Low mix on CD

Uladine

New member
I have a VS-1880 and the CDR-II CD burner. I have a small problem. It seems every mix I put to CD just sounds noticeably too quiet and a little muffled. When I mix down to the master tracks, I usually have the mix compressed to the point where the meter is bouncing around between -4 and just under zero. If I try to make the mix any louder on the 1880 ill clip. Is there any way to get a hotter mix to CD without mixing down to a seperate system? Will a seperate system get me a louder mix or would I be wasting my time? I was thinking maybe I could mix down the songs to a stereo track in cakewalk, normalize it, then burn it to CD, but I might lose sound quality converting to analog and going through my generic sound card. Any ideas? Thank you.
 
You need to be as close to 0db as possible when mastering. If you're clipping when you get the levels up where they need to be then it may be just one instrument making it clip. You might have to lower the kick or snare drum level. Or you may need to compress the bass guitar to level out some of the dynamics.

I have a VS 1880 and the CDRII burner also. I had the same trouble with my first few CD's.

Check out this link. Go to the Articles section.

http://www.audio-recording-center.com
 
So in other words its just my inexperience?

Hopefully this is the case. Thank you for your advice.

Is there a function somewhere that will keep the level from hitting 0db if there is a stray peak hits it? I've tried the limiter, but I don't know if thats what the limiter is for and I dont know how to adjust the settings for it to make it do what I need.
 
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