Audacity Forum

I recorded drums from keyboard, using a rule " not exceed 0.5 on waveform". I fed the inout with that power signal without any distortion. Then the same with guitars, bass, vocal.
When i mix it into two channels and mp3 it is very quiet comparing to market CD's.
So then i went back to mixer and tried levelling, compression, but it shows clipping on meter, anyway with strong compression you can hear it.

(btw, if you compress or normalize all tracks to 0 dB, there is a lot of distortion, dont know why, i thought whole song will be normalized).

Is there a solution during mastering process to make it loud enough?
Thanks.

oles wrote:I recorded drums from keyboard, using a rule " not exceed 0.5 on waveform".

It's OK to go a bit above 0.5, but just be sure to keep it below 1.0 (also some sound cards will distort below 1.0 - they shouldn't, but some do).

oles wrote:When i mix it into two channels and mp3 it is very quiet comparing to market CD's.

That's because commercial CDs typically have all the life compressed out of them (see "loudness war" in Wikipedia).

The standard compressor built into Audacity is not suitable for "maximising" volume as the attack is too slow.
The "SC4 compressor" is much better for this job (available as a free plug-in for Audacity). http://plugin.org.uk/ladspa-swh/docs/ladspa-swh.html

oles wrote:(btw, if you compress or normalize all tracks to 0 dB, there is a lot of distortion, dont know why, i thought whole song will be normalized).

The distortion is produced because "mixing" will add the tracks together. If you have a peak on one track that meters at 0.6, and a peak on another track at 0.7 at the same time, then the mixed track could potentially have a peak that is at 1.3 (but it gets cut off at 1.0 and sounds horrible). For mixing tracks, look for a generally loud section and Amplify all of the tracks (or use the track volume sliders) so that they are about -6db, then play it back and keep an eye on the meters (and listen). As long as you adjus all tracks by the same number of dB, the relative levels will remain the same (same balance in the mix). Adjust as necessary to get a mix level that peaks over 0.5 but below 1.0 (0.5 = -6dB, 1.0 = 0dB).

If the is an occasional spike that you want to push down a bit, there is another free plug-in called "fast lookahead limiter" that is suitable for the job.

One more thing.

when i play the recorded material back in Audacity it has some volume.
i dont touch anything and export the file as a mp3 or wave and then play it in windows media- and it is more quiet.
Why does it happen and how to avoid this?