I recently discovered the benefit of the Muse FX, specifically the compressor for processing live vocal recordings with high level differences between music and applause.
I usually just normalized the whole recording, which left the vocal parts very weak.
When applying the compressor (and sometimes also a bit of reverb) I noticed that this significantly increases the overall signal level, even close to full scale, so that I sometimes see the VU meters turn red.
I fixed this before export by reducing the track gain by some 3dB, but to be sure about the actual headroom left (or dB to reduce) I would first have to mix-and-render (to a new track), and based on those peaks process the original source. Obviously I can’t apply a “normalize” effect after the Muse FX unless I want to avoid the time consuming intermediate step of mix-and-render.
Now I wonder if there is a recommendation on the order of effects, assuming a rather low-gain source (with lot of headroom) and a target of let’s say -3dB peak:
- first apply comp/reverb, then “guess” a suitable value for amplification to get to target
- first apply normalize to target dB, then comp/reverb and finally guess a value for attenuation (track gain -x dB) before export
- any other recommendation?