mastering peak levels

[etok]

OK, new here...

I'm recording an LP on a yamaha 8 track cassette recorder. i'm doing vocal tracks in cool edit pro and mastering shit in sound forge...problem is on my PC the levels look fine, nothing peaks hard...its all dandy. but when it gets on

my imac-g5....and i turn the volume up all the way on my headphones....those parts when everything was just about to peak seem to be amplified and i get some nice clicks/pops/nastyness.....question is...once this stuff is burned to cd...what am i supposed to trust....do i need to lower levels on my pc to a point that they dont peak on my mac....or should i just burn a cd and put it in my car and see what happens.

any help is appreciated

[Robert D]

You need to determine where the clipping is happening and why. Between sytems this often turns out to be rference level mismatch, +4 into -10.

[FALKEN]

it could be the headphone amp that is distorting......

[MessianicDreams]

Originally Posted by etok

and i turn the volume up all the way on my headphones....

Maybe that's the problem? if you're cranking the fuck out of yer headphone amp, it could be anything that's clipping.

[scrouch]

It'd have to agree with this. If it sounds fine until you push the headphone amp, the problem is in your headphone amp on in the headphones themselves. Maybe pushing too much bass into them? What are you using as output when the levels are fine? Are you using monitors or computer speakers? A few pretty good rules are not to trust computer speakers, not to trust headphones, and not to trust anything where the amp or speakers/headphones are being pushed too hard. The imac g5 has an optical output which will give you better results than using headphones will. You'd be best off to rent some actual monitors. They're normally dirt cheap if you don't need them for long. Or better yet, burn a CD and take it to a place that sells monitors. Then use the CD to "demo" their selection.