I've been messing about with trying to get more volume consistency in things that I'm converting but not hand editing. Finally it struck me to actually try to find a way to mass normalize the files and it was out there.

OK after a touch of feedback, I've deleted the link to the old dos program. Thanks to this thread I figured out I could mass normalize using Audacity, http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Go to Edit Chains and add Normalize and Exportwav and there you are. A nice little chain that will normalize your audio files.

As for why I need to do it, I should say I'm more interested in making instruments than using them. So no don't normalize existing instruments. I know not everyone agrees, but I like to normalize all the files I actually hand edit. I find Kontakt does a much better job of changing velocity layers when every layer is the same volume and not different volumes. It is still good to observe and listen to the waves inside kontant and give a bump up or down as appropriate, but it is much, much easier if they are in the same ballpark.

Thanks for all the input.

http://bigcatinstruments.blogspot.com/

 

Pointless

 

Wavosaur can do this and it doesn't take root in your system.

Why would you want to do this anyway?

 

I was always taught not to normaliz anything because it takes away the head room in your tracks

 

I would hesitate to use this utility. I like the idea of automatically adjusting the *perceived* loudness, but...
First, it seems like there's no dither during the process so you'll inevitably add additional quantization noise to your samples.
Second, because applying a pure multiplication factor to each sample won't equalize all files to the same perceived level, this utility introduces RMS measurement and a simple limiter, so again, your resulting wave files will probably sound different, and be processed by a limiter with automatically chosen, unknown parameters.
What's more, i would NEVER EVER process individual samples of a Kontakt/sampler instrument because this way you make all individual samples' volume adjustments obsolete, so in the worst case every sample mapped has a different (wrong) volume.
If you really want to apply dynamics processing, i'd rather go for "sox", another great commandline utility, which has unbelievably rich functionality, top-notch quality, and is very fast compared to GUI applications. And it gives you much more control over processing parameters, and it can also analyze your files and show their RMS value, Crest factor etc.
sox plus batch files plus gnu grep, sed and awk can give you more batch processing power than any GUI editor i know of.
It takes some time to get used to it, i admit.

 

fiction sum it up very thoroughly. Nothing to add !
I will avoid normalizing like a plague.
Proper matching can be done non-destructively only by matching RMS with a meter and ears, using just the volume fader.
(if the samples have similar dynamic, if some sample is already destroyed with massive limiting is a problem)
As fiction said, normalizing samples in a Kontakt library is just non-sense. You end up with an unusable library.
Velocity and dynamics are there for a reason, otherwise why making libraries weighting several GBs
if they can just use one dynamic layer per note?

(I would have renamed such a topic like this: Mass Normalize - My New Worst Nightmare *yes* )

 

you can use batch normalize in SoundForge, Wavelab, RX3 etc without fuss...the only command line app(audio) I know of worth writing a .bat file for is FinalCD...make sure you keep copies while youre normalizing away though lol...

 

Bump for explanation and such.