J
jal
New member
whats the standard db level on cd's you buy at a store? anyone know, so i can normalize my cd's at that level.
thanx, Jal
thanx, Jal
sonusman
Banned
If you where to rip a professionally done CD onto your hard drive then open it in an audio editor and analyze it, you would find that definately at some point in the song it reaches 0db, which in digital is the loudest it will get.
Here is where the confusion is. You can analyze two different songs, see that they both are very well filled out .wav files. Great, they should sound as loud as each other right??? Wrong!!!
A midrange heavy mix will should up to three times louder to your ears as a low end heavy mix will, of a high end heavy mix. Why? Because of how our ears percieve the relative loudness of different frequencies. We hear midrange much better than we do low or high frequncies. Studies by two scientists in the 40's illustrated this. The result of the research is known as the Fletcher/Munson Relative Loudness Curve.
If you do not understand these curves, and use what they illustrate in real life to your recording techniques, you will constantly battle getting the most out of your recordings.
Study up!
Ed Rei
Echo Star Studio www.echostarstudio.com
Here is where the confusion is. You can analyze two different songs, see that they both are very well filled out .wav files. Great, they should sound as loud as each other right??? Wrong!!!
A midrange heavy mix will should up to three times louder to your ears as a low end heavy mix will, of a high end heavy mix. Why? Because of how our ears percieve the relative loudness of different frequencies. We hear midrange much better than we do low or high frequncies. Studies by two scientists in the 40's illustrated this. The result of the research is known as the Fletcher/Munson Relative Loudness Curve.
If you do not understand these curves, and use what they illustrate in real life to your recording techniques, you will constantly battle getting the most out of your recordings.
Study up!
Ed Rei
Echo Star Studio www.echostarstudio.com
drstawl
Banned
I'd rather err on the side of not having the loudest sounding .cda file ever written to CDR in favor of preserving the original sound that I worked so hard to capture accurately in the first place. EQing the mix to get more dBs out of the recording needs to be done with extreme finesse.
sonusman
Banned
As always, the doc has the right words!!!
Mastering for CD's is a funny thing nowadays. It seems that everyone wants to have the loudest CD on the market!!! Look, I am even buying into that by using exclaimation points all over the place here!!!
But seriously, I did a recording for a band, we spent butt loads, mixed at a nice facility, etc....It is louder than just about anything I have ever heard. But you know what? The original mixes sound better than the mastered versions do. They also translate every bit as good of other systems. I am not saying that the volume optimization and eq'ing where not somewhat helpful, but they were done to the degree that the original "airyness" of the mix is lost now. A big price to pay for a couple of db of "percieved" volume.
So much of mixing and mastering is easy to get wrong. Trying to make a recording do something that it doesn't already do is always going to hurt the mix. I say this all the time. There are times when you need to just step back and say it is good, why change it!!! Normalizing is hype pure and simple. It really does not work the way people think it will. It still does not address the issues of percieved volume. You can't automate that without some serious side effects.
So, as to normalizing your .wavs, just compare what you have to some professionally done stuff that is similar in style. If you are within say 90-95%, well, you have done well with a home setup. But don't try to make it as loud as possible just because it is possible. You could be doing your mixes a lot more damage than good. If your mix is not loud already, well, making it louder just highlights what is wrong with the mix anyway.
Most of the time, I cannot really get my mixes more than say 1 db louder. Or I should say my more recent mixes. After playing the game of "fix it in the mix" for some time, it really comes down to making it right and as good as possible before the next step. If you are playing "pop" music (this can include just about anything that is somewhat similar to what is on the radio, any radio) you will probably not have more than a 10 difference between your lowest and highest volume. Typically, you can maybe get away at mastering/normalizing it to about 6 db before you really start messing with the mix a bunch sonically speaking.
So, if your mixes have like a 12-20 dynamic range, you may need to work more on mixing skills than normalizing files.
Mixing and mastering are a lot harder than tracking for an engineer in my opinion. Being able to take the tracks and bring them together in a way that compliments the song takes a lot of imagination, knowledge, and patience. Having great gear helps also. It would be hard to do something on the scale of a Paccaso with charcoal...
In professional mastering suite, they don't use programs to normalize from song to song. After the songs have been compressed and eq'ed, the last step is to adjust the induvidual tracks volumes to make them sound about the same. So on one song the meters may never go past -2db, while another may ride -1 through the whole song. But they both will sound about the same volume. But also, they will have an appropriate amount of dynamic range to them. You will need good monitoring, and a lot of RAM on a computer to accomplish this. When I say a lot of RAM, we are talking about over 500MB to handle like 10 songs at once.
Anyway, could go on forever, but I think you get the point here. Filling out the meters is not always the best way to go. If you are looking for a standard, good luck. Every song and artist, and CD will have their own, as it should be.
Ed
Mastering for CD's is a funny thing nowadays. It seems that everyone wants to have the loudest CD on the market!!! Look, I am even buying into that by using exclaimation points all over the place here!!!
But seriously, I did a recording for a band, we spent butt loads, mixed at a nice facility, etc....It is louder than just about anything I have ever heard. But you know what? The original mixes sound better than the mastered versions do. They also translate every bit as good of other systems. I am not saying that the volume optimization and eq'ing where not somewhat helpful, but they were done to the degree that the original "airyness" of the mix is lost now. A big price to pay for a couple of db of "percieved" volume.
So much of mixing and mastering is easy to get wrong. Trying to make a recording do something that it doesn't already do is always going to hurt the mix. I say this all the time. There are times when you need to just step back and say it is good, why change it!!! Normalizing is hype pure and simple. It really does not work the way people think it will. It still does not address the issues of percieved volume. You can't automate that without some serious side effects.
So, as to normalizing your .wavs, just compare what you have to some professionally done stuff that is similar in style. If you are within say 90-95%, well, you have done well with a home setup. But don't try to make it as loud as possible just because it is possible. You could be doing your mixes a lot more damage than good. If your mix is not loud already, well, making it louder just highlights what is wrong with the mix anyway.
Most of the time, I cannot really get my mixes more than say 1 db louder. Or I should say my more recent mixes. After playing the game of "fix it in the mix" for some time, it really comes down to making it right and as good as possible before the next step. If you are playing "pop" music (this can include just about anything that is somewhat similar to what is on the radio, any radio) you will probably not have more than a 10 difference between your lowest and highest volume. Typically, you can maybe get away at mastering/normalizing it to about 6 db before you really start messing with the mix a bunch sonically speaking.
So, if your mixes have like a 12-20 dynamic range, you may need to work more on mixing skills than normalizing files.
Mixing and mastering are a lot harder than tracking for an engineer in my opinion. Being able to take the tracks and bring them together in a way that compliments the song takes a lot of imagination, knowledge, and patience. Having great gear helps also. It would be hard to do something on the scale of a Paccaso with charcoal...
In professional mastering suite, they don't use programs to normalize from song to song. After the songs have been compressed and eq'ed, the last step is to adjust the induvidual tracks volumes to make them sound about the same. So on one song the meters may never go past -2db, while another may ride -1 through the whole song. But they both will sound about the same volume. But also, they will have an appropriate amount of dynamic range to them. You will need good monitoring, and a lot of RAM on a computer to accomplish this. When I say a lot of RAM, we are talking about over 500MB to handle like 10 songs at once.
Anyway, could go on forever, but I think you get the point here. Filling out the meters is not always the best way to go. If you are looking for a standard, good luck. Every song and artist, and CD will have their own, as it should be.
Ed
R
Recording Engineer
Moderator
Ah, there's nothing like masking.
J
jal
New member
hey thanx, thats kinda what i figure. i swear every time i have a ? about mixing or recording, compression and eq always come up, thats why im trying to get as much information as i can about both, mic technique too.
Jal
Jal