Not a "direct" feel when put on CD

[Bildnsteam]

My work consists of sampling on an MPC2000, producing the majority of the song and then recording it onto Cooledit. From there, I add additional elaborate tracks, etc, anyway, my problem is simple (I think). At every "mixdown" or recording (such as from the mpc), I make sure that I have the volume/record level as high as I can (under 0db on the monitoring meter on cooledit) but when I burn the wav onto the cd, the tracks dont sound "direct". Also, the tracks are a great deal quieter than a regular cd but like I said, I am a picky recorder and I make sure that I record as loud as possible. I'm not sure if this is connected but when I play these finished songs (in wav format) on WinAmp, the spectral analyser barely "jumps"! Whats going on?!

 

[zer0sig]

if there's a draphic dynamics control in cooledit, i'd reccomend giving it a try and experimenting. using those (or a plugin, if you can get one), you can compress some of the sound and get a bit more "jump" on those graphs and a lot more overall power in the sound. you can also push down the noise floor, if you can hear it. keep in mind that most popular recordings use a great deal of compression and the levels at most frequencies are boosted somewhat, rather than that one sample you're using. get a graph of the overall levels pre frequency and think about it. most popular recordings are designed to be played over the radio, which only offers about 50db of signal above the noise floor, so when you're doing 16-bit recording, you're looking at nearly 50db unused by many people in many applications, and while i find that not compressing very much sounds pretty real on my recordings, my stuff also doesn't sound as loud as i'd like, and the extra realism from the improved signal-to-noise may need to be compromised in order to get that "punch" you want.

 

[raindrops]

ok im new to all this.

but on the few things i have done, i use a waves L1 ultramaximiser directX plugin which from what i understand is a limiter/copmresser type thing. cause in your wav file there may be momentary peaks whcih when you normalise it the level is hardley any higher cause some where one peak was nearly at the max level anyway. the waves just reduces the peaks. you can get loads more signal on your file

hope that helps