Normalising audio tracks in QLab

[Watson]

Thanks to everyone who offered thoughts and advice in my earlier QLab thread. I'm slowly getting to grips with the program (or at least with those areas of it that I need for the fairly basic show I'm working on to begin with).

 

I do have an additional question: I thought I'd seen reference to this somewhere but can't find it again.

 

All but one of the tracks in the project are sound effects and most are recorded at various different levels, so It seems sensible to normalise them in order that setting the individual levels in QLab can start from a common basis; but is there a recommended level to normalise to in order to allow for headroom where it might be needed?

 

Thanks.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Watson

[gareth]

Don't think QLab can do this. Probably best to prepare your audio files in an editor (Audacity - https://www.audacityteam.org/ - is free, easy to use and very capable) before bringing them into your QLab workspace.

[Watson]

Probably best to prepare your audio files in an editor (Audacity - https://www.audacityteam.org/ - is free, easy to use and very capable)...

Thanks. I was planning to use Audacity. Is there a particular level you'd recommend I normalise to, or is this something that can't be pinned down to a one-setting-suits-all-cases figure?

Edited May 8, 2021 by Watson

[sclg]

I always prepare stuff in Goldwave (similar to Audacity) and I just get them to a 'reasonable' level. I use SCS rather than QLab but that's where I set the levels I want - not in the sound files themselves.

S

[TomHoward]

Within Qlab you’ve got two Level tabs on an audio file - level and Trim.

Level is used for setting playback levels, which is what is adjusted when you use fade cues etc

Trim is unaffected by other cues and is for input gain adjustment and general routing between outputs (not an issue with stereo)

Personally I just adjust in Trim in qlab to normalise then adjust the Level with fade cues.

[Watson]

Thanks for the new replies. I was thinking of normalising before importing into QLab simply because my various audio tracks are at wildly differing levels and it seemed sensible to get everything into QLab on an equal footing.

 

I'm new to the software and there are still many aspects that I haven't explored yet, Trim being one of them: I'll take a look at that.

 

[sandall]

In answer to the original question, in whatever editor I am using I usually normalise to about 85-90%, which has negligible effect on the level, but guarantees that you are not adding any clipping to the waveform (though of course this doesn't "mend" any clipping that was already there). It also makes your waveforms easy to inspect without having to constantly zoom in & out. Regardless of playback device, whether Mac, MD or acetate disc, it is always good practice to start with a reasonably full-level signal & then attenuate it as required at the playback stage.

[Watson]

In answer to the original question, in whatever editor I am using I usually normalise to about 85-90%...

Excellent. Thanks for that.

 

[Watson]

Within Qlab you've got two Level tabs on an audio file - level and Trim...

Trim is unaffected by other cues and is for input gain adjustment and general routing between outputs (not an issue with stereo).

Thanks for that, but I just looked into Trim and it appears to be a way of adjusting how much of a track plays by setting start and end points in the waveform rather than anything to do with input gain adjustment. Have I misunderstood something?

Edited May 9, 2021 by Watson

[TomHoward]

It's the Audio Trim tab, two along from Time & Loops where you set the play start/end points. Confusingly the term could be used for both, but it's "Trim" in an input gain sense.

You could reasonably process separaretly which would allow you a more consistent waveform, but I can't say I ever have, I've just added boost in the Audio Trim tab to save an extra step.

[Watson]

It's the Audio Trim tab...

 

Ah, apologies for the confusion: as you realised, I was thinking of the "trim to time" capability in Time & Loops. Thanks for putting me straight. I must admit though, having now looked at it, that I can't immediately see the difference between Audio Trim and Audio Levels: there obviously is one though so I'll investigate further.

 

You could reasonably process separately which would allow you a more consistent waveform, but I can't say I ever have, I've just added boost in the Audio Trim tab to save an extra step.

Thanks. As an experiment, I batch-processed all my audio tracks in Audacity and saved the results to a different folder, but I can't work out how to insert them into my existing project in place of the non-normalised ones. I could start again from scratch with a new workspace but then I'd have to recreate all my fades, levels and transitions, which would be a bit of a fag. I'll probably forget about the preliminary normalising.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Watson

[TomHoward]

You can just drag & drop the new file on top of the old audio cue and it should replace. You can also open the cue and in the first tab should be the file it’s using.

 

Audio Trim and Audio Level and like input gain and fader level. When you process the fade, it’s Level that changes. A typical example of a problem of misuse is we had a show a student had programmed where it had pre-programmed house music and show announcements. The house music needed to be quiet, so it was set to an Audio Level of -12 or so. Then the pre-recorded announcement fades down the music to -12, plays the announcement and fades the music back to up to zero. The music after the announcement is 12dB louder than it was before, because they’ve used absolute fade levels. If the adjustment on the overall volume is done in the Trim tab, you can apply fade to whatever you want and back again, assuming zero is the default playing level. If you make adjustments to playback level in Levels rather than Trim your fades may need to take account of where it started. If that all makes sense...

[Watson]

You can just drag & drop the new file on top of the old audio cue and it should replace. You can also open the cue and in the first tab should be the file it's using.

That did work (after I made some ham-fisted mistake the first time I tried it) so many thanks.

 

Thanks too for explaining the Audio Levels/Audio Trim distinction. It would seem (to me, at least) more logical if Audio Trim ("input gain") was placed before Audio Levels ("fader setting") rather than after!

Edited May 10, 2021 by Watson

[TomHoward]

I’m not sure how many people program it properly anyway and how many people just use “Audio Levels” for everything and then hit ESC to stop.