Posted by Farshad

Is one of these solutions a better thing to do in this case? Given the only purpose of this is to bring up the mix level without any gain reduction.

If the only purpose is to bring up the level with out any gain reduction, It might be easiest to simply bring the gain up 8 db with your master fader? You still will have 8 db of head room left if your talking about peak level, or you could normalize and set your peak ceiling for -8db. Probably 6 of one, half dozen for the other...