Topic: Mastering a CD

[Tall Adam]

I know some of you work more professionally in the audio field and hopefully one of you can help with this. I'm putting together a compilation disc. I need to make it finalized for duplication. I have a few questions and I hope some of you can help.

My instinct is to analyze all the tracks in Wavelab, check that they're all with in a pretty close average DB level and if some are much higher or lower, to change the amplification in wavelab. Is this a good idea?

Second, how do i get the CD-Text onto a disc? My boss is very insistant that the CD information should show up on the computer when you load the CD. I've yet to figure out how to make it happen. I've tried burning in CD-DA and Nero and neither makes that happen, even when the full CD-text info is entered and the Write CD Text boxes are clicked.

Thanks guys!
-adam

[Tall Adam]

anyone? bump^

[pigiron]

I'm not gonna be of much help here since I don't run winders... but this looked lonely 

My instinct is to analyze all the tracks in Wavelab, check that they're all with in a pretty close average DB level and if some are much higher or lower, to change the amplification in wavelab. Is this a good idea?

I think you're instincts are right... volume levels on compilations I've made bounce all over the place... but I use "normalize" since it can do the job automatically... and I see that it can run on winders... http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~cvaill/normalize/ ... see the "Mix Mode" feature.

Can't help ya on the Nero CD-Text... but X-CD-Roast works just fine    Just guessing it could be the player application tho. I'm thinking just because the computer player will display ID3, it may not mean that it'll display CD-Text. You try taking it for a spin on a stereo CD player that displays CD-Text?

On another note... I hope you're not making a disc for distribution using our tunes if there's some sort of "boss" involved... unless you're speaking of the old lady 

[Simp-Dawg]

to get the cd info to show up on a computer, why don't you just add an entry for the disc to CDDB?

[Chuck]

As far as getting the levels right for each song, listen to each transition. Make notes and add/subtract gain mostly by ear. Normalizing won't neccesarily make all the tracks match in level.

[JasonR]

If you don't see the CD-Text option when burning in most popular software (like Nero), it's likely that your drive doesn't support CD-Text!  Many drives didn't until recently.

Mastering has little to do with normalizing and a lot to do with compression, normalizing's agressive sibling. 

- Jason

[TNJazz]

I would suggest you take this question over to the Mastering forum on http://www.recording.org

That way you can get the right answers from the people who know.

Obviously you should take it to a professional mastering engineer if you really want it done right, but sometimes that's not in the budget (I'm guessing that's the case here).  Perhaps the pros over there can at least get you started down the right road though.

Dirk

[zowie]

Buy Bob Katz' book "Mastering Audio."   No one can tell you how to master a cd properly over a chat board, although specific questions can be addressed.

[stlram]

You really may not want all the tracks to be the same level. If you songs have a wide dynamic range or some have many instruments and other have a few you will blow your ears off, or worse, your speakers by compressing them to the same level.

The best way to do it is by ear. Listen to each track and bring each track up or down to the level necessary to create a seamless transistion to and from each song. Songs that are suppose to be lower in volume should remain that way and songs that should have a wide dymanic range need to be accounted for too.

[Terps]

As far as getting the levels right for each song, listen to each transition. Make notes and add/subtract gain mostly by ear. Normalizing won't neccesarily make all the tracks match in level.

QFT
computers aren't really good at interpreting perceived loudness, but they're getting better at it.
Choose you normalization algorithm wisely