How do I make my CD as loud as a store bought CD?

[ncsmith]

If you answer, please speak in simple terms, for I am very new to Pro Tools.
I have all the tracks done for my CD, but when i burned the first copy and listened to it in my
car, it was realllllllly quiet. Any helpful hints for loudness?

[murph16]

If you put a limiter on the Master fader of your mix, you'l be able to get the level up to zero or just under. If you have the "Maxim" plug-in, even better. If you have the Waves L1+Ultramaximizer plug-in, even better!!
Get your mix sounding as good as you can, bringing the master fader to a nice "just under red" average level.
On either one of those plug-ins, if you set the OUT CEILING to 0.1 and pull the threshold down slowly, you'll hear the mix get louder.You'll see the ATTENUATION bar start to register a signal. If you keep the ATTENUATION peaks in the -1.00 to -2.00 range, you'll increase volume of the mix and basically preserve the integrity of the mix. This should work fine to answer your question.
You can take it a step further by attenuating more. You'll hear the mix start to pulsate a bit, and it will sound more energetic...but be careful...you're really decreasing the dynamic range more than you think, so you can be fooled.
Getting into the fattening abilities of a Mastering limiter requires advanced scientific audio knowledge and a great ear. Read up on mastering techniques before you dabble.
For the time being, if you don't attenuate too much, you can get that volume up and not ruin the mix. The digidesign stereo limiter will suffice if you don't have Maxim or the L1.
Have fun!

[ckerian]

I compressed nothing except for vocals and my songs thump good. Not sure what happens exactly when some projects are just too quiet. It's a mystery to me. Maybe it's something like +4 or -10 settings on your board. You got to make sure also that if you do a bounce to disk that the music is hitting the meters. I use adaptec Jam to cut my CD's and it has a 'normalize selection' that will make all the songs even in volume and bring up the loudest volume to just below peaking.

http://www.crystalclearrecording.com...yed%20Girl.mp3

http://www.crystalclearrecording.com...r%20Leavin.mp3

[MattiMattMatt]

Turn up the volume.

[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Zownd]

I would like to do a hiphop mix of brown eyed girl

[Bloux]

Anyone using wavelab 4.0 or T-racks, will they help or is it better to stay in PT?

[citi]

I know people who stay in ptle and do just fine. However I prefer to "master" outside of pro tools. Wavelab and T-Racks are designed to do one thing: master. I believe their tools implement the plugs better and offer better analysis of your recordings. Again, people do use ptle to master. Wavelab is a little expensive, T-Racks is priced midrange, about 200 I think. If you have the money, invest, if you don't use the tools god gave you.

[citi]

ohh, and wavelab kicks *****. I like it better than T-Racks and I have used them both. T-Racks has a very specific sound. Like a Joe Meek preamp. Wavelab is very transparent.

[mattm]

pro tools is absolutely fine for mastering. many real mastering studios use it to master the audio then use masterlist cd (mac only, of course) to burn a redbook production master as it can import protools' region definitions amongst other things.

on a pc, you can even use something as cheap as nero5 to burn a redbook master after you've processed and edited the audio in protools.

i'd give T-Racks a wide berth if i was you.

~matt

[Audiogeek]

As to the original question - was your session 24 bit, and did you bounce down to 16 bit? I believe that process knocks everything back down 6 db to preserve your headroom. In other words, there's more signal in a 24-bit file. If you took advantage of that in session and then just chopped it down to 16-bits, there is the likelihood that you'd chop the top off your signal. I believe Pro Tools protects you by dropping the volume 6-db.
The other posts on compression are correct, too, but just thought you might want to check out that basic issue.