Consistent volume in CDs

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JonPaulP

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Now that I'm finishing up songs, I wanted to know...how do you get all the tracks in an album to have the same consistent volume? Is this what "normalizing" is for?

Is it something you do in the DAW or do you use another software for it?
 
JonPaulP said:
Now that I'm finishing up songs, I wanted to know...how do you get all the tracks in an album to have the same consistent volume? Is this what "normalizing" is for?

Is it something you do in the DAW or do you use another software for it?
Click to expand...
Well that is included in a process called mastering. You can send them away to be professionally mastered, which does a lot more than just normalize the tracks, or you could have a go at it yourself(not the best idea if you do it in the same room you record and mix).

There are some good mastering programs out there if you fancy doing it yourself. CD architect and Wavelab are probably the most well known, although you can probably use any DAW software.

Normalizing will simply amplify the whole track until the largest peak reaches a certain limit (usually 0dB). You can also compress and limit the signal to gain more volume, but this reduces the dynamics of the recording.
 
JonPaulP said:
Is this what "normalizing" is for?
Click to expand...

Normalizing is just bring the highest peak in the track to a said point (ie. -0.1 db)

This will just make your peak have the same decibel value from song to song and not make the volume retain any more continuity.

Pandamonk is right. The process youre referring to is really called mastering. Which does a lot more than make the volume consistent... though that is an important aspect of mastering.
 
I think that I should add. Like "Normalize", you are not going to find "Master" in a drop down or using a hot key. :eek:
 
Sorry for the triple posts. But here is a good read to get you started at least understanding what mastering is.

http://www.box.net/shared/hcpta149py

(stolen from monkey allen who stole it from someone who stole it from someone else)
 
I believe a lot of time has passed since that was written.

Im pretty certain is doing the same thing but to all tracks. You should be able to normalize with whatever software you are using now.

While it may be a step that may make your tracks have more continuity, a better test is listening to them in sequence and make volume adjustments that way.

For example, if you had a pop (p noise plosive) on a track as the highest peak, "normalizing" the track would just make the p sound as loud as it needs to be to make -0.5 db or whatever. This may not actually bring the overall volume of the track up much at all. And transversely, if there is no pop and the song is very consistent dynamically with no real evident peaks, the overall volume will be adjusted very much and the track will be much lower than the aforementioned track with a pop in it.

Look in your daw for a normalize option, I'm sure it has it. Then you can see how it works.


Hope that clears a little up.:)
 
Erockrazor said:
I believe a lot of time has passed since that was written.

Im pretty certain is doing the same thing but to all tracks. You should be able to normalize with whatever software you are using now.

While it may be a step that may make your tracks have more continuity, a better test is listening to them in sequence and make volume adjustments that way.

For example, if you had a pop (p noise plosive) on a track as the highest peak, "normalizing" the track would just make the p sound as loud as it needs to be to make -0.5 db or whatever. This may not actually bring the overall volume of the track up much at all. And transversely, if there is no pop and the song is very consistent dynamically with no real evident peaks, the overall volume will be adjusted very much and the track will be much lower than the aforementioned track with a pop in it.

Look in your daw for a normalize option, I'm sure it has it. Then you can see how it works.


Hope that clears a little up.:)
Click to expand...

Hmm...I was wondering...would the quality be reduced if I were to put the songs through a CD burning software, like let's say iTunes, then have the burner automatically normalize all the tracks, then rip the songs back?
 
JonPaulP said:
Hmm...I was wondering...would the quality be reduced if I were to put the songs through a CD burning software, like let's say iTunes, then have the burner automatically normalize all the tracks, then rip the songs back?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't advise that.

What I have done in the past is put all the songs into one Cubase (or whatever your multitrack software is) project. I give each tune it's own track, then hit play and flick between them and adjust the volume until it's as consistant as I can get it. Obviously this won't work for everyone, but it works for me.

I did this as part of my 'mastering' process, so the tracks were also laid out in sequence, and any 'mastering' effects or limiting/compression was done to each individual track at the same time. Then I burned the whole thing down as one .wav file, threw it into nero and set up track indexes for burning.
 
legionserial said:
I wouldn't advise that.

What I have done in the past is put all the songs into one Cubase (or whatever your multitrack software is) project. I give each tune it's own track, then hit play and flick between them and adjust the volume until it's as consistant as I can get it. Obviously this won't work for everyone, but it works for me.

I did this as part of my 'mastering' process, so the tracks were also laid out in sequence, and any 'mastering' effects or limiting/compression was done to each individual track at the same time. Then I burned the whole thing down as one .wav file, threw it into nero and set up track indexes for burning.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting way of doing it.

What I'm currently doing as "mastering" in Cubase is setting the EQ/volume up until it's hitting the red lines...so I'm guessing each track might be at around the same volume?

By the way, when do you know which level is correct? The track volume bar shows waving in the red section, but I don't hear any clipping.
 
I wouldn't necessarily advise that, throwing every song into the red is going to leave you with a very loud mix. You don't want your tracks peaking like that.
 
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