Re: [LAU] my CD-R sounds weak and bland. What to do?

From: Rob <lau@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Sun Apr 15 2007 - 04:52:10 EEST

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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Received on Sun Apr 15 08:15:02 2007

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