Sound Card's Built-In Compressor/Limiter
 

There's lots of discussion about normalizing the volume level of karaoke tracks. Threads range from Hoster processing to external, hardware compressors/limiters. But I haven't seen any discussion of a feature many of us already have available to us... normalization via the sound card itself.

I typically load "drivers only" for my cards, but a recent re-install of my Sound Blaster accidentally included the "suite of apps". Before deleting what I assumed was useless crap, I played with the FX features and was surprised to find that normalization was one of the listed effects.

I engaged it on one of my systems and then added several known problematic songs to Hoster's playlist. Tracks by Sweet Georgia Brown are typically too-loud and tracks by Pioneer are typically too-quiet. Played back-to-back these tracks would normally require significant mixer board adjustments to compensate. With normalization engaged, that wasn't necessary.

I ran a show with the sound card's normalization engaged and barely touched the mixer level for the karaoke track all night. It worked that well.

Is this an ideal solution? No, it's a poor man's implemention of compression and to a trained ear you can hear it's effect. But for karaoke in a noisy environment the artifacts are not detectable.

If you've got a Sound Blaster card evaluate it for yourself. Where you'll find it is dependant on the card's vintage. On my XFi Fatal1ty it was a pull-down FX effect called "Compressor" available from the Creative Console Launcher. On my old Live! it was accessed via AudioHQ/EAX Control Panel and the effect was called "Normalizer".

I don't know if other brands of sound cards have a similar feature, but with the Sound Blaster family being so prolific, it's a free stop-gap fix for many of us. Try it, you may like it.

Thanks bernie for the info. I've often wondered if I couldn't do something like that through the soundcard software. My EAX control must be older or something because I don't have the compressor limiter/ normalizer option with it. I've upgraded the drivers a few times over the years but never the software. I also wish I could get it to output to mono, that would save me some wiring headaches.
Which version are you using?

Sam

mindonstrike, the version of AudioHQ I have is ver 1.10.22 (dated 2001). What version is yours?

Although the AudioHQ applet is a separate executable ("AudioHQU.exe") Creative Labs doesn't offer updates as a standalone download. It's only bundled with the complete install package. That sucks. Even more irritating is that an install package for a different card, known to have a newer version of AudioHQ, will immediately stop loading when it finds your card doesn't match.

I've searched Creative's forums on this subject and it appears the only way to get a newer version of AudioHQ is to find the latest install package for your card. In my case, I had to do a Google search... Creative's website had no downloads available for my old "no longer supported" card (a ploy to buy a newer one, I guess).