My finished mixes come out too quiet when burned to CD... WHY?!?!?!

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pisces7378

pisces7378

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I have been recording a demo CD with my band on my Logic Audio Plat. v. 5.5.1 on a PC through a MOTU 828mkII and Mackie HR624 near-fields.

The audio tracks are quite loud during mixing. I have the master fader kept at ZERO and am having to pull way back on all the individual track faders to keep the volume tollerable. But when I bounce down to one track and burn to CD, the finished song is WAAAYYY quieter. I am having to turn my CD player up to "11" just to get it up to a descent level.

Now, I think it has to do with my MOTU 828mkII software mixer and the Logic Audio Software mixer. I think I might have the MOTU 828mkII mixer's faders pushed up too high, so I am getting a "false sense of loudness" through my mixing monitoring speakers, but in reality it is just somehow the MOTU software jacking up the volume. Am I on to something? If so... what should I set the MOTU 828mkII software mixer level to?

Cheers!

Mike
 
Mike, it doesn't matter how loud you hear a track, all that matters is how much rms you are putting in that track. You could amplify a very low volume track to sound way louder and similarly v.v
I think you are printing the track too low, the best thing to do is to set everything in the mixer (in your case MOTU) to unity gain (zero dB) and then adjust the preamps and everything to the most high you can go without peaking, I also read you previous post, and I understood that your monitor volume cannot be controlled seperately from main stereo volume. This is your major problem, try to correct it and everything will come clean. Teh master volume should always be hot ( peaking without clipping :) ) and then you should be able to adjust your monitors volume seperately. Liek I said in the previous post, get a small mixer and connect your monitors to your control out and yoru headphone amp (if you have one) to your main stereo out. This way you get complete control of your playback system. The MOTU will take care of all the input stuff. Tell me what you think about it and lets see what others are to say.
 
Forgot to ask you, if you have MOTU, you do have CUEMIX dont you? Did you try setting up a cloned main out in some channel like analog1&2 or 3&4 and connect that output to the monitor speakers? Just a thought.
 
Look at the waveform of the final mixdown or just watch the meters while it plays. Are the levels hot or not?
 
A fix or a work around...

Ok I am pretty sure that I just have the MOTU 828mkII software mixer jacked wide open to like "11". But now the question is... I have already spent weeks mixing and mixing, and tweaking this song with Logic Audio Plt. 5.5.1's automation. So all my moves, and tweaks are automated and saved. When I go back in and adjust the MOTU 828mkII's internal level to Zero where it shoudl have been all along... now the whole song is going to be too quiet. How can I just raise the level of all the tracks but save the relative automation moves?

I am a complete automation goof. I have no clue what TOUCH, WRITE, READ, etc... even mean. I figured out that when I have a track in touch mode, it only will except new moves (automation) when I click and hold on the fader. That is all I know, basically. I have no idea if it is even possible to raise all the faders together and them still save their moves relative to the new level. What do you guys think???
 
pisces7378, what may help you at this point is a level maximizer on the output stage. If your song is mixed the way you want it, try placing a limiter of some sort in the master output. Be careful not to smash the song too much, but if you can manage to limit some of the transient peaks, this should allow you to raise the overall volume of the track and bring it closer to what you are trying to acheive.

Also, you might try just 'normalizing' the mixed down track and burning it that way to make sure you are utilizing as much of the dynamic range as possible.

Cheers
 
The only problem with normalizing or limiting to get the level up is that it may be pretty 'grainy' sounding if the mix level is too low and then bumped up.

Can you turn up the slider on the master buss? Usually that is the same as turning up all the individual sliders by the same amount.
 
make sure the music peaks are not anywhere between 6 and 12 db above the body of the music. Your meters might be showing a hot track, but if the track is only hot when during a kick, snare or cymbal, then you will definitely need to compress. Try to level everything out as best you can in your mix and if you need further assistance turn to a compresser/limiter so you can bring the body of the music up to a sufficient level.
 
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