Glossary

What does normalizing audio mean?

Normalizing means adjusting the whole recording up or down so it lands on a target level. It changes loudness, not balance — it will not fix a quiet guest against a loud host, because it moves everything by the same amount.

Normalizing lifts the whole recording to a target level, so a quiet guest and a loud host both move up by the same amount. The gap between them is unchanged — normalizing fixes loudness, not balance. — Everything moves together, so the difference between two voices survives untouched.

That distinction catches people out constantly. If two people are at different levels, normalizing the mix does nothing to the gap between them; you have to fix the levels of the two voices relative to each other first.