Curious about levels.

[foomangoo]

Hi all,
I am fairly new to Cool Edit or "digital" recording. I am putting together a quick demo of some songs and want to start to use Cool Edit in the demo production process. My question is how do I get a constant level for each song I save after I have tweeked it with Cool Edit?

My set-up: I have a 4-track tape I run into a cass deck for the mixdown. I then run it into my pc and record it with Cool Edit. I then do some messing around with it and save it as an mp3.

I have 3 songs now saved on my hard drive, and began wondering how to equalize the different song levels when I burn them to disc. To me, they are not saved at the same level I fear.

Any help with my setup / procedure / or questions would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thanks
Foo

 

[sikter]

You can use "amplify" effects in Cool Edit.
I actually used FFT filters. You can edit FFT filter line and make it look like a strait horizontal line. Depending where you put that line you are getting result 10% louder 15% louder or the opposite. EX: Line at 100% will not affect your mp3.
You can save your tweaks and give them names like 110%, 80% etc.
I have one with a name 0%.

Try not to go up with your mp3-levels. It is better to put levels of too aloud file down.

 

[foomangoo]

I do use amplify to make it louder right out of the cass deck before I save.

Is there not any way to regulate the level of different songs besides by-ear? I want all the songs to be the same level on the cd.

 

[dobro]

One way to do it is to solo the vocal track in each of the three songs, and make adjustments based on the relative vocal levels.

Imagine, for instance, that the first song is a screaming rocker, so the vocal's naturally gonna be pretty loud, right? Imagine the solo vocal is averaging about -12 dB in Cool Edit and it's peaking in the -6 to -3 range. Okay, imagine the next song is a soft ballad. So in the real world, the vocal would be quieter for that than the screaming rocker, right? So when you solo the vocal track for the quiet song, maybe you'd like to have the average and the peaks lower than that for the rocker. Etc.

I use this method all the time when I'm trying to adjust the overall level of each track relative to every other track. It works for me, but remember that when you finally get things to where you think they belong, to burn the sucker to a CD and listen to it on three different sound systems lol.

 

[superspit]

many more proffessional ways of doing what u want........but the easiest that works quite well? (in other words, what I used to do).....use the normalise and equalizer functions found on some Nero CD burner programs, prior to burning your 3 songs. They will at least sound similar in output and in tone.
But You will eventually learn how to mixdown more consistantly as you learn more about CEP, and the above method I mentioned will then seem ridiculous!!

 

[dobro]

superspit, what are some of the more professional ways that you mention, since you say the Nero approach seems ridiculous to more experienced mixers?

 

[superspit]

One of them appears to be your approach to the matter.....but I'm not too sure whether our relatively inexperienced friend (the original poster) may have the innitial skill to actually perform said tasks, innitially. Another easy method is to have CE mix down all the tracks in a 'serial' fashion then attempt to use CE's normalise or Hard limiter and eq settings applied to all 3 songs but as one complete wave file. Once CE has processed all the sounds equally (now one track in edit view), they can be re-spliced, different names assigned to each 'split' track and basically, do what u have to do to put it onto CD. Would that be another reasonable way too? (still not quite professional, but.....)
Ofcourse, as u would know only too well, as I do, eventually he'll fall into a system that will give him an 'automated' and natural way to record and mix,...therfore all sounds/songs will begin to appear quite uniform. Only experience will allow this!!.....I guess!
Regards,
Superspit.