I just finished recording/producing a CD project for a friend. It was the 1st full project that I had done. When I mixed it down and put it on a CD it sounded fine. I normalized every final audio track before exporting it.
I made sure that I mixed the final track to the peak tolarances before distrotion. I was able to get the meters on my channel as well as my master buss and my soundcard buss to peak out at either 0.0 or 0.1. But when I play that CD followed by another CD, (Store Bought) then there is a substantial differnece in the volume between the two. I have to turn up the one I made quite a bit to get the same overall volume as the "regular" CD.
Even though I am using the BBE Sonic Maximizer plugin, I still feel the recording is "weak" compared to Professionally produced CD's.
I record in 24 Bit 96000 rate then export to 16 bit 44100.
Is there something else I can do to get more "GAIN" so my CD's will have the same volume as one purchased in a store?

MC

MC,

I almost never 'normalize' - for various reasons (though it can be useful in some circumstances).

The BBE Maximizer is not necessarily going to give you the 'loudness' you seem to want/need. And, frankly, it has some limitations imho.

However, I think what you're looking for would come from using plugins such as master limiters/compressors, and from using mastering software (such as Ozone).

But, it should be said, like anything else, using these tools takes a bit of skill and experience (and experimentation of course).

As a suggestion, I would start with something like the "Classic Master Limiter" (it's a free master limiter plugin, I just don't have the site URL handy at the moment or I would present that as well). Throw it on your master bus - just before the final hardware stage output. It comes with some presets. What it will immediatley do, however, is limit the output to -.2 below 0 (so there's SOME headroom left) and it will limit (which is a form of heavy compressions in simple terms) giving you the "loudness" you are looking for. Experiment and you'll see.

HOWEVER< limiters, compressors and ANY type of processing can be overused, or used improperly, or can take away some dymanics, and so on. So I always suggest using judiciously - unless the sound you're looking for is, in fact, 'to the wall'.

Enjoy.

ORIGINAL: IamUncleMikey

I just finished recording/producing a CD project for a friend. It was the 1st full project that I had done. When I mixed it down and put it on a CD it sounded fine. I normalized every final audio track before exporting it.
I made sure that I mixed the final track to the peak tolarances before distrotion. I was able to get the meters on my channel as well as my master buss and my soundcard buss to peak out at either 0.0 or 0.1. But when I play that CD followed by another CD, (Store Bought) then there is a substantial differnece in the volume between the two. I have to turn up the one I made quite a bit to get the same overall volume as the "regular" CD.
Even though I am using the BBE Sonic Maximizer plugin, I still feel the recording is "weak" compared to Professionally produced CD's.
I record in 24 Bit 96000 rate then export to 16 bit 44100.
Is there something else I can do to get more "GAIN" so my CD's will have the same volume as one purchased in a store?

MC

What Billy said....

When you normalize, you are effectively changing the volume so that the highest peak is at 0dB (or whatever you normalize to). If your loudest peak is 20dB higher than most of the song, it will still be quiet. You'll need to compress or limit the sound so that you can raise the overall level without pushing the peaks over the top. You can also manually lower the levels on the peaks (which is a good option if you have a few major peaks), then compress.

If you're new to compression, check out the links on...
http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m=102911

I downloaded the Classic Master Limiter.zip file. I extracted it to my program files/cakewalk/shared plugins folder. It didn't reconize it. So I copied it into my shared dxi folder. No luck. So I copied it into shared folder that I could think of. Still nothing. It doesen't seem to be able to find it. IS there something I'm doing wrong? I am running windows XP.

>I extracted it to my program files/cakewalk/shared plugins folder. It didn't reconize it.

It might be a VST plugin(?).
You need to run the VST adapter.

In addition to the comprassor/limiter advice, I read here recently that lots of commercial CD's are not mastered for quality, but instead for loudness. Executuives/Producers tell the engineers to clip the waves, to try to make the songs louder than rival cds, so they 'stand out from the crowd'.
I think you could do this to check.... rip the song on the commercial CD that you are comparing to, and paste it into Sonar. Look at the waveform. If most of the wave parabolas are cut-off at 0db (ie. you can't see the top or bottom 'loops' in the parabola) then it is probably a bad example to try to emulate.

There is a post on the forum called 'loudness race' or something that explains this more fully.

It might be a VST plugin(?).

It IS .

There is a post on the forum called 'loudness race' or something that explains this more fully.

yeah , it sux .. i hope this would reverse at some point .. maybe its one sign that its the end of the world...coming soon ..

one of the first articles about this (a good one ) :

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C

Forget about normalize,- if you need to normalize then you need to re-record your audio and check your levels better.

Of course, if you've managed to record Michael jaskon in the next room confessing then you can use a compressor and a gate/noise reduction software or an expander.

Kind regards

Dave Rich.

Mc,
One of the FIRST things I would recommend you NOT do is to start copying a bunch of files you download to a bunch of folders on your hard drive without knowing where they should go or why they should go there. That could cause more problems and make it much more difficult for you to figure out what happened when problems do happen.

Quick lesson: there are (basically) 2 primary types of plugins for Windows - one is a format called DXi and the other VSTi. You can do research on all this on your own, but for now just know that DXi type plugins usually have some install program which correctly registers them on a windows system without further need for the user to do so. VST format plugins need to be run through a VST Wrapper (also known as a VST Adapter in Cakewalk terminology) in order to be recognized by SONAR and other programs which are not written explicity to do so. Steinberg developed the VST format, Cakewalk developed the DXi format.

So if you have the VST Adapter for Sonar, you need to use that to 'wrap' any VST(i) plugins.

My suggestion to you for now is to learn what you can (do research) about all this so you can use the tools you want. But, you also may want to stick with only DXi format plugins for now until you're more comfortable with using all the various formats and tools.

Enjoy.

ORIGINAL: IamUncleMikey

I downloaded the Classic Master Limiter.zip file. I extracted it to my program files/cakewalk/shared plugins folder. It didn't reconize it. So I copied it into my shared dxi folder. No luck. So I copied it into shared folder that I could think of. Still nothing. It doesen't seem to be able to find it. IS there something I'm doing wrong? I am running windows XP.

Hey guys,

Here's the link for the "Classic Master Limiter"- http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-master-limiter.php

I am thankful for everyone's advice. I have learned a ton just in the last 24 hours. I did finally put the file in the correct place. Since I have been doing a lot of 24 bit recording, It was using tons of my hard drive space. So I bought another hard drive as a dedicated "music" drive. I uninstalled Sonar from the "C" drive and reinstalled it to my "G" drive.
But for some reason, (probably a windows reason) sonar defaulted my VST Adapter to the "C" drive instead of my new "G" drive. After thinking that through, I put the file in the C drive VST folder and whola! Thanks to everyone for this discussion group!