DP3 exporting soundbites for cd burning

[brownrecluse]

I use dp3 on a mac, and after I have bounced down to a final mix and exported the soundbite in sd2 or Aiff formats .in I-tunes the audio level of my song is low(in comparison to other comercial disks I have loaded) . all my levels are as high as they can be in dp3 . What am I doing wrong?

[JeffBarnett]

What is your mastering process like? Do you use much compression? Limiting?

[cmchamp]

Brown:
If you don't use a Master Fader, use one. Simple to set up and assign. Depending on what you need to finalize the process, EQ, compressors, etc. use the MasterWorks Limiter last in the plug in chain on the Master Fader.

I'm in OSX right now, so going from memory.

Upper right, you'll want to set your threshold to -4db to start. Ceiling, set at -.15db. Lookahead to 20ms, release at 0.01, I set both the dither and noise shaping on.

This is not an exact art, and it will take some time to get it down. You want to look for a gain reduction of between 3 and 5db.

Hope that helps.

[brownrecluse]

I have been using a master fader with mw limiter. however , I use the presets . I will try to readjust my gain manually ,thanks.

[michaelhoddy]

Not that this should be an endorsement for level-smashed masters, but you likely do need to get your RMS levels up relative to your peaks. Depending on what your sources are and how you're compressing and limiting them, there can be a BIG difference between the peaks and RMS, often 6dB or more if we're talking about kick and snare drums. If you have a lot of big transients, you may want to try fiddling with the attack times on your channel compressors, especially with the drums and vocals.

For pop/rock, I almost always run a limiter last in the chain, set with a fairly high threshold, no so much to smash the mix, as to catch overs. When the project isn't being sent out to a mastering house, I'll do the multiband comp and limiting as part of a separate process after mixing. I think you can develop some bad habits very quickly if you're trying to mix with a bunch of mastering processes running on the stereo buss.

The Masterworks limiter isn't a bad start. It's a little finicky to set up correctly. I use the Waves L1 and L2, along with the whole Waves Masters bundle for in-house stuff. Very easy to set up and use, and they really sound amazing.