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Old 10-17-2016, 06:29 AM   #1
MRMJP
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Default [DONE] Item Normalize to XXX LUFS/RMS

In light of the SWS Actions being supported less and less, I would like to submit a feature request for a native solution of an SWS action I find extremely useful.

For nearly all of my mastering sessions, I start by normalizing all items to a certain level so I have a good starting point. I have the current SWS Action bundled into a custom action and it's great.

I would love to see some native REAPER actions to normalize all items to a predefined RMS and/or LUFS level.

The current option to normalize to 0dBFS or a common gain doesn't work. I would need REAPER to normalize all items to an RMS or LUFS level that I determine somehow.

The SWS actions work OK but I fear they will stop working someday and also, now and then I get a false normalization and the level is changed to an insanely loud value. Changing the target window by a value of one unit solves the issue for whatever reason.
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Old 10-17-2016, 08:47 AM   #2
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+1

I"m also in favour of a native version. The library on which the SWS actions were built are released under the MIT license last I read, so they could be integrated in to Reaper or be integrated and optimized to be useful for metering as well.

Imagine what script and extension authors could do if LUFS normalization and metering was available and accessible via the API.

The ITU BS.1770-4 (that's v4 which covers 7.1 mixes) standard can be studied here:
https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en

The EBU R128 recommendation is available here
https://tech.ebu.ch/loudness

It has now been six years since these standards appeared and they're in force all over the planet, as well as being supported by most DAWs natively.

None of this stuff is complicated for folks who have written plugin DSP. I use the SWS actions every day to normalize mixes to broadcast standards. They check out for the EBU test files(for stereo as far as I have tested), but I too worry that this stuff might pass away.

And metering with a 2-band filter isn't that big a deal, or is it ?

One more good reason.

ReaSurround can pan around in three dimensions, but you have no metering that measures the final loudness. The 1770-4 standard includes rules for three-dimensional speaker sources and how they add in to the loudness.

And you do have a large bunch of folks dealing in many-speaker installations. Why wouldn't you want metering of this century for that purpose to be part of Reaper. It would complement Reaper extraordinary panning abilities perfectly.

It's a match.
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Old 10-17-2016, 09:02 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by airon View Post
+1
I'm glad I'm not the only one needing this. The current normalize built into REAPER in the Item Properties is not all that useful in my opinion.

I actually normalize to a certain level to help optimize the levels of all items before I do some light plugin processing and then send out to my analog mastering chain. Normalizing each item to peak at 0dB doesn't really work for this task.

I mostly use the SWS RMS normalize options but I would use a good LUFS or RMS that is native to REAPER.

Some things to consider:

1) An option to simply normalize each selected item to a determined RMS or LUFS value on its own

2) An option to normalize all selected items to an RMS or LUFS as a group. In other words, factor the loudness of a group of items and normalize them as a group as if they were one item.
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Old 10-17-2016, 10:18 AM   #4
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+1

SWS loudness functions are very buggy. Sometimes I get -Inf as analyzed value. not good, and if you update a media item externally, and reanalyze loudness again it doesn't update sometimes and I have to restart REAPER and analyze item again and it works, so I'm never sure if the loudness value is the latest good value.
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Old 10-21-2016, 06:01 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by heda View Post
+1

Sometimes I get -Inf as analyzed value. not good,
Maybe this is why with some items at random, they get normalized to a crazy loud level. I see this every week or so. Changing the analyze window seems to clear it up.

Needless to say, a more elegant and reliable native method to normalize items to a defined value (not just 0dFBS peak) would be great. LUFS and RMS support would be so useful for many users.
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Old 10-21-2016, 07:47 AM   #6
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Yes... yes.
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Old 10-26-2016, 03:06 PM   #7
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It sounds like there is a bit of support for this from others as well. I'd be curious to hear from Justin or Schwa if this is a realistic possibly in the near future or at all.
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Old 10-27-2016, 02:49 AM   #8
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They're over in the Pre-Release cafe. They appear to show up here on a highly irregular basis.

The coffee might not be good enough in this corner of the board.
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Old 10-27-2016, 03:46 AM   #9
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Mochachino, please

Meanwhile, MeldaProduction's MLoudnessAnalyzer does a good job:

>>> https://i.imgur.com/BUTuZcH.png

(1) set the target level
(2) drop your files onto the [Batch Auto-gain button] and confirm that the files will be overwritten
(3) check the results

And here are the 'before' and 'after' waveforms and loudness levels in MMultiAnalyzer.

>>> https://i.imgur.com/gWeP2Ss.png

Check the orange line in particular - running very close to 0 LU.
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Old 10-27-2016, 04:08 AM   #10
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Clever idea, Darkstar. I never thought about it !
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Old 10-27-2016, 07:44 AM   #11
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+1
I use the sws action and would rather see a native solution. The sws loudness is presumably based on an older iteration of the standard and it would be nice to have target options.
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Old 10-27-2016, 08:08 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkStar View Post
Mochachino, please

Meanwhile, MeldaProduction's MLoudnessAnalyzer does a good job:

>>> https://i.imgur.com/BUTuZcH.png

(1) set the target level
(2) drop your files onto the [Batch Auto-gain button] and confirm that the files will be overwritten
(3) check the results

And here are the 'before' and 'after' waveforms and loudness levels in MMultiAnalyzer.

>>> https://i.imgur.com/gWeP2Ss.png

Check the orange line in particular - running very close to 0 LU.
Thanks, but I'm not sure this method could integrated into a custom action so I'll probably stick with SWS until it actually breaks for any reason.

I've been spoiled by REAPER and I love how the SWS version can be part of a custom action but the detection algo must have a weird bug because now and then I get an item that will go to EXTREME loudness unless I tweak the RMS window.

I just don't see any sign of the SWS versions getting better and could stop working at anytime.

An updated native version would be a huge value to many users I think. LUFS and RMS.
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Old 11-11-2016, 08:41 PM   #13
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Optimistic bump for 5.29
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Old 11-19-2016, 05:00 PM   #14
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BUMP for sometime in the near future?
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Old 11-19-2016, 11:44 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MRMJP View Post
The SWS actions work OK but I fear they will stop working someday
We really needs decent ongoing support for SWS !
IMHO a good move would be to split SWS in multiple small add-ons (managed by REAPack) that would be manageable with limited effort and find maintainers for
each of them.

-Michael
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Old 11-20-2016, 05:54 AM   #16
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+1 for this idea.

We need to ask SWS how easy it would be to split off the loudness module and make it available via ReaPack.

Cfillion, Reapacks author, could tell us more as well.
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Old 11-20-2016, 08:21 AM   #17
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I think it needs to be compiled code due to the heavy nature or the quantity of maths and sequential processing needed for this, Airon. Even Heda uses compiled code calls for his LUFS calcs.



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Old 11-20-2016, 08:44 AM   #18
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-1 to splitting SWS into seperate parts because

- having to deal with seperate maintainers, bugtrackers

- possible incompatibility issues between the different SWS parts

- possible overhead as currently everything (e.g. libraries) has to be integrated only once in the .dll

- There's no problem to work on / improve / fix parts of SWS already right now by submitting pull requests (though I admit it's currently unclear if / when these will be handled).

- There's nothing stopping from forking SWS and do a own extension (dedicated to whatever part of it).

(my thoughts, someone correct me if wrong)

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Old 11-20-2016, 04:02 PM   #19
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Of course you are correct if there is anybody actively maintaining SWS. The first post in this thread seems to express some doubt on this.

Finding anybody to take on the task to maintain SWS seems difficult just because it's huge.

E.g. I would happily try to maintain "LiveConfigs" but only when it's rather independent of the rest.

-Micjhael
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Old 11-21-2016, 12:32 AM   #20
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Just had a play with that Melda plug and hit the wrong button! Thank goodness for Reaper`s automatic cutout when gain is too high!
That is some powerful plug.
But it certainly works as advertised.
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Old 11-21-2016, 03:58 AM   #21
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Quote:
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... and hit the wrong button!
You pre-trumped Trump
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Old 11-26-2016, 10:28 AM   #22
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Bump for 5.30
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Old 11-28-2016, 01:41 PM   #23
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+1 for more LUFS features in general.

I'd like to be able to export WAVs and have them automatically analyzed for RMS or LUFS level and normalized to a certain pre-set value.

I'd also like to be able to reconfigure the the master channel not only to show peak and RMS but also LUFS.
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Old 11-28-2016, 07:26 PM   #24
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+1 from me as well. So many good ideas in this thread!

The HOFA 4U Meter also does drag and drop analysis of files...just while we are waiting.
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Old 11-29-2016, 06:11 AM   #25
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+1 from me

On a side note What do people here do with short files? (sub 400ms)

All the loudness tools I have used fall down when attempting to analyse short files, be they single word dialogue or sfx. Tools like rx5 ignore them, and others give wildly different results.

Is it that the standard just doesn't work with multiple short files? And if so is there some way to tweak it to get average loudness across multiple short files?

If Reaper could manage this, then it would be a big win for people in game audio trying to balance thousands of files at a time
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Old 11-30-2016, 12:54 PM   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint_6 View Post
+1 for more LUFS features in general.

I'd like to be able to export WAVs and have them automatically analyzed for RMS or LUFS level and normalized to a certain pre-set value.

I'd also like to be able to reconfigure the the master channel not only to show peak and RMS but also LUFS.
Yes, to all of that.
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Old 12-20-2016, 05:27 PM   #27
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Just a friendly bump for 5.31 or 5.32

Enough with the MIDI and Notation Editor already
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Old 12-21-2016, 04:24 AM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint_6 View Post
+1 for more LUFS features in general.

I'd like to be able to export WAVs and have them automatically analyzed for RMS or LUFS level and normalized to a certain pre-set value.

I'd also like to be able to reconfigure the the master channel not only to show peak and RMS but also LUFS.
Yes please
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Old 12-22-2016, 02:37 PM   #29
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+1 for this.

The BBC likes EBU R-128 too.
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Old 12-22-2016, 03:52 PM   #30
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This seems to be one of the more popular feature requests I've made. It would be nice to hear from Justin or Schwa if this is a realistic option for the near or somewhat near future.

The SWS options are OK but could be better, and I still see a bug now and then where normalizing an item to a certain RMS level goes wrong and the gain is boosted by A LOT. If I change the window of time used for calculation then it's fine but I don't think the window of time was the cause for the incorrect gain change.
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Old 12-22-2016, 05:12 PM   #31
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+1!
Im for all new features that will improve audio workflow and specifically mastering type workflow.
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Old 12-29-2016, 08:40 AM   #32
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+1!
Im for all new features that will improve audio workflow and specifically mastering type workflow.
I see more and more dedicated mastering engineers (meaning not people that mix/master their own stuff) using REAPER but it still falls a little short in a few mastering specific areas if you really study the craft. This is why I still use WaveLab to finish the job but I absolutely love REAPER for initial processing of the audio via plugins and analog gear, and the capturing back to a new track and cleaning up noises and blemishes by sending item copies to RX5 standalone. It's been a HUGE time saver since moving to REAPER from Pro Tools for this portion of the mastering workflow.

I think if REAPER added a few things like native LUFS/RMS normalize for items, and then on the tail end some WaveLab montage style mastering specific things. It could become the best mastering solution but right now it misses a few big things.

I know they are not trying to be a dedicated mastering DAW but it already comes fairly close.
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Old 01-29-2017, 12:37 PM   #33
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Another annoying bump for developer consideration. Spectral peaks and editing is awesome for mastering engineers, but this more simple FR is also important:

Native LUFS and RMS normalization for items both individually and as a group.
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Old 01-29-2017, 12:41 PM   #34
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meanwhile, as a workaround, I find that analyzing items from the analyze loudness window, may work better, and then if you remove the problematic items there, and restart REAPER, and normalize them again it works well again on those items.
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Old 01-29-2017, 12:48 PM   #35
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meanwhile, as a workaround, I find that analyzing items from the analyze loudness window, may work better, and then if you remove the problematic items there, and restart REAPER, and normalize them again it works well again on those items.
Thanks for the info. I have the current SWS normalization integrated into a bigger custom action so this isn't really an option for me.

I worry about the SWS action breaking and it already has a weird bug where now and then, when normalizing a handful of items, one item will normalize to be REALLY loud as if there was a misreading of the original level.
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Old 01-29-2017, 01:06 PM   #36
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did you by chance edit the files while REAPER was open? Sometimes I have these kind of errors in the loudness being -Inf when I update the files outside the REAPER project. So if the loudness is -Inf, the normalize function cannot work, obviously. So you have to try to remove them from loudness analysis, and then reanalyze them again from the Analyze loudness window. And then you can normalize them again. It's a strange bug. Yes I'm worried too about SWS future. I miss Breeder, the creator of these loudness extensions.
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Old 01-29-2017, 01:15 PM   #37
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did you by chance edit the files while REAPER was open? Sometimes I have these kind of errors in the loudness being -Inf when I update the files outside the REAPER project. So if the loudness is -Inf, the normalize function cannot work, obviously. So you have to try to remove them from loudness analysis, and then reanalyze them again from the Analyze loudness window. And then you can normalize them again. It's a strange bug. Yes I'm worried too about SWS future. I miss Breeder, the creator of these loudness extensions.
No edits to the files. In fact, these are very simple sessions. I have a session template that I start with. I load all the songs I need to master on a single track in that template. Then I run my custom action that spaces the items out with 10 seconds between them, adds a marker at the start of each time, and normalizes each item to a certain pre-determined level.

Most times it works great but now and then, an item must be improperly analyzed because the SWS action raises the item level by an insane amount even though the file is not really much different than any of the others. I can't find a reason for it.
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Old 02-06-2017, 08:51 AM   #38
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Here's a screen shot of where the SWS normalize option decided to boost one item by +71dB.

As you can see it's a big blob, and I can't detect anything weird about the file that would trigger such a false analysis and cause a 71dB boost.

I really think that if REAPER natively had some loudness normalization for items it would be HUGE deal.
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Old 02-06-2017, 12:29 PM   #39
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I would like to be able to normalise groups of items by momentary. I have to do this manually currently.
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Old 02-23-2017, 05:06 PM   #40
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Native item normalization by LUFS and/or RMS would be such a great feature. I wish one of the devs could chime in about whether it will ever happen or if I should give up here.
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