Burned CD levels

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Newatthis

Post by Newatthis » Tue Sep 07, 2004 2:31 pm

I'm tranferring tapes and lp's to cd thru Cakewalk. Levels are set in console view just below clipping. Sounds good as it's recording. When done, levels are a little lower than what I heard going in, plus when I burn the CD, the levels are a little lower than a commercial CD. Nothing seems to be wrong with overall sound, just a little lower in volume. Is there something I can do about this or is this normal for transferrals? Thanks!


kentothink
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Post by kentothink » Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:37 pm

There's about a million explanations for this...

do this experiment first:
put a record on on your home stereo and have a CD playing in the CD player. switch back and forth between listening to them and see if the records are actually the same volume as the CDs. not likely...

why is this? the industry standard for "loudness" has risen significantly over the past years since the digital age and the need to have every song on the radio be louder than the last one. this makes for the squashing of all transient nature and dynamics out of current recordings (rock mostly) when they get mastered by compressing the CRAP out of them.

SO?

well records and older recordings werent mastered like this so they still have all kinds of peaks and transients in them to make them sound dynamic so what you get is the loudest part of the song (even if its for a second) is the loudest part and isnt usually stripped of its loudness by making the rest of the song that loud and no change in the loudness of the loudest part. (go ahead...read that again...it almost makes sense)

basically, if your records are low volume and youre not happy about it going to CD, then youll need to remaster them. Either do it yourself by getting a GREAT compressor or look up Emily Lazar...i hear she's cheap... :wink:

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