audio levels and other problems

[cobweb]

I'm making hip-hop beats with chords. I'm recording into Acid directly from a drummahine and a keyboard synth. I end up with a wav file that is low in volume. This is not the only complaint I have with my wav files, Please read on there's more....... I have been recording using Headphones because of pain in tha ass neighbors. I moved so now I am using my Yammy NS10's to monitor the playback in Acid (I haven't mixed down the files yet). I am trying to adjust the levels before mixdown. I am using several commercial CD's I converted to wav as a reference to compare my work to theirs. The commercial CD have drum/bass sounds that sound thin. At low volumes I can hear the commercial CD but at the same low volume I can't hear the track(s) that I made. When I crank the volume up a little bit the commercial CD increases in volume but the tracks I made explode and the bass is pounding and if I increase the volume even more then I know I would crack the speaker cones. Even at this volume where I can hear my track about to explode the cones the volume is still about half that of a reference CD. So the problem with my track/work is that at low volumes I can't hear it on the monitors but when I turn the volume up the bass/drums they are right there in my face too quickly (and at this volume the commercial CD is twice as loud as my track(s). What should I do? Keep in my mind that some tracks have bass drums so I can't separate the bass from the drums and put them on separate tracks in those instances. I haven't tried compression or added any effects to the tracks. What software could I use (personally I prefer stuff from Sonic Foundry).

[Eddie N]

firstly , i would look into your recording multimedia settings for your soundcard.. your line in level might be set too low.. try incresing it and see what happens.. also raise the volume on your drum machine to about 3/4's of the way before you adjust the recording properties..

secondly , a professionaly mixed and mastered cd has been normalized , compressed , eq'ed and a bunch of other things , so your setting high standards to raw tracks .. when your comparing your mix are you monitoring your playback levels ? ideally you want to get as close to -1 dbs as you can..

fix your first problem about not getting high enough recording levels , then get back to use so we can more accurately give advice as to your second issue..

- eddie -