A Question About Normalizing with Nero Express

Hi. I know that there are drawbacks to normalization, but for some applications (use in the car or making compilations CD-Rs of tracks with wildly varying SPLs and sound quality, for example) it's a must.

I have some specific questions about how Nero normalizes, and their User Guides frankly suck. First off, if you pick "Normalize RMS", it defaults to "20." What is this value? Is it 20% of the peak? 20% of the RMS (average)? Or is it not a percentage? To make it louder, do I choose a larger number or a smaller number? The range is 20 to 50.

Second, is there a way to use the RMS method (to get a high average "loudness" level) yet somehow set it to keep the peaks under the 0 dB point? Digital clipping sounds attrocious.

Lastly, if I choose "Normalize Peak", is the value it defaults to (95) mean 95% of zero dB? If one song was a bit louder, could I reduce it's volume by setting it to "90?" And if one song on the same compilation was very soft, could I enter "100" to get it subjectively louder?

I understand that doing what I want with RMS is essentially compression, but that's what I want: loud sounding tracks that retain most of the fidelity but avoiding clipping like the plague!

Thanks for any advice you can give me. For $100 you'd think Nero could provide a little better manual!

 

I appreciate the info, but I never use MP3. Likewise, I hit the link you provided, but I'm not going to buy any more software. I really just want to figure out a few things about Nero.

Anyway, I spent much of the nite just burning things onto CD-R using all the different filters, then ripping 'em back to the HD & comparing them on the Wave Editor. The results were most enlightening.

Still, anyone who can give me any more insights into the finer points of NERO, please feel free to chime in.

 

Thanks, Tigre. That is essentially what I want. I clicked to the link you provided and I misunderstood that you had to buy the software. Of course, if it was the superior product I would buy it- I have no problem with the creator of a good product being paid for his efforts. Mostly though I'm happy with NERO, and perhaps more importantly, I'm very familiar with it. I hate to learn a whole new program.

But if I can "normalize" and compress with Foobar then burn w/Nero, that would work well.

BTW, it's not that I'm lazy, just that I'm far from a computer expert. Things that may be obvious to the hard core geeks takes me awhile to learn.

Thanks for the help. This site is great.

 

You just can't do that with such a poor program like Nero.
Like you said, you can't know what "20" means.
Follow what tigre says.

Nero easily produces terrible clipping when using the default normalizing options:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=78057

There's no way you can know if clipping is going to happen if you use Nero.

 

Minix, if your only purpose on this forum is to bash Nero, then either grow up or get lost. If I've got you wrong, I apologize, but the only posts I see by you are obvious troll bait.

I'd still appreciate any useful substantive responses.

 

yes, i wrote to bash Nero: it's a buggy program with almost no manual (in fact, the installer comes with no manual).

Apart from that, you said: "I want: loud sounding tracks that retain most of the fidelity but avoiding clipping like the plague!"

Easy answer: you can't have that with Nero. There's no way to know if the sound will clip. I guess you've already knew it...

Alright, I've just read that you were happy to use Foobar to normalize.
Sorry for adding nothing.

 

minix, you can certainly use normalizing and avoid clipping. I don't want to be rude, but you obviously know far less about NERO than I already do, which makes your posts useless to me. Anything you would add here would be a waste of bandwidth. As far as being buggy, maybe you don't know how to use it or have a bad install. Try uninstalling it and reinstalling it again- that might help with whatever problems you're having.

As far as it lacking good documentation, you're right. But I don't think I've ever bought any software that had usefull manuals or documentation. The software companies seem to think the end user either already knows it all or isn't intelligent enough to read instructions. Neither premise is helpful.

In the case of Nero, you can certainly use the Wave Editor to see if the waveform is clipping. Take a ten minute break from grinding your axe and see what it can do. You might be surprised what it can do if you take the time to try to learn it.

 

That's very possible.
What I find amusing, is that I use it very little (only for the few data discs I burn) and I find a lot of bugs.

I've been using it since version 4.
I've seen countless bugs.
I had too many coasters with Nero4 because of all the people saying how great Nero was. Luckily, at that time I found a program that really worked and that showed how software must be programmed.
Nero 5 was a reliable program thanks to its new burning engine, but it wasn't made by Ahead (it was copied from Feurio).
Then, the more they added features, the more bugs started to appear.
I'm just trying to point that people shouldn't believe all the hype about Nero: it's buggy and a bit poorly designed. On the other hand, it has a lot of features.
I already wrote about this in several Nero bashing threads by me like this:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=17914&st=0&&#entry176885
but I don't have time to explain it again...
If you don't mind its drawbacks, then it's OK.

well, if I use "RMS normalization" from the compilation windows, the wave in Wave Editor is the same whether I choose the value 5 or the value 50.
The normalization is done "on the fly" when burning/playing, so I'll have to burn the disc to check the actual burned wave.
If you use normalization from Wave Editor, I guess you have to save the wave, losing quality if you save it as MP3, and time.

BTW, I like the RMS normalization feature, but it's dangerous if you don't know how to use it. 2 people at cdfreaks found that the default 20 value easily produces clipping (or it isn't well programmed).
Anyway, I would gladly use that option in Nero for the situations you said (car, some compilations) but I still don't believe that you can know if there's clipping without burning the disc.

 

You always lose quality anyway with MP3, and I really don't have any use for it. It can sound tolerable @ really high bitrates with VBR, but it still isn't as good as PCM.

You are entirely correct about having to burn it onto a disc and re-track it to the HD to analyze it w/the Wave Editor. I neglected to post that detail, but I didn't mean to mislead. I don't consider that to be a big downside but some might. Basically you'd only have to normalize and burn a few things to get a "baseline" as to just what it's doing.

On my particular machine, Nero is stable (using XP Home). I don't frequent the computer forums much, so I honestly don't know if others are finding the same problems you are. The guys I know that use it haven't had many problems. Likewise, I'm not saying Nero is the best there is- there's a lot of software out there I'm totally ignorant of, so I do appreciate your input.

BTW, I think I got you all wrong, Minix, and I'm sorry I jumped down your throat. I've been a forum junkie for years and there's lots of guys who only use these sites to bash and flame products and further some hidden agenda. I can see that you're not doing that, and I'm sorry.

The "20" value works very well for some material and doesn't result in any clipping, but the worst problems you get are with newer stuff. And I don't know if you realize this or not, but 90% of all new pop music today is mastered in a way where the waveforms clip badly. Put a new CD into the Wave Editor or Soundforge and examine the waveform- often Nero is taking the rap for something that's already on the original disc. FYI, most of the music I use Nero to burn is from the 60's, 70's & 80's- on this stuff (mostly recorded several dB under max) the default RMS norm works very well.

I will try using Foobar2000 to norm & Nero to burn. I haven't been able to make heads or tails out of FB yet- it mystifies me. But hopefully i'll figure out how to use it.

Rob