I think it just depends on the samples, Like if one kick drum sample is aggressive tonally but quiet, and another is mellow, but loud, that doesn’t make for great dynamics really. My answer would be that instead of taking a one size fits all approach of normalizing or not, I would adjust each sample volume until all their dynamics mesh well with each other, with the tonally soft sounds actually being lower in volume than the more aggressive ones. Like if your favorite big bass drum sound is just quieter than the rest, the dynamics are working against you.
In a recording of a drum break the dynamics all make sense relative to each other because they all come from the same recording, and if the drummer hit a drum harder it would be both louder and more aggressive sounding. But as soon as you take things from two different recordings the dynamics no longer match. One recording might be twice the volume of another, so a ghost note on one would be louder than the main note on the other. If you just take those two samples and don’t adjust the volume, you don’t really have intentional “dynamics” between the different samples, they are just different volumes.
But again, your ear is the key, if it sounds good to you then it is good. But when you say “I hate when I’m switching samples over the chain and I found the level droping from one sample to the other” that sounds to me like just one or two samples need manual volume adjusting rather than a one size fits all approach.
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