Normalizing vent.

[Forb]

- Log in

- Go to Setup

- Enable Direct Sound

- Select the SFX Button

- Select Compressor and click Add.

- Under Compressor Properties use the following settings

- Gain = Adjust for how loud you want people to be. (I use 15)

- Attack = 0.01

- Release = Around 500

- Threshold = Around -30

- Ratio = 100

- Pre delay = 4.0

Copied from here.


This makes a difference in vent so everyone is basically the same volume.

[Tymjin]

Thanks Forb. It should be noted that the instructions are for Vent on PC.

Unfortunately for those of us on Mac there is not an elegant way to do this as Vent on Mac is nerfed heh. The only thing I found on the net is at the following link which requires more 3rd party apps running :/

http://dreness.com/wowblog/?p=37

I'm trying to look for another solution and will post when I find it.

[Tymjin]

Confirmed, Vent devs for Mac are still asleep. The following forum post is our only work around without using more 3rd party apps or outboard compressors/limiters before your headphones/speakers. The later is totally possible, but complete overkill of course.

"MAC users cannot do normalization this way. I use a mac and it was frustrating until I figure out I could set up special effects to change the volume of each person individually (and it saves between uses).

To set up a special effect for a person: Right click on the user's name, select miscellaneous, then Special effects. This gives you a slide bar where the volume is set at 100% Move it above 100 for higher volume, below to dial it down a bit."

For those who care, technically Normalization and Compression or completely different. Normalization increases the highest peak to 0 db (or another predefined highest level) where as audio Compression* actually lowers the audio peaks to smooth out the difference between loud and soft passages. So technically the PC suggestion is Compressing Vent, but everywhere I found on the net (including Wow Insider) calls this process "Normalizing Vent". It's still a great suggestion though Forb

*Dynamic Compression like this is completely different from MP3, AAC, etc compression codecs that shrink data size of audio files.

erm....where am I? How did I get here? Sorry about that. Most everyone knows this stuff and apologies for the tangent if you made it this far.

[Forb]

Yeah, I did want to mention it technically is not normalization. But everyone knows it as that and it was requested I repost this on this forum.

And for the Mac thing... I'm sorry. How do you keep yourself from throwing it out the window?

[Tymjin]

I have a ProTools HD system and for audio and video production Mac is still king.

Granted it is complete and total overkill running WOW with a PT system on studio monitors, but damn it sounds good