my CD-R sounds weak and bland. What to do?

I wrote and recorded a nice little 7 tracks worth of sterio
audio using
Audacity set to CD quality. It all sounded great as a
project file,
and the burning of the CD showed no errors, but when I play
it
on the sterio it sounds so weak and bland compared to
store-bought
music CDs. What can I do to get some life into it?
I know next to nothing about the production side
of audio, so any comments, web sites where I can get
information,
or information of any kind would be appreciated.
   I have a major restriction with my recording. It's almost
all done
directly into the computer without microphones because I
have to
keep noise levels low around here. Bass sounds just fine
this way,
and even the electric guitar through a Korg box, but forget
about
loud guitar amps or PAs or anything like that.  I do the
vocals and harp
on those rare times when no ones around.  But the end
result, the
Audacity project file, and the .WAV file I export from it,
sounds just
fine. Its the burned CD-R on the sterio that sounds bland
compared 
with regular music CDs.  Something is missing.
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On Saturday 14 April 2007 21:35, millward wrote:
> times when no ones around.  But the end result, the
Audacity
> project file, and the .WAV file I export from it,
sounds just
> fine. Its the burned CD-R on the sterio that sounds
bland
> compared with regular music CDs.  Something is
missing.

These are some of my observations based on trial and
error... I'm 
no engineer, nor an audiophile, just a guy who likes his
music 
to sound "like a real record".

If you're making something that sounds like almost any kind
of 
popular music (pop, rock, country, even most jazz and folk)

you're going to want to experiment with compression at the
very 
least, since that's kinda standard on commercial releases 
nowadays and I assume that's what you're comparing to.

Almost every recording nowadays has some reverb on it, even
if 
only to simulate a room sound (unless it was actually 
recorded "live in the studio", in which case it's
not 
necessary), so if your stuff sounds really dry and flat
that'll 
probably help.  Be subtle about it or you'll sound like
you've 
recorded "Chant VIII".  

Also, if you're recording the bass directly with no amp 
simulation or any of that, it'll have no presence at all. 
You 
probably want to dirty it up a little, maybe with an
overdrive 
or distortion plugin used judiciously.

Rip a music CD that you think sounds great and look at the 
waveforms and at the frequency spectrum so you can get an
idea 
of some things to try with EQ, compression, etc.  But don't
try 
to make yours look just like theirs because you'll end up 
overproducing it and instead of sounding bland it'll give us
all 
ear fatigue.

Rob
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Am Sonntag, 15. April 2007 schrieb millward:
> I wrote and recorded a nice little 7 tracks worth of
sterio audio using
> Audacity set to CD quality. It all sounded great as a
project file,
> and the burning of the CD showed no errors, but when I
play it
> on the sterio it sounds so weak and bland compared to
store-bought
> music CDs. What can I do to get some life into it?

Welcome to the (very important) world of mastering!

In the last days there was some big discussion about
compression on this 
mailing list. You should read that thread...

You should look at jamin, which is a mastering suite for
jack.

I don't know if jamin can be interconnected with audacity,
but with ardour I 
would propose the following:
1. Import all your songs into one ardour-session.
2. Connect jamin as an insert-effect on the master-track.
3. Work your way through mastering... (takes the longest
time)
4. Export the whole session from ardour. This gives you a
big wave-file and if 
you choose to do so (and added the track-markers) a toc-file
ready for 
burning your audio to a cd right away.
5. Listen to this cd on as many different system you can get
hold of.
6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 as long as you want/need.
7. Sell lots of cds and make lots of money. (Depending on if
your cd contains 
the next number one hit 

Have a nice sunday,

Arnold
-- 
visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/
---
Hi, I am a .signature virus. Please copy me into your
~/.signature and send me 
to all your contacts.
After a month or so log in as root and do a rm / -rf. Or ask
your 
administrator to do so...

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Thanks for the tips, Arnold.  I'm struggling with mastering
myself.
One overall question, then a few more specific.

Genarally:  What advantages, if any, does your method have
over just
taking a bunch of well mixed songs, throwing them in a
single
directory, normalizing them with ecanormalize (or something
like it)
and burning that directory to disc as audio?  (An aside to
this
question:  anybody know how to get metadata into wav
files?)

> I don't know if jamin can be interconnected with
audacity, but with ardour I
> would propose the following:
> 1. Import all your songs into one ardour-session.

Import them all onto the same track/channels, side by side,
I assume?

> 2. Connect jamin as an insert-effect on the
master-track.
> 3. Work your way through mastering... (takes the
longest time)

A little more detail would be helpful here for us newbs --
what are
the basic principles of good mastering?  I haven't had any
luck with
jamin even though it works well with *very* low latency on
my system
-- can't figure out what I'm supposed to do with it.

> 4. Export the whole session from ardour. This gives you
a big wave-file and if
> you choose to do so (and added the track-markers) a
toc-file ready for
> burning your audio to a cd right away.

Any advantages to a .toc file as opposed to plain old wav or
aiff?

> 7. Sell lots of cds and make lots of money. (Depending
on if your cd contains
> the next number one hit 

Sounds great.  Anybody have any success at doing this
without selling
your soul to a record company?

> Have a nice sunday,

You too!  Thanks again.

> Arnold
> --
> visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/
> ---
> Hi, I am a .signature virus. Please copy me into your
~/.signature and send me
> to all your contacts.
> After a month or so log in as root and do a rm / -rf.
Or ask your
> administrator to do so...
>
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> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cg
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>
>
>
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Am Sonntag, 15. April 2007 schrieb Charles Linart:
> Genarally:  What advantages, if any, does your method
have over just
> taking a bunch of well mixed songs, throwing them in a
single
> directory, normalizing them with ecanormalize (or
something like it)
> and burning that directory to disc as audio? 

Well, imagine all songs rather high level except one song
with a low level in 
general and just some high-level-peaks (voice tends to have
some high peaks 
for rather short time). Normalize would keep that song with
low 
overall-volume because of that one peak.

Mastering (the compression-part) removes the peak and makes
everything a bit 
louder.

> > I don't know if jamin can be interconnected with
audacity, but with
> > ardour I would propose the following:
> > 1. Import all your songs into one ardour-session.
> Import them all onto the same track/channels, side by
side, I assume?

Yeah, I mean one stereo track that contains all the songs
one after another 
with the same breaks as you want them on cd.

> > 2. Connect jamin as an insert-effect on the
master-track.
> > 3. Work your way through mastering... (takes the
longest time)
> A little more detail would be helpful here for us newbs
-- what are
> the basic principles of good mastering?  I haven't had
any luck with
> jamin even though it works well with *very* low latency
on my system
> -- can't figure out what I'm supposed to do with it.

For mastering you don't need low-latency and because of the
high cpu-usage of 
jamin you don't want it...

For more on mastering please search soundonsound or this
lists archives as I 
am also only a (advanced) beginner in this field.

> > 4. Export the whole session from ardour. This
gives you a big wave-file
> > and if you choose to do so (and added the
track-markers) a toc-file ready
> > for burning your audio to a cd right away.
> Any advantages to a .toc file as opposed to plain old
wav or aiff?

The toc-file doesn't replace the wave-file, it accompanies
it and contains the 
information cdrdao needs to burn the cd in disc-at-once
mode. That way you 
can declare track begin and end where you want and you can
even have break 
between songs which don't contain silence (good for live
recordings where the 
comments between songs can be "hidden" in the
break).

So long,

Arnold

-- 
visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/
---
Hi, I am a .signature virus. Please copy me into your
~/.signature and send me 
to all your contacts.
After a month or so log in as root and do a rm / -rf. Or ask
your 
administrator to do so...

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On Sun, Apr 15, 2007 at 12:55:10PM -0400, Charles Linart
wrote:
> Any advantages to a .toc file as opposed to plain old
wav or aiff?

toc = table of contents 
It's not a replacement for wav or aiff. It's a text-file
describing your
audio-CD - telling your CD-burning-application details about
where tracks
start and end (this means you could have several tracks in a
single .wav)
and whether there should be pauses between tracks and things
like this.


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On 4/15/07, Arnold Krille <arnoldarnoldarts.de> wrote:

> For more on mastering please search soundonsound or
this lists archives as I
> am also only a (advanced) beginner in this field.

Here's a good introduction by Ron Parker, an audio engineer
who is one of the jamin developers...

  http://jamin.sourceforge.net/old/Loudness/loudness.html
-- 
 joq
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On 4/15/07, Jack O'Quin <jack.oquingmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/15/07, Arnold Krille <arnoldarnoldarts.de> wrote:
>
> > For more on mastering please search soundonsound
or this lists archives as I
> > am also only a (advanced) beginner in this field.
>
> Here's a good introduction by Ron Parker, an audio
engineer
> who is one of the jamin developers...
>
>   http://jamin.sourceforge.net/old/Loudness/loudness.html

Oops, that was an old version, here's the latest...

  http://
jamin.sourceforge.net/en/loudness.html

-- 
 joq
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