When I finish mixing my music on my home studio I really love how it sounds through my behringer 2031A's. It sound very loud and solid. But when I burn it to cd, it leaves me wanting more. It sounds very low and when I pick up the volume on my car stereo i can hear distortion. Is it because I am using windows media player to burn my cds? or do I need special software to burn my music, or do I need to get it mastered in order for it to be loud? PLease share your views. Thank you much!!

Juno wrote:

When I finish mixing my music on my home studio I really love how it sounds through my behringer 2031A's. It sound very loud and solid. But when I burn it to cd, it leaves me wanting more. It sounds very low and when I pick up the volume on my car stereo i can hear distortion. Is it because I am using windows media player to burn my cds? or do I need special software to burn my music, or do I need to get it mastered in order for it to be loud? PLease share your views. Thank you much!!

Hmm difficult to say without hearing it.

Distortion could be any number of things.

Overall levels may well be an accumulative issue through recording and mastering, probably related to long term average levels, particularly if compared to anything recently commerical.
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Recording Studio Suntans

During the mastering stage the overall level is usually brought up through careful use of compression and limiting. It's difficult to tell where the distortion is coming from without listening. Sometimes it may be due to an overabundance of low frequencies that can be reproduced on better quality speakers, but will distort on speakers that cannot reproduce them.
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Tom Volpicelli
The Mastering House Inc.
http://www.masteringhouse.com
CD Mastering and Media Production Services

This may sound really stupid, but I gotta ask stupid questions to learn right?

I get the same problem with sound from my home studio. Could you not, connect a variety of speakers and then mix so it sounds good on all of them? From bad head phones, to horrible computer speakers, to high end bose and all the way to the lovely studio speakers?

kasper wrote:

This may sound really stupid, but I gotta ask stupid questions to learn right? I get the same problem with sound from my home studio. Could you not, connect a variety of speakers and then mix so it sounds good on all of them? From bad head phones, to horrible computer speakers, to high end bose and all the way to the lovely studio speakers?

Sure, and I highly recommend doing that. One of the difficulties with this approach though is the amount of time that it consumes and dealing with conflicting perspectives, e.g. "it sounds "boxy" on this system and great on this one. Which one is right?
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Tom Volpicelli
The Mastering House Inc.
http://www.masteringhouse.com
CD Mastering and Media Production Services

Right, ok cool, but apart from it being time consuming, it can actually be beneficial?

kasper wrote:

Right, ok cool, but apart from it being time consuming, it can actually be beneficial?

Absolutely. It's just a question of which monitoring and room environment you feel translates the best. That's why ME's are so particular with room acoustics and monitoring. Listening on various systems allows you to hear potential flaws, it only becomes problematic when the different systems and listening environments are contradictory.
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Tom Volpicelli
The Mastering House Inc.
http://www.masteringhouse.com
CD Mastering and Media Production Services

Ok, I know what you mean.

I am still just trying to learn as much as I can before I go and hit the SAE Course.
I am just gonna try and listen to my recordings on as many speakers as I can, and is as many different environments. Should only prove helpful.

What I dont quite get is that when I bounce a complete song, as an mp3 it doest quite sound as cool. Is that because its lower quality sound files? Should I bounce it as something else?

kasper wrote:

Ok, I know what you mean. I am still just trying to learn as much as I can before I go and hit the SAE Course. I am just gonna try and listen to my recordings on as many speakers as I can, and is as many different environments. Should only prove helpful. What I dont quite get is that when I bounce a complete song, as an mp3 it doest quite sound as cool. Is that because its lower quality sound files? Should I bounce it as something else?

You should bounce it to the same format as the recorded material in order to compare apples to apples. In general though you will probably want to bounce it to 44.1K/16 bit wav files in order to hear what it would sound like on a CD.
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Tom Volpicelli
The Mastering House Inc.
http://www.masteringhouse.com
CD Mastering and Media Production Services

Gotcha. Thank you.

Kasper