SYSTEM:
Mac OSX 10.4.11 on Mac G4 machine 500MHz. Installed Audacity from <audacity-macosx-ub-2.0.0.dmg> I usually apply the chain to .AIFF files.
Apply Chain… (1) Normalize to 0.0db, (2) Export as Ogg
RESULT: The normalization process appears to run, but the screen does not update to show the change. Valid .ogg files are created, but they are not normalized. I discovered that VERY SHORT FILES (24-second audio clip) normalize correctly.
I made up some WAV files from 12 seconds to 90 seconds long.
Apply Chain… (1) Normalize to 0.0db, (2) Export as WAV
RESULTS using Audacity 2.0.0.0 >36 seconds long - not normalized
RESULTS using Audacity 1.3.12 beta DOES NOT SHOW THE ABOVE PROBLEM:
I repeated the same tests after deleting everything in <audacity.cfg> except the top line. RESULTS: (exactly as above) v 2.0.0.0 fails; v 1.3.12 beta succeeds. (I’ll try Audacity 2.0.1 rc2 but both .dmg and .zip failed to download)
I agree this should be fixed in 2.0.1 (see “Normalize: Fixed issues where normalization could be to wrong value… if applied to “read-directly” WAV and AIFF files before On-Demand completed” in the 2.0.1 Release Notes). This would assume your preference was set to use On-Demand loading for import of WAV and AIFF files; Normalize was going ahead without waiting for On-Demand import to finish calculating the waveform amplitude.
The reason files shorter than 30 seconds did not produce the issue is that On-Demand loading is not used for such short files (although they are still “read directly” rather than copied in).
In 2.0.1 release, I have tested Chains using “read directly” WAV and AIFF imports shorter than 30 seconds, without a problem, to make sure that is still working.
Note that if you are exporting to a lossy format like OGG or MP3, the peak amplitude of the exported file is unlikely to be exactly the requested Normalize level, especially with MP3, but should be close to it. The exported amplitude should be exactly correct for lossless exports like WAV and AIFF. We have a low priority bug open to try and correct the exported amplitude level for lossy exports, but basically the issue arises from using a lossy export format.
If you still find problems in 2.0.1 with this, please let us know.