Last Updated on April 16, 2017 by Dave Farquhar
A lot of people think audio doesn’t matter when they edit video. They’re wrong. If you notice the audio, something’s wrong.
An easy way to improve audio quality is to normalize it, which makes the volume more consistent. Windows users can do it with Normalizer, a GPL command-line utility (a GUI is available). Linux users can use Normalize.
Normalizing still won’t make bad audio sound good, but it will at least make bad audio sound better.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
Please may also want to look at Replay Gain for their music collections.
From what I can tell Normalize(r) recodes the audio which can add further noise to the signal. Replay Gain simply adds a tag to the files so that players adjust output levels. Thus you don’t lose any quality in recoding.
P.S. Would it be possible to add a “preview” button to comments?