Volume levelling for finished CD...?

Dogbreath

Dogbreath

Im an ex-spurt
whudda you guys do for levelling out the volume of the CD as a whole?
I've got 12 songs ready for my next one and I've got about a 6 db variance between tunes.
My last ones were sent out for real mastering but this one's just me and just gonna be for friends n shit. :)

Ideas?
Thoughts?
Get a real job?

:D


:drunk:
 
I use wavelab to sequence the songs and adjust the volumes of each.

If you don't have wavelab, Sound forge, or CD architect, you could always just line them up in your DAW, adjust the levels, send them through a limiter and render.
 
+1. I bounce out all my wav files then when they're all finished I import them all into a new session, back to back, on separate tracks.

Final tweaks of broad eq or volume between tracks happen here, then final compression/limiting on the master if appropriate.
The bounces from this session are the final copies.
 
:)
I get ya.

Just tryin to figure out how I'd do this with my setup. Akai DPS24, no computer.
May create a new project, copy/paste all 12 mixdowns onto one long assed song, tweak, set markers and burn from there.
?
maybe...
and maybe normalize it as a whole then the limiter.

hmmm....
Thanks gents...wheels are turnin.
:drunk:
 
If you're going to limit, don't bother normalizing. In fact, just don't bother normalizing anyway.

Just to touch on what you said in your first post, Dog, do they SOUND like they're 6db apart? Because one thing I've learned is that 2 songs can come in with the same average and peak levels and still not sound equal in volume, and the opposite is true too. So, even though your meters tell you some songs aren't the same volume, they actually might sound just fine side by side volume wise. Just something to look out for.
 
I'd second the anti- normalising thing.
I didn't appreciate you were working OOB, I'm not really sure what the best approach is, but I do know if you normalise one long assed song the individual songs will still all have the same relationship.

I'm not even sure about limiting that way either. For arguments sake say one song is shedloads louder than another, your limiter is going to kill the former and barely touch the latter.


Can you do volume automation on that thing?

I guess you could take notes and just adjust the master fader for each session, then bounce them out as you describe for any global processing.

What RAMI said there is good too. I'm no expert by any stretch, but I do go by ear rather than numbers when it comes to final volumes.
 
RAMI said:
If you're going to limit, don't bother normalizing. In fact, just don't bother normalizing anyway.

Just to touch on what you said in your first post, Dog, do they SOUND like they're 6db apart? Because one thing I've learned is that 2 songs can come in with the same average and peak levels and still not sound equal in volume, and the opposite is true too. So, even though your meters tell you some songs aren't the same volume, they actually might sound just fine side by side volume wise. Just something to look out for.
Click to expand...

Well...I mixed and burned and during playback on different systems, there's a marked difference. 3 of the songs are way lower. Just tryin to make em equal (ish).
And when I mixed em down, I had all of em just touching in the yellow. This is the part that's throwin me. All 12 were touching yellow but a big diff in volume.
Seems like I still have some shit to take care of in the multitrack itself.
:confused:
 
Steenamaroo said:
I'd second the anti- normalising thing.
I didn't appreciate you were working OOB, I'm not really sure what the best approach is, but I do know if you normalise one long assed song the individual songs will still all have the same relationship.

since I don't know how to break this up, I'll do it this way. :D
So that idea won't work. That makes sense. One long assed song will maybe be a skosh louder but the differences will still be there.

I'm not even sure about limiting that way either. For arguments sake say one song is shedloads louder than another, your limiter is going to kill the former and barely touch the latter.

again....this makes sense. Shit, I'm feelin like a noob all over again.


Can you do volume automation on that thing?

Yup...looks like I'm not done mixing yet, huh?

I guess you could take notes and just adjust the master fader for each session, then bounce them out as you describe for any global processing.

What RAMI said there is good too. I'm no expert by any stretch, but I do go by ear rather than numbers when it comes to final volumes.
Click to expand...

yeah...shit. Thought I had a pretty good grasp but that was doing single mixes. This CD project is a bit different.
 
Hey Dog, don't forget man, you're 90% of the way there if all you're having a little trouble with is levelling volumes. This should mean that you're happy with your mixes, which is the most important thing.

I'll tell you what I do, hopefully it will help a bit. I "master" all my songs separately, getting them to average as close to -12.5db as possible. Then, when I'm putting a collection together, I put all the "mastered" songs side by side and see how close they are volume wise. If some sound lower than others, I usually end up going back to my mix. I'm not saying that I mix according to the meters when I master. But what I found is that whenever 2 songs come in at the same volume on the meters, but don't sound like they're the same volume, 99% of the time, I realize that something in the mix nneds to be fixed and it really stands out to me now even though it didn't stand out to me when I mixed it. For example, one might be too bass heavy, or the kik is sucking up the limiter....or something in the mix that's not right and it's making the limiter work more/less/differently.

So, what I would suggest is, rather than automatically adjusting the volume of one song to match another, first go back to your mix and see if there isn't something that wasn't obvious when you mixed it, but might be more obvious now that you haven't heard it in a while.
 
Dogbreath said:
Well...I mixed and burned and during playback on different systems, there's a marked difference. 3 of the songs are way lower. Just tryin to make em equal (ish).
And when I mixed em down, I had all of em just touching in the yellow. This is the part that's throwin me. All 12 were touching yellow but a big diff in volume.
Seems like I still have some shit to take care of in the multitrack itself.
:confused:
Click to expand...
That means the quieter ones have more percussive content. A limiter on either the stuff that is pushing the peaks higher, or even across the mix buss can knock those transients back so the meat of the song can be brought up to match the other ones.

Some things other than drums that can do this are strummed acoustic guitar, tamborines, and things like that. Depending on what else is going on in the mix, sometimes you can lower those elements or EQ them differently in an attempt to get rid of the giant peaks so you can turn up the mix.
 
Farview said:
That means the quieter ones have more percussive content. A limiter on either the stuff that is pushing the peaks higher, or even across the mix buss can knock those transients back so the meat of the song can be brought up to match the other ones.

Some things other than drums that can do this are strummed acoustic guitar, tamborines, and things like that. Depending on what else is going on in the mix, sometimes you can lower those elements or EQ them differently in an attempt to get rid of the giant peaks so you can turn up the mix.
Click to expand...
Man, thanx for that. Christ, that explains a lot. Often the average level meter on some of my songs jumps up a few db's during the quietest parts of the song, and it always freaked me out. But usually, it's a strummed clean guitar, or something like a guitar and tamborine, etc....I always wondered why and how that would happen and looked more in the low end area. :cool:
 
Ya both nailed it.
;)
Pretty sure the ones that are quieter are needing to be remixed. Of course, as I listen to my older stuff I cringe and think "remix that shit!"
:laughings: like that's gonna happen...

AND they just happen to be the ones with busier drums and are just harder hitting tunes.

so yeah....much thanks gentlemen.
Moocho appreciated.
:drunk:
 
RAMI said:
Man, thanx for that. Christ, that explains a lot. Often the average level meter on some of my songs jumps up a few db's during the quietest parts of the song, and it always freaked me out. But usually, it's a strummed clean guitar, or something like a guitar and tamborine, etc....I always wondered why and how that would happen and looked more in the low end area. :cool:
Click to expand...
It also depends on what your meters are actually reading. Sometimes the average level is the RMS power, sometimes it's the average peak. Those are two completely different things.

For the most part, the more transients, the quieter the song will be for a given peak level.

This is the reason why setting recording levels with peak meters is kind of silly. A drum that peaks at -1dbfs will be a lot quieter than a violin that peaks at -1dbfs simply because we don't perceive the transient peaks as volume. It's the power over time that we perceive as volume.
 
Wow, I never knew you didn't use a computer. These guys are giving great advice. When it comes time to level up all the songs, it ain't so easy. An acoustic song is going to sound quieter than a hard rockin song even though the levels match. Matching up the RMS values of a song might help, but that gets you halfway there. Remember old SouthSide Glen?? He said it best when he said songs have different Sonic Density. I still think of that and damn if he ain't right. If a song doesn't have a much meat, it'll be quieter. It's things like that that force you to use your ears more. Get em close and let the final limiter even it out.

I like editors like Wavelab for this stuff because you can line them all up in a timeline, adjust each song with plugs and bounce around from one song to another, different sections, etc and compare. Verse of one song to a verse of another. Chorus of one to the chorus of another... etc... I try to get lead vocals all to match up closely. It's a bitch.

and just gonna be for friends n shit. :)
Click to expand...
I hope I'm one of the friends and not the other category!! :eek: Send me a cd when you're done!!!
 
:drunk:

sure thing. Just as soon as I'm not embarrassed by it. :D

But I got a friend who's gonna swing by tomorrow and see what he can do with it in his pooter.
It's funny cuz he's talked about Cool Edit (?) and how he digs it and invariably has to add that it'd never work for me cuz computers hate me.
:laughings:

That's at least half true. :D
 
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