mastering and Compression...

[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

[Buck62]

As far as duplication goes, I suggest Oasis.
The advantages to using Oasis is that:

A: They take sample tracks off of the cd's they produce, and put these songs on a sampler disc that is distributed to "all the right people"... producers, larger radio stations, record company execs, promoters, etc.

<and>

B: Your cd will be available for national distribution, to stores like Borders, Camelot, and other retail music outlets across the country. This is all included with thier package.

Check out thier website ... oasis.com

I'm sending my 10 song mastered cd to them next week. They will send a full package to your home with all thier information, as well as numerous samples of thier work, thier client list, and all the benefits of using thier services. This package is extremely impressive.

If you are serious about your work, and you know that it's good, then I'd suggest you start off with a thousand cd's.
The price is much better per cd, and I don't know anybody that will touch such a short-run of only 100 cd's. If they do, it'll cost you a bundle.... like 6 or 7 dollars per cd, as opposed to 2 dollars per cd for 1,000. Realistically, you'll need dozens of extras just to send out for promotional purposes anyway.
Think BIG, my friend... or you'll pay out the ass for a short run and kill your chances of going anywhere in the music industry.
Yes... it's a gamble. but you'll never know unless you try.
Best of luck to you...

..............Buck

[scraggs]

Hey Phil, what you really want is a limiter, not a compressor. The difference being that a compressor works on overall program level, while a limiter just brings down the peak levels (very basic explanation). I use the Waves Ultramaximizer, basically you set the output level to where you want it (say -.5db), and then adjust the threshold to determine how much the peaks are being attenuated. It's very simple and intuitive to use. I usually have the peaks being attenuated about 5-6db. You can go nuts with it too and make complete sonic hamburger of your audio, so be careful.
As far as duplication companies offering "mastering": in many cases this just means cutting your cd onto a glass master from which the copies are made. Nothing is actually done to the audio. However, many companies will do mastering for you, in terms of limiting, compression, eq, sequencing. I'd be wary, not that i think these guys don't know what they're doing, I'm sure they do, but mastering can have a big effect on how your cd sounds, and if you've spent a bazillion hours working on it, you don't wanna just hand it over to someone who might not know where you're coming from...

[crosstudio]

what you really, really need to do is compress the individual tracks as necessary, and then when mixing use a multi-comp which can split the audio spectrum into parts and only compress further the frequency sections that jump out. i use cakewalk's compressor for mixing the individual tracks to a stereo mix, and sekd's redroaster multi-comp when mastering.

also, don't forget to normalize the stereo mix. the redroaster multi-comp algorithm has a built in maximizer setting that works OK, but i'd gotten into the habit of the normalizing the stereo mix tracks in cakewalk before mastering.