Mastering and Compressrion...

[Phil]

Okay, Okay, thanks to much of this boards help, my CD is finally nearing completion. I also bought the ntrack compressor and eq, although I have not used either yet.

My question is this.. After burning a few CD's just for fun, the overall volume is lower than I would like. From what I gather perusing these boards, I need to apply a compressor to the master channel, is this correct? Can someone please give me some intstructions into using the software effectively? What settings should I use, what should I be listening for, etc?

P.S. I am looking into have my CD mass produced by one of those companies in the back of the home recording magazines. I only need about 100 or so, can anyone recommend any companies they've had success with? What do they actually do when they "master" it and is it worth it?

Thanks again,
Phil

[Treeline]

Check out this site on the homerecording.com webring -
www.bway.net/~rongon/home_rec/

[ME]

The FAsoft compressors are pretty good but for mastering your mix you will probably want something that will add gain and limit the peak. http://www.db-audioware.com has some in-expensive mastering compressors that will help. You can use one of these in the master chanel before rendering the mix to a wave file.

A better approach would be to use a GOOD wave editor. I use Soundforge 4.5 to master mixes with. The reason is that I can analize the EQ and adjust, add gain and use the 4 band compressor to the mixdown file. The result is a 'way better' finished product!

just a thought.