Question about putting together a best of CD

[toemaster]

I'm strictly a hobbyist home recording musician at best. My question has to do with taking several recordings which I've converted to mp3's and putting them on a "best of" cd for our upcoming 20 year anniversary show. Some were recorded in a "pro studio". Others were recorded in a home studio so to speak. I've got the songs laid out the way they should appear on the cd. They're in chronological order (from about 1985 - 1993). The newer stuff is much better quality than the older. What do I need to do to get the levels, I guess, kind of equal so it sounds natural transitioning song to song? Oh yeah, I have cubase LE and Sound Forge.

Thanks

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I'm going to break type here and actually suggest a black box solution (veterans of this board sit down and take your nitro pills. ). But frankly it's too damn early on a Sunday morning to argue the obvious answer.

Toe, you might want to check out Volume Balancer if you don't know your way around perceived levels. Volume Balancer can really mangle your waveform if misued, and even when used properly, a manual job will usually do much better. But until a manual job can be done, this app may get you where you want to go reasonably well.

Just make sure you experiment as to what you want to use as your example file. Sometimes better results could be had by gowing up, other times by gowing down.

HTH,

G.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

If I were you I'd send them to a Mastering House.... John (Massive Mastering), and Tom (The Mastering House) both hang here regularly and do excellent work!

 

[toemaster]

Thanks to both of you. I will check into the outsourcing them to someone.

 

[mawtangent]

I know this is not the top-level pro solution but the $29 program Cakewalk Pyro (I use Pyro 2004, but I assume later versions allow this also) lets you line your tracks up visually and (by various means, "automatic" and/or manually) get them to a similar volume level before burning them to CD. You can do crossfades, apply EQ, and apply effects if you wish. It has a noise reduction feature also but I haven't found it very useful.