My mixes sound good on the computer but sound bad on burn disc
- Thread starter jamit
- Start date
depends of course by what you mean by weak, but if the listening environment remains the same there is no reason by a song summed from distinct tracks should sound significantly different from those tracks not rendered to a single stereo pair.
if the CD issue is purely volume you need to check master volume on the mix. Some DAWs default to -3dB on mix as a safty messure to try to keep rendering of the summed tracks below 0 dB not sure whether that is feature/fault of Logic or not. But it is something to check.
If volume is the issue simply adjusting the rendered track will resolve that.
If you are working in 24bit (or 32bit float) it is possible that even in the same listening environment you might notice some difference in transient detail and reverb tail when stepping down to redbook 16bit. but those differences tend to be relatively subtle and are unavoidable. In fact in some ways the better the mix in 24bit the more change can be detected in the step down
if you are not writing a Redbook CD but a data one with some format other then lossless AIF or WAV , MP3 for example then an auditory, even if using the same listening environment, difference is also to be expected
The most common source of problems between a mix listened to via DAW and CD is a change in the listening environment. If a mix is executed in a typical home recording room with, among other things, standing wave bass modes then it is possible that the summed, mixed CD render can sound 'weak'. It is also possible that editing the rendered track via what is commonly referred to as mastering can alleviate some of the issues
not proposing that people not master tracks but trying to fix most of the above via 'mastering' rather then in the mix tends to be counter productive
witzendoz
Senior Member
I Repeat: I would say that the Mastering stage is missing (not any mastering being done), read the posts under the Mastering Section.
Plugins are not much good if you don't know what to do with them, read some posts covering Mastering.
Cheers
Alan.
Jeff_D
New member
Classic problem: You record music in your home studio and it sounds great. Then you burn a cd and take it to a friends house, or the living room or your car and it sounds like shit.
The cause- poor acoustics in your recording and mixing space. The more you mix and the more plugins you ad, the worse it gets. Basically, your room is lying to you. The peaks and nulls created by reflective surfaces in your untreated room cause certain frequencies to be accentuated and others to be canceled out. Mixing to make your music sound good in your room ultimately mangles the sound to the point where it sounds bad anywhere else you take it.
Check out the studio building forum here. Look up "bass traps".
The cause- poor acoustics in your recording and mixing space. The more you mix and the more plugins you ad, the worse it gets. Basically, your room is lying to you. The peaks and nulls created by reflective surfaces in your untreated room cause certain frequencies to be accentuated and others to be canceled out. Mixing to make your music sound good in your room ultimately mangles the sound to the point where it sounds bad anywhere else you take it.
Check out the studio building forum here. Look up "bass traps".
TheGuitarMan
New member
Mastering is not a cure-all for bad mixes. This misconception needs to die. If it doesn't sound good when it leaves the studio, the mastering engineer isn't going to be able to do anything with it.
Yes.