i use cubase 4 and for some reason, even though in the program my masters are almost clipping, when i burn a copy to cd it isnt anywhere near the volume of a regular commercial release. my masters arent even coming out as loud as a cd from the 70's or 80's. if anyone can tell me what the problem may be, feel free to let me know.

thinlizzydude wrote:

i use cubase 4 and for some reason, even though in the program my masters are almost clipping, when i burn a copy to cd it isnt anywhere near the volume of a regular commercial release. my masters arent even coming out as loud as a cd from the 70's or 80's. if anyone can tell me what the problem may be, feel free to let me know.

There are a variety of techniques to acheive a louder master, brickwall limiting, purposely clipping a good converter, parallel compression, to name a few. The technique(s) used will depend on the mix.

The main thing is that the mix has to be able to take this type of "abuse" to remain relatively clean. A good non-distorted mix that's not overly dense to start lends itself to a louder master.
_________________
Tom Volpicelli
The Mastering House Inc.
http://www.masteringhouse.com
CD Mastering and Media Production Services

do you think there's anything that might be going wrong during mix down? Right now I am mixing down the songs to a wav file. for some reason i have to do it twice for each song because the first time i mix down, the file size is too big for a cd and the second time is a normal file size.

thinlizzydude wrote:

do you think there's anything that might be going wrong during mix down? Right now I am mixing down the songs to a wav file. for some reason i have to do it twice for each song because the first time i mix down, the file size is too big for a cd and the second time is a normal file size.

Are you mixing down to a 44.1K 16 bit stereo file for the CD?
_________________
Tom Volpicelli
The Mastering House Inc.
http://www.masteringhouse.com
CD Mastering and Media Production Services

yeah

What do you mean by "the file size is too big for a cd ". If it's a 44.1K 16 bit file you would need more than 80 minutes for it to be too large.

I would verify that the format of the first file is correct.
_________________
Tom Volpicelli
The Mastering House Inc.
http://www.masteringhouse.com
CD Mastering and Media Production Services

you'll have to excuse me for misspeaking. The file size thing is not the problem. after researching this fully, I have narrowed the problem down and am now under the assumption that there is some kind of volume reduction happening within cubase. After applying eq, a limiter, multi band compression and stereo enhancers to my masters, they are still coming out too quiet. after i have applied all of these things the output bus is nearly peaking and when i put it on a cd it is still too quiet.

thinlizzydude wrote:

you'll have to excuse me for misspeaking. The file size thing is not the problem. after researching this fully, I have narrowed the problem down and am now under the assumption that there is some kind of volume reduction happening within cubase. After applying eq, a limiter, multi band compression and stereo enhancers to my masters, they are still coming out too quiet. after i have applied all of these things the output bus is nearly peaking and when i put it on a cd it is still too quiet.

To verify that cubase is reducing the volume, bounce a reference tone at a given level then compare this to the original. If they are the same then the issue has more to do with the processing that you may be using.

Getting a mix to be "competitve" with other commercial master is not an easy task if it's to be done correctly. It's much more than throwing on a few plug-ins and smashing away. The mix also has to be able to withstand this type of abuse that many commercial release go through. The cleaner the mix, the easier it is to get it up to a commercial level.
_________________
Tom Volpicelli
The Mastering House Inc.
http://www.masteringhouse.com
CD Mastering and Media Production Services