This week I’ve mostly been working on getting the final editing done to all of the sounds that we are going to use in our game. To ensure an even level of volume I had to apply either one of these tools – Audio normalization or Compression.
Audio Normalization
Audio normalization is the process of adding a constant amount of gain to an audio recording to bring the average or peak amplitude to a target level. What this means is that you change your recording’s overall volume by a fixed amount to reach a target level. There are 2 good reasons to normalize, getting the maximum volume or matching the audio of several recordings.
If you have a quiet audio file you may want to make it as loud as possible without changing its dynamic range. If you have a group of audio files at different volumes you may want to make them all as close as possible to the same volume. It may be individual snare hits or even full mixes.
Compression
Adding compression to a recording of, for example, an electric guitar can be a really great tool for balancing your audio. Normally, strumming the strings of your guitar really hard will make the sound it produces really loud and plucking a string lightly will in comparison make almost no sound at all. Compression solves this problem. Compression is the process of lessening the dynamic range between the loudest and quietest parts of an audio signal. This is done by boosting the quieter signals and attenuating the louder signals.
Normalization can be done automatically without changing the sound as compression does. While this is a huge advantage, it can’t replace compression, as it can’t affect the peaks in relation to the bulk of the sound. This means you have far less control.
In addition to mastering and editing the sounds I already had there were still a couple of them that I needed to create. One of them was a sound we had decided to call “Snooze you loose” which is the sound that will play when our character’s “pumpmeter” reaches zero and he falls asleep in the middle of a riot.
”Snoozers are loosers”
This is what I came up with:
For this sound I played a low note on my guitar while using one of my effect pedals called Pitch Shifter, when pressed it will simulate the sound of a single note getting dropped several steps. You can control how low the tone will drop and how fast it will do so. When I was satisfied with that part of my sound I added some piano chords and toped the whole thing of with a lullaby style melody.
Alex Westerdahl 
Greetings Alex!
Have you been working with audio before, because it sure wounds like it! Very nice and impressive explanations as to what is what. I myself, who doesn’t have that much experience with audio, found it very informative and easy to understand.
So, what I’m getting from this is that normalization is easier and quicker to use than compression, but compression gives you more control in what to raise and making it easier for you to even out the audio file as you like. Correct me if I’m wrong as I very well might be. How do you decide on which method to use? I’m just curious.
I’m sorry to say that the link you provided seems to be broken. A bit of a letdown, would’ve liked to hear the sound you described. But I like the idea of it being a lullaby theme when he falls asleep; everyone loves a good lullaby with some piano.
I am unsure what else to say as I’m not that familiar with the subject. But as I mentioned earlier, very nicely explained and easy to understand for those with basically no knowledge of audio editing. So thank you for an overall nice blogpost!
Have a good one,
Måns