making a demo sound - "mastering"?

[Blue Bear Sound]

Hey blue bear, this is kinda off the topic of this thread but what soundcard do you recommend? I'm in the market for a new one....I have heard fairly decent things about the new soundblaster audigee card as far as price/quality ratio. Is that all just hype or no?

Nothing Soundblaster makes is anything even remotely "pro".... it's only my opinion, but I would say "hype"

I know the MOTU cards are excellent, as are RME's... personally, I don't use a soundcard for analog-to-digital recording -- my RMEs are only digital I/O which get fed to/from 20-bit ADATs...

I use an Audiophile 2496 for monitoring purposes only....

And what is it specifically about an A/D converter that makes it good or bad?

The circuit design - quality of the components - the quality of the internal clock - the word-size of the converter and its sampling rate... I'm not a tech so I can't explain the actual component specifics!


Bruce

 

[werewolf831]

Hello Alschmid,
I've had similar probs with my mixes not sounding hot enough once I burn them to cd on my computer. I learned this is another forum and it really helped. Double click your volume icon on your toolbar, then click options>properties (my card is a Sounblaster 128), then theres a field that says "adjust volume for" and chose recording. From there you can raise your Line In volume. Voila, your soundcard records at a higher volume! Although this may not solve all your problems, It sure helped my recordings sound louder and fuller. Hope this may help.
werewolf

 

[Dolemite]

Hello Bruce, Hello Track Rat

It's as follows:
First, I mix the whole thing over an old Yamaha 16-Track board, and I compress the two lead voices with a Behringer Composer (2x Compressor), the guitars and the bass with a Behringer Multicomp (okok, not really good but I don't really have very much money...). I add two reverb sources, one from a Carvin XP4 MultiFX and one from a Zoom thing which I borrowed (I don't know the product name).
My monitors are two Yamaha MSP-5s.

Now when I listen to the mix in the room where I mix (which is a really "dry" room with lots of carpets and no reflecting walls or so) it sounds good, at least when I listen to it loudly. I'd like to take this "loudness" over to the CD...

I record the signal from the board into a computer. I toy around a bit with Samplitude and export the thing to WAV and burn it from there.
When listened to the CD loudly again, it's okay but a bit thin. When listened to it quitely again, it sounds VERY thin.

How do I make it sound thicker, "louder" when played quietly (as known from "commercial" CDs)?

Thanks a lot for your quick answer!
alex/switzerland

I'm coming to this thread a little late, but anyway...I think you'd end up with a louder, fuller mix if you simply recorded each track to your computer individually (or even 2 at a time with them hard-panned) as hot as you possibly can - just use the Composer's peak limiter function to keep it from digital clipping. Hopefully you have some way of easily lining up the tracks - like a click or something. Maybe you can mix in a few drum beats on the beginning of every track you record, or just record all the tracks with a certain drum track on the opposite (left/right) channel. Now I'd just mix in Sonar or Cubase or whatever.

 

[nave]

Bruce , thank you for your opinion.....For awhile i was thinking I would just go with a Sound Blaster card, but the more and more I talk to people and read the less I think I'm gonna get one....

I've been looking into both the MOTU's and RME's.....ya know I just want to spend my money on something I'm gonna be real happy with...I think alot of the people with the sound blasters tend to not have done their research and just buy on compulsion and go for the SB for the obvious name recognition amoungst amatuer audio folks(not that I'm pro or anything ofcourse)...


Thanks

-nave