Having problems with playback being quiet after burning to CD

Question

Hey everyone..
OK... this is a weird one... well im hoping its an easy one and im just missing something.
OK so i edit music together for a dnace group so ts basically blending songs together using MP3's. Once finished i create a mixdown and burn to CD.
The problems occurs when we perform at venues with big sound systems :It just plays back quiet when everyone else music is fine :S but when we play it on a normal to medium size system its fine.
Please help as its so frustration.
Thank you in advance

Answer 1

This could well be one of the few genuine examples of "everyone is out of step but me".
There is a tendancy these days to burn CDs at the hottest possible level and also to over compress the music so it has little or no dynamics (and very little "life) left.  I suspect the other CDs are burned like this.  On a controlled system, your versions probably sound fine but compared to the over-hot, over-compressed stuff, yours sounds quieter.
That said, theatre venues can be remarkably noisy places for playback.  A shuffling, coughing audience, air handling, candy wrappers and (nowadays) the scourge of moving lights can mean you compete with a lot of background noise.
My main involvement in sound is for live theatre work so I prepare a lot of CDs for playback. When that's the only use I'm going to have for the CDs, I tend to put in higher levels and more compression than I would for normal listening.  However, I tend to do this "by eye and ear" rather than using an automatic compressor.  My method would be:  (look away, Steve G...I'm going to mention hard limiting.)
1.  Prepare my track in the normal way.
2.  Normalise to -.1dB.
3.  Examine the Audition display of the whole track.  Generally, there will be a few transient peaks that represent the highest level with most of the track being a few dB lower.  I note the level of the highest "general" part of the track.
4.  In Edit View, I use Effects/Amplitiude/Hard Limiting to hard limit the track to -.1dB and I  use the "Boost input by ____ dB" to raise the signal so the "general" level is now the maximum.
Obviously this requires a bit of a judgement call do decide what you consider the "general" level.  However, with a bit of practice you can get you levels as high as possible without killing all the dynamics.
The other thing to say is this only works if all your tracks are reasonably similar.  If, since you're putting together a medley of different tracks, there are huge differences to start with, you should even these out during the mix process.
Hope this helps.
Bob