🚀 go-pugleaf

There is only one tried and true method and it uses two very important components - your ears.

I have two ears but I'm still convinced there is also
a technical factor in this also. Commerical projects
are most always perfect. I can't believe that the people
who make these rely completely on ears.

If that was true then there would be just a button that you could press on some hardware or software that automatically did it - try a google search.

From that same logic there must be a piece of hardware or software which automatically sets all the levels in a mix.

I've been doing it the hard way all these years :-(

Please post the results of your search back here as I have a number of projects I need to finish and the time saving would be much appreciated.

Shhhh - Lets keep it a secret between you and me because otherwise there would be a heap of people in the audio industry losing their jobs ;-)

Group Waveform Normalize is the tool to half do the job (if it's in that version) but Runaway is right - getting perceived volumes right from track to track is what mastering engineers get paid loadsa money for, and time and patience is required.

      Commerical projects are most always perfect. I can't believe that the
      people who make these rely completely on ears.




They don't have to on most 'commercial' projects, because the dynamics are squashed out of existence. The more squashed the dynamic range of a recording, the less you need ears, and the more painful the result is to listen to.

But, if you find a well-recorded album with a sensible dynamic range, and the tracks all sound as though they 'belong' together, chances are that the most important thing that a good mastering engineer has done is to have his ears all over it - because that's the only way to do it satisfactorily. There are certainly some tools to help, but the ultimate decision has to be aural.

Thanks for the replies.
I guess I have learned that I just don't have ears
to do this. I have some projects that I thought I had
a good mix, burned a CD, to find several tracks louder
or softer than others. Several projects I've burned
at least 20 CD's of my "final" mix.
One thing that makes my projects hard is I buy commerical
soundtracks and then record my singing with them.
That means I'm putting ten or so tracks together that
we all made different. It's easier if it's a live band
playing all the tracks kinda the same way and same instruments
I guess.
Maybe I should get a new hobby

      I guess I have learned that I just don't have ears to do this. I have
      some projects that I thought I had
      a good mix, burned a CD, to find several tracks louder
      or softer than others.






      Maybe I should get a new hobby




No, I think that what you should do is figure out why this happens. If you notice the effect after you've created the CD but not before, then it can't be your ears, can it? Chances are that there will be a good reason for this, although without knowning exactly what the processes you are using are, it's hard to say.

It's not unknown, for instance, for mixes to sound fine in MV but be mixed at levels that are, shall we say, not exactly optimal... and if you create CD tracks directly without passing through EV, then they may well sound okay in isolation, but quite different when played from the resultant CD.

SteveG is right. What may help is if you get all your 'finalised' tracks and load them into MV in the order that they will appear on the CD (and this is important).

Play the tracks soloing each one flicking between them. Then put them end to end on one track paying careful attention to the differences between adjacent tracks as that is where most people will notice the difference.

This will give you some idea of how they sit and what adjustments jou need to make

Putting them all together as one track sounds like a
good scheme. I'm going to try that. That would also
show up in the wave form.
Thanks