What is Normalization?

Normalization is the process of adjusting the volume of your audio to a consistent and pleasant volume (not too high, not too low).

Studio Microphone supports two methods of normalization. One is to let you manually adjust the volume and the other is called automatic gain control (AGC). AGC automatically adjusts the volume to keep it at a good level.

Manual mode

Manual normalization is very simple. From the normalization options screen you will see something like this:

With the top control (AGC) turned off, you will manually adjust the gain level. That means you set a fixed gain level (amplification) and it doesn't change unless you change it. So if you adjust it to a good volume but then move away from the microphone, it will get quieter. With AGC turned on the gain will automatically change to try and maintain a similar volume.

In manual mode, you can adjust the level from 0% to 1000%. Anything less than 100% will make the volume quieter, and 1000% will make it 10 times as loud. The "Speed" slider is not relevant in manual mode, so it is disabled.

There is also a control for "Cut silence". When that is turned on it will completely silence the audio when you stop talking. That can be a really good feature in some situations where there is a little bit of background noise, because it will be completely gone whenever you aren't talking.

To use this feature you just need to turn it on and adjust the silence level. You want to adjust the silence level to the lowest level that still cuts out the background sound consistently. A good way to adjust it is as follows:

AGC mode

For most people the AGC settings will work okay without changes, but to get the most out of your AGC or if you have background noise it may need a little adjustment.

With AGC turned on, the level slider will let you choose a value from 0 to 100% where 100% is the maximum possible volume before audio clipping (distortion) would occur. You will usually want it set between 80% and 95%.

AGC constantly adjusts the gain level to try and reach the volume you set. If you stop speaking for a while, AGC would try to amplify up the background noise to make it full volume too. You don't want that because it brings it up to a loud hissing sound in your long pauses. So to avoid that, AGC will not make any adjustments if the sound is too low. Exactly what is too low depends on how noisy your location is, and is set with the Silence Level slider.

Adjusting the silence level can be done with the same process for manual normalization (see above). Even though you set "Cut silence" while fine tuning, you don't need to leave that on afterwards if you don't like the way it sounds. It's just useful to use so that you can hear when you have the setting correct.

If your silence level is set too low, you will hear the background noise amplified up during periods when you aren't talking. If it's set too high then it won't adjust volume at all.

In AGC mode, you also have the "Speed" slider available. The purpose of that is to adjust the maximum speed at which the gain is increased. A longer time here makes the effect of AGC more subtle and less obvious but also it takes longer to respond to changes. A short time rapidly responds to changing situations but may be more jarring to listen to. Regardless of this setting, if the input volume suddenly increases beyond maximum permitted volume the gain will be rapidly decreased to bring it back under control.