[In 11.7.0] Playlist volume levelling/normalisation.

[d_korman]

Currently the playlist cues allow you to specify relative levels for each track, to take account of tracks recorded at different levels. It would be great if this could be automated. In the editor, one the playlist is complete, I'd like SCS to have the option to be able to scan each track and automatically adjust the relative volume settings to normalise each track to a specified level. This would save a lot of time especially with longer playlists, ie pre-show and between shows.

[Willarki]

+1 for this

[willyBsm]

+1 for this

[allcomp]

+1 for this feature.

[BritGeek]

+1 for me too.

However, if automatic level normalization is too difficult, would it be possible to add an option to use MP3 gain tags to adjust the relative playback levels? That way we could use an external program such as MP3Gain to do the level analysis on a set of playlist tracks.

If that's still too much work, would it at least be possible to enable scrubbing through playlist tracks in the editor window by dragging the position slider at the bottom of the "Test" box, same as for regular audio cues? This would make it easier to quickly find portions of tracks suitable for setting levels, rather than having to listen through each song past the intro until reaching a suitable section.

It would also be great if we could adjust individual playlist track relative levels from the cue panel while the playlist is playing. Currently the level slider in the cue panel appears to show the overall playlist level multiplied by the track's relative level, and changes to this combined level don't get saved. Would it be possible to display a separate slider for the relative level of the track, and have it saved by the "Save Settings" option?

[Mike Daniell]

What this basically comes down to is what is meant by 'normalization'. It's relatively easy to implement 'peak normalization' as SCS would just need to scan each file for the maximum peak and then apply whatever factor was necessary to increase the level of the entire file to maximize that peak. SCS already scans files to build audio graphs. However, the issue with 'peak normalization' is that an isolated high peak (possible even a clipped peak) would influence the level of 'normalization' applied to the whole file.

Referring to the Wikipedia Audio Normalization entry, the alternative approach is 'loudness normalization'. This seems to be more useful. If someone can help out with the formula for calculating loudness I'd be happy to consider this. Or is 'peak normalization' an acceptable solution?

[d_korman]

Peak normalisation would be fine for me for the vast majority of tracks. Many modern recordings are already compressed to death anyway and I don't want to lose the dynamic range of those that aren't.

Dynamics processing might be nice, but then we are in the area of audio workstation and different tracks require different degrees of threshold, gain reduction, compression ratio and make up gain. That's going to be very tricky to automate for multiple tracks and generally it is done by ear. I have Adobe Audition or Audacity (free) that I use to fix difficult tracks before putting them into SCS.

Thanks,
Dave

[Mike Daniell]

Working on this for SCS 11.7.0.

[d_korman]

Excellent! Thanks, as always, for top class support for a superb product.

[Eric Snodgrass]

Mike, would this just be normalization for individual tracks or are you also working on integrating dynamics processing for live inputs via SMS?

[Mike Daniell]

Mike, would this just be normalization for individual tracks or are you also working on integrating dynamics processing for live inputs via SMS?

Just normalization of tracks. What dynamics are you wanting to handle? For example, in the SM-S Documentation I can't find anything about compression, although I could check with Richmond Sound Design if that's what you're looking for.

[Eric Snodgrass]

You are correct. There is no compression algorithm in the SMS live input implementation. I was just wondering if this was something that was being considered, but you answered that.
I'm also waiting for the SCS implementation of the full EQ capabilities of SMS. Any word on that?

[Mike Daniell]

I'm also waiting for the SCS implementation of the full EQ capabilities of SMS. Any word on that?

Are you referring to EQ control of Audio File Cues? Still on the 'to do' list.

[Mike Daniell]

Peak normalization added in 11.7.0.