recording home demo: volume?

[thomas2]

Though i'm quite new to this i’m currently helping a local band recording a demo, using cakewalk sonar. we’ve recorded everything (bass, drums, 2 guitars) except the vocals, and so far it sounds alright, but the total master volume seems to be quite low, compared to other mp3’s on the same computer. Is there any way to solve this problem?

thanks, thomas

oh, and maybe just any other tips for home-recorders?
when everything’s finished i might post a link here to the songs. if anyone cares.

[Dogman]

If everything sounds good, just bring the fader volume up on the master bus, or on each track, whichever. If that causes problems, you can try a limiter, but be cautious.

[pingu]

Yes you need to get your stereo mixdown mastered.



Tip - give up now before this shit takes your life.

[Agent47]

Thomas2, you need to get it mastered, which will come after the mixing stage.

Mastering is a specialist field involving equalisation, multi-band compression, limiting, exciters and other processes. These all work together to improve the 'quality' of the final mix, as well as making it sonically match other tracks on an album, and will normally boost the overall level so that it sounds 'loud'.

(I'm sure the mastering engineers on this forum will pull-apart what I've just said, but it's more or less accurate!)

If you want your final mix to sound 'loud', then you'll need to involve some form of mastering, preferably from a mastering engineer, otherwise it'll sound quiet and nowhere near the level of a commercial CD.

[IronFlippy]

I'll be nice and not tell you to search, because this has been posted here before quite frequently.

It's all in the mastering. When everything's all done in the mix, you mixdown to stereo. Then you bring certain frequencies up/down (usually down) to make it sound better, and you use a limiter and a bit of compression to bring up the volume. Of course there's a lot more to it than that, but if it were easy to describe, there wouldn't be a profession surrounding mastering, now would there? Since you're helping a band that isn't yours do a recording, I suggest sending the final mixdown to a mastering engineer to get it done. It really is a difficult thing to do. If you really want to do it yourself or you can't afford to have it done professionally, then you're going to have to settle for something a bit subpar until you can get it done properly. Unfortunately, I can't help you beyond that as I don't do it myself.

[thomas2]

thanks a lot for all your replies,

perhaps it's best indeed to seek a bit of assistance, just to get the most out of the recordings.
None of us have ever done anything like this before, so when we have finished recording and mixing one or two songs i might post them up here and ask for comments on that. This place has already been quite useful for us newbies!