Hi all! I had hoped my first post would be in the “made with Ardour” category, but here we are.
I “completed” a project, and upgraded to 7.5 on Windows the other day. Of course, I had to go back and make slight alterations to one of the mixes per the artist’s request, but now I run into a problem with export only producing a normalized file.
My export profile is set to a 48k 32 bit floating export with no normalization. I chose the correct profile. I export, and the final analysis reads at -14lufs and -1 peak.
Using Loudness Analysis on the mix outside of the export process seems to confirm that normalization is occuring (apologies, I had screenshots to show the other steps, but my account is too new):
I didn’t use any processing on the master bus, I removed any metering tools, and I’ve also tried an export with the fader positioned at ~-20db with the same result
Prior to altering this mix and attempting to re-export, I had run a set of mastered files through a slightly modified version of the YouTube export profile for a final normalization. I thought that perhaps the settings had carried over (bug or new feature or something), but that modified profile had peak normalization deactivated.
I exported a lot of mixes and several mastered versions of those mixes without this issue on Ardour versions 7.3 and 7.4, so I have to conclude that this is a bug in 7.5.
I glanced through the bug tracker, but didn’t see anything similar. Just wanted to check in here to see if anyone else was having a similar issue before I submit a formal report!
Hi Seablade, sorry about that — I wrapped up my first post right as I was heading out the door for work yesterday, and didn’t realize I was limited in the number of images I could include.
This link should have screenshots of the export profile, the export dialog, and the final analysis of an export: Imgur: The magic of the Internet — thank you for your time!
Definitely think you are correct, it appears to be applying a normalization still. So out of curiosity, if you CHECK the normalization box, does it still normalize? And if so, what happens if you then UNCHECK it again?
Just trying to figure out if it is purely graphical or functional.
Yesterday, I did a flac export with the ardour-included profile, and didn’t appear to get a loudness analysis (there’s a slim chance I somehow closed the window when waking my monitor). Subsequent wav exports still had the same apparent normalization.
As soon as I get off of work in a few hours, I’ll export my same profile with normalization on/off to see what that does.
I’ll also pop one of my apparently-normalized exports into a new session with a loudness meter to help see if the issue is graphical or actual.
To clarify, the graphical vs functional issue I was referring to was with the checkbox in the export dialog, I have no doubt based off what you posted that the file itself is actually being normalized, I am just wondering if it is a problem of the checkbox being out of sync or not reflecting the actual setting correctly, vs it is always applying normalization.
Now it gets interesting. I exported with the box checked to normalize loudness to -16LUFS (just to be sure there was a difference from the -14LUFS target of my previous exports) and got a normalized output to -16LUFS:
So it looks like maybe the checkbox is ignored. Loudness normalization happens regardless of if it’s selected or not, however the target settings seem to be respected.
