Is there a pattern for track volumes?

  • Thread starter Thread starter wasabi25
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wasabi25

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I guess so, right?! If not, songs would come in different volumes...
How do I make it so the songs I record are with the same volume as the ones we hear on cds, etc?

Thanks! =D
 
wasabi25 said:
I guess so, right?! If not, songs would come in different volumes...
How do I make it so the songs I record are with the same volume as the ones we hear on cds, etc?

Thanks! =D
Click to expand...

Well you may not want that but if you do turn it ll of the way up till the dust falls off your speakers then apply a generous amount of compression so that your tracks look like a cinder block then your good to go.:rolleyes:







:cool:
 
Put a pro-mixed song that you like right on your DAW in one of your songs and try to match it.

The biggest reason most people can't get it loud and in your face is because there's too much fog in the bass that's taking up space. If the bass is tight then that fog isn't there and there's more headroom to use if you want to.

Most of the fog in bass comes not from the fundamental frequency, but more from the harmonic that is an 8va above that and even more so from the 5th that's above that. The 5th is the main reason most mixes that sound soft do, from what I've seen,
 
There was another thread a lot like this. Louder isn't always better. Google "volume wars" and look at some of the results that come up, specifically the Wikipedia page.
 
Commercial CD's are mastered. They are not a collection of mixes that are just put on CD.

There is a process after mixing in which the songs are all processed to sound like they belong together and be uniform volume. That is also where the volume is jacked up and limited. This is the mastering process.

You will not be able to make a mix that is as loud as a mastered CD.
 
Farview said:
Commercial CD's are mastered. They are not a collection of mixes that are just put on CD.

There is a process after mixing in which the songs are all processed to sound like they belong together and be uniform volume. That is also where the volume is jacked up and limited. This is the mastering process.

You will not be able to make a mix that is as loud as a mastered CD.
Click to expand...

Ohhh! I see!
Most messages were very complicated! Haha, I'm kind of a big noob...
But, yep this one was pretty straight forward.
I just wanted to, whenever I was like recording a CD, that songs didn't sound like they don't belonged in the same range of volume.
Is there a technique for us to limit a volume, or something like that?
Or like someone else said, we have to listen to another song, take it as a model, and follow it?

Thanks again! Massive amounts of help! =)
 
There is a technique and equipment/software that facilitates that sort of thing. But it is a separate process.

Mix all the songs first.

Then bring all the mixes into one session

EQ them individually so that they all start to sound similar

Then run them into a limiter to get the volume up without clipping the file

Take those and put them on a CD

That is the process, but there is as much art to doing that as there is to recording and mixing in the first place. It's not a one-size-fits-all thing.
 
Farview said:
There is a technique and equipment/software that facilitates that sort of thing. But it is a separate process.

Mix all the songs first.

Then bring all the mixes into one session

EQ them individually so that they all start to sound similar

Then run them into a limiter to get the volume up without clipping the file

Take those and put them on a CD

That is the process, but there is as much art to doing that as there is to recording and mixing in the first place. It's not a one-size-fits-all thing.
Click to expand...

Awesome!!! Now I have an idea about it! =)
I'm such a noob, but I plan on getting good knowledge on the years to come.
Thank you for this precious information, my friend. =)
 
farview said:
it is a separate process.


There is as much art to doing that as there is to recording and mixing in the first place. It's not a one-size-fits-all thing.
Click to expand...

.......................................+1 !!!
 
You may also want to consider this. While it's good to have all the songs on an album the same volume, you don't necessarily want all the tracks to have the same tone / eq. Meaning, make sure all your songs don't start sounding the same. Having some different flavors in there will help the album to sound varied. This, of course, is second to the songs themselves being written in a way that they don't all sound the same.
 
DogmaticVox said:
You may also want to consider this. While it's good to have all the songs on an album the same volume, you don't necessarily want all the tracks to have the same tone / eq. Meaning, make sure all your songs don't start sounding the same. Having some different flavors in there will help the album to sound varied. This, of course, is second to the songs themselves being written in a way that they don't all sound the same.
Click to expand...
I wish someone would tell this to AC/DC :)


I think it's more important to have the album flow from one song to the next. They don't hall have to sound the same or be the same volume, but the songs should flow into one another. Of course they should all sound close enough that seem like they belong together and not like a compilation CD.
 
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