Yikes... I just produced a CD for money and all !! Help.

[leedsquietman]

Rave - you're the RAVEMONSTER dude - so I agree with you and am not trying to pick a fight - honest !

SF - you have a lot of wisdom because you seem to be able to read me like a very simple and predictable chapter book - kudos


Gjm - Sorry for the head trauma I helped to inflict on you with all this information. I appreciate your situation. It is all hard to take in and you do need to work it through step by step.

OK - here's another approach. http://www.voxengo.com/product/SPAN/ - this tools is similar to Spectrum in Live, but holds more information.

Download this free product, which now has mac OSX AU plugin support. Stick it on your master bus in Live when you are doing your final mixdown (make it the last thing in the chain). Note that it has clipping indication (obviously adjust your mix so you don't clip), and in the bottom right, there are 2 values - RMS and PRMS - RMS is the AVERAGE volume of your track and this is what you need to make consistent for track volumes to match. You don't want this too high, -9 to -11 dB RMS MAX for harder edged dancier type music (unless you have great equipment which can ultra compress without artifacts, not likely to be a software solution), and -12 to -14 for rock/pop/alternative.

PRMS measures the peak average RMS value, which you want to keep below 0db to prevent clipping (and ideally should be no more than 4-5dB more than the RMS figure). Monitor your mixes with this tool and then try to get the RMS figure to match with your other mixes. You might well need to up the gain, or compress/limit some tracks more than others to achieve this and being it's for demo purposes, don't go too hard on the compression/limiting, use the lower end of the scales if possible for better sound quality.

If your mixes are within the same ballpark level wise, that's half your battle done for now. SPAN is also great at visually seeing where your mix needs to be fixed in terms of gain or EQ, like you have a booming low end sub 40 Hz (most of which can't be hear but still generates mud on the low end) and nothing going on in the 8-15 Khz range.

If your mixes are in the same ballpark and you know there's no clipping, then you can use Itunes to burn the music with at least some confidence that it's not going to be all over the map. Later you can buy more pro applications as mentioned and refine this further, but for demo mixes this should help you get started.

[gjm]

OK - here's another approach. http://www.voxengo.com/product/SPAN/ - this tools is similar to Spectrum in Live, but holds more information.

Download this free product, which now has mac OSX AU plugin support. Stick it on your master bus in Live when you are doing your final mixdown (make it the last thing in the chain). Note that it has clipping indication (obviously adjust your mix so you don't clip), and in the bottom right, there are 2 values - RMS and PRMS - RMS is the AVERAGE volume of your track and this is what you need to make consistent for track volumes to match. You don't want this too high, -9 to -11 dB RMS MAX for harder edged dancier type music (unless you have great equipment which can ultra compress without artifacts, not likely to be a software solution), and -12 to -14 for rock/pop/alternative.

PRMS measures the peak average RMS value, which you want to keep below 0db to prevent clipping (and ideally should be no more than 4-5dB more than the RMS figure). Monitor your mixes with this tool and then try to get the RMS figure to match with your other mixes. You might well need to up the gain, or compress/limit some tracks more than others to achieve this and being it's for demo purposes, don't go too hard on the compression/limiting, use the lower end of the scales if possible for better sound quality.

If your mixes are within the same ballpark level wise, that's half your battle done for now. SPAN is also great at visually seeing where your mix needs to be fixed in terms of gain or EQ, like you have a booming low end sub 40 Hz (most of which can't be hear but still generates mud on the low end) and nothing going on in the 8-15 Khz range.

If your mixes are in the same ballpark and you know there's no clipping, then you can use Itunes to burn the music with at least some confidence that it's not going to be all over the map. Later you can buy more pro applications as mentioned and refine this further, but for demo mixes this should help you get started.

Leeds, this feels like very solid advice. It sets me up within my recording environment and gets me working the gear I already have. I am happy with this approach as a starting. It appears though that SPAN is still only a WIN VST. Last update was Sep 07, and the last comment on the Voxengo forum regarding SPAN becoming an AU was July 09. Up until then, at least, there is no AU version. Anybody suggest an AU plug-in for me to take this approach? (free is always good)

[leedsquietman]

Ah, Bollocks !!

Sorry mate - I honestly thought Alexsy had coded SPAN to Mac, he has been converting plenty of other classic Voxengo plugins such as Elephant, Crunchessor and Varisaturator etc. SPAN is such a useful little freebie - there are plenty of spectographs, but I couldn't find any Mac freeware that gave an audio analysis simultaensously as well as the spectograph. There probably is one out there, just that being a PC user, I don't know of any and couldn't find any when I googled it and looked on KVR etc.