coz, atma, cd burning

[frEk]

what do you guys use for cd burning? i just wanna be able to take say a long mix and do track split points or put two tracks together and overlap at the edges where the track changes, and duplicating. if it can bump up the gain too all the better. pretty simple i'm thinkin pyro should do fine even, i can score wavelab pretty cheap too but i'm thinkin it'll be overkill and i want to just use my integrated samsung cdr drive.

[atma]

you could try something like sonic foundry's CD architect. i know coz has that 1, he'll hook you up. i just use soundforge. i prefer doing all my sample editing and post production/mastering in it.

if your levels are too low, you need to normalize your tracks. any editor can do this, actually even cubase can do it. you should start learning to use compressors on your tracks to even out the amplitude dynamics, that way you can apply much more gain when you normalize. then you can use a limiter as a final step to squash down some of the high peaks in the audio and that will allow you even more RMS decibels (average loudness). i'd recommend you get the waves plugins. the renaissance bundle has some great compressors, eqs and a reverb, and the mastering bundle has the sickest limiter out there, L2 (as well as having some other sick eq's and multiband compressors).

the problem is that waves stuff is several thousands of dollars, so its not really practical to actual buy it (unless you're making hit records with it!). but you should be able to find that stuff no problem.

[Cozmo D]

You should definitely grab Soundforge and CD Architect!

Download the demos from Sonic Foundry.

Here's the keygen for CD Architect. I'll dig up the keygen for Soundforge and up it later.

http://www.pmdawnonline.com/~coz/cdarchite...tect5keygen.EXE
EDIT BY HAX: addy typo

[frEk]

good lookin out, i'll give the cd architect a try. not in dire need for it yet but i've been gettin material together and am gonna definitely need to do some track id-ing. yeah i got waves p4 and L2 is awesome, i use it at the end of my master channel on everything, for dithering too. still seems though things aren't quite as hot as commercially produced stuff, not way off or anything but a little more gain couldn't hurt. i don't use compressors a whole lot, but i probably should. i gotta sit down with the waves pdfs one day.

[Cozmo D]

Woops! Thanx Hax! :wink:

Yeah, you definitely need to use compression if you want your finished product to compare to commercial stuff.

2 essentials to get...Steinberg Free Filter, sick ass plugin that will cop the EQ off of youR favorite commercial track (or whatever) and apply it to your mix. I can't live without that shit...and Soundforge 6, just for the RMS normalization...OFF THE HEEZY YO!!!

[Cozmo D]

Here's the Soundforge Keygen:

http://www.pmdawnonline.com/~coz/soundforge6keygen.EXE

[DJ Detroit Butcher]

Yo Coz I know it wasn't for me but goodlookin out that plug in sounds ILL....

[Cozmo D]

No prob! :mrgreen:

[atma]

ya freefilter is definately an interesting plugin, but i've never found any really practical use for it. the problem is, unless your song has the same instruments playing the same notes in the same sequence, if you apply the eq of a different track, you're gonna get a lot of crunchy and otherwise weird frequencies raised up in your track (and possibly cut). so its not an incredibly pragmatic sort of eq. it can actually be nice in very small doses, like you can do weird shit with it like i've fed it pink noise before, which has a flat frequency response per octave, and then applied that to whatever i was doing to flatten out the response slightly, so there's creative applications that are interesting, but anyway... the steinberg plug i find the most useful is magneto. that's one of the very best tape saturation plugs out there. you drive your tracks through that a little bit and it'll make them sound very nice and warm, its a great effect for anyone using digital recording to get back some analog characteristics into their mixes.

[Cozmo D]

I've never had that problem with freefilter. Maybe you have the 1st cracked release, cause it was bugged. I've done over 2 albums with it without a glitch! All I do is find a real good sounding commercial track with similar instruments and whammo...instant EQ. I don't even bother with Q10 anymore!

I don't understand what you're saying about the notes and sequences either...it takes less than a second for it to sample the EQ so where would notes or sequences play into it? Maybe you're using it differently? :donno:

Yeah, I love magneto, but I don't have it for the PC...or freefilter for the Mac.

[atma]

nah all i'm saying is if you for instance take an acoustic guitar track you recorded, and then you take part of some commercial track that's an acoustic guitar part soloing. both parts are going to likely be playing different notes, and that's where the frequency response of each is going to peak out at, where the base notes are. so when you read that track with freefilter and then apply it to your track, you're more than likely going to be boosting and cutting a lot of frequencies in your track that are unnecessary. say the commercial track has a bunch of notes focused in the 3-4khz range, and your track doesn't. whats going to happen is freefilter is going to boost your tracks 3-4 khz eq way up, and if there's not really anything there, you'll get a crunchy sounding high end and some noise, basically.

so all i'm saying is the majority of the time, its just not practical to apply the eq of a different track to your own, because of the differences in the actual notes inherent in both peices as well as differences in instruments, so its not going to really give a professional result on the track you're applying it to, because its generally completely out of context with your tracks frequencies. however if you use it really lightly and sparingly, or just use it creatively in some cases it can be interesting. but that's just my opinion

i feel like eq is really a very intricate and precise thing to fuck with, and with freefilter, you're getting wildly erratic frequency alteration that doesn't necessarily suit what needs to be cut or boosted in your own track.

though that's just my experience with it, but i have used it quite a bit.

[Cozmo D]

Ummmm...Atma...it's a mastering plug-in. :wink:

[frEk]

you guys tried NI's vokator yet? it's pretty dope, still haven't run vocals through it though. one a the coolest things i think is you got a 4 part mixer to it. there's dry level a, dry level b, then a channel for one being the carrier and another channel for the other being the carrier. you can toggle back and forth for which input is which, cool stuff.

[atma]

nah, its not strictly a mastering plugin, its just an FFT convolution filter used to EQ things. but even if you're using it for mastering, i still stick to what i said earlier :thumup:

but hey, if you get good results with it, i've got no beef with that!

[atma]

i actually haven't checked it yet frek, just haven't been motivated to mess with any new software lately.

[Cozmo D]

Have you tried mastering with it Atma? I've gotten amazing results, and absolutely none of the problems you spoke about earlier. The key is to find a phat-ass track for your source with a similar mixture of instruments as the 1 you are mastering, and pick a full range passage for it to learn. It's been completely flawless for me, it's the only eq I use post mix now. Saves my ears and shaves a good hour per song off the mastering sessions.

The couple of (GLOWING) reviews I read on it as well as Steinberg themselves all seem to expect you to use it in mastering. In fact, it is 1 of the 6 plug-ins included in the Steinberg Mastering Edition bundle. I know that I never even considered using it in the manner that you have described, nor have I seen any suggestion of it anywhere.

I usually defer to you in these discussions, as I tend to not stray from what has worked for me consistently over the years, but this time I think you are a little off the mark. This is my absolutely favorite plug-in, it's the sole reason that I now transfer my mixes from the Mac to the PC, just so I can use it for mastering. I would really hate to think that you are missing out on this amazing plug-in simply because you are using it wrong.

Try it you'll like it. :thumup:

[Cozmo D]

Nope, haven't tried it FrEk. :donno:

[atma]

honestly i have spent hours and hours and hours with it, and i have definately used it on full mixes for mastering purposes. i just feel like its really hit-or-miss. i'm extremely picky about eq'ing, and when you take a frequency response from another track and apply it to a wholly different one, you're always going to get unnecessary boosts and cuts in your eq curve. i think its an interesting tool for some things, but i wouldn't use it to master mixes because of its erratic nature. with eq'ing and especially mastering i'd have to spend hours fine tuning tiny details of the eq spectrum by hand, i wouldn't want to just use convolution and make the eq curve somewhat like an unrelated track. but that's just my opinion. i know its a cool plug--i actually use it more for solo instruments or individual sounds rather than entire mixes. like the example i made earlier, if you record an acoustic guitar track and perhaps its too dull sounding, you can take a track that has a solo acoustic guitar part in a similar melodic range and leech some of the eq from it and brighten up your own guitars eq. but even in those cases, i feel like there's too much superfluous eq boosting and cutting in an erratic manner, so i usually just try to do stuff by hand.

you can do similar things with acoustic mirror. even though acoustic mirror is meant specifically for capturing real reverbs out in the world and then applying them virtually to your sounds, you can also use it to take the eq from things and apply it to your track in interesting ways. like you can run a test tone through a piece of gear, or onto a reel to reel, then record that test tone back into the pc and and make an acoustic mirror impulse from it, then you can apply that eq of the sound of the peice of gear to your track. it works similarly to freefilter, its a basic fft filter that uses convolution, its just used for reverbs generally (and you can get sick, ultra-realistic reverbs from it!).

anyway...

[frEk]

hey what is a "good" rms level anyway? i've been messing around with waves q, renaissance compressor, and L1 on individual tracks more and after the L2 on the master i've got a track up to about -10.5, which is alot hotter than stuff has been. i tried putting a multiband compresson on the master too, but i couldn't get it to sound so good. what's a commercial track at usually though, like -7?

[atma]

well it depends on the style. some heavier rock stuff can be super compressed and can have really high rms levels, but this is because the guitars are the focal point and they're already heavily distorted, and the natural characteristic of overdriving a signal is that it compresses and evens out. on top of that, because the signal is already distorted you can compress the track a lot more without too much compressor artifacts being noticable.

but usually with pop music things are generally around -12 to -8, but even that can vary quite a bit.

just keep in mind, a hotter signal isn't necessarily a better one. some of the best music out there is incredibly dynamic. its to the point in pop music now days where its just ridiculous--things get so compressed that they just become 'flat', like they've been steamrolled, they have no dynamics left in them at all.

the trick is to learn some discrimination about using compressors, and only use them when and how its necessary for each instrument and the for the final mix.

its definately good to develop production skills by learning to use compressors and limiters properly, but in the end you can still have a really terrible composition that's just got high rms levels and perhaps some half-decent mastering.

so i'd say that in reality, professional sounding results always start with the composition itself, all the production tricks and mastering techniques are pretty secondary to that end.