Making pre-recorded and mastered material LOUDER.

[clockface]

Louder as in higher volume and more decibels, nothing else. I know this subject has been covered before, but after a few searches and wading through about 900 topics, I am unable to find an answer.

I have a live concert DVD that I am trying to burn to CD (The Cure - Trilogy), after some minor tweaks in PT and what not. I don't want to change the dynamics of the music at all, I just want to make it louder. But no matter what I do, it either isn't loud enough or it is clipping.
What I have done so far is to apply the Gain plug to each of the songs at +9.5 dB. This gives me the loudest wave forms I can achieve for each song without clipping the signal. When I look at the wave form and compare it to another audio source (usually the same song from a studio CD), it appears as if it should be of about equal volume, but when I burn to disk and compare the two on my stereo system, my track is only about 75% as loud as the pro CD. I've done this with other material and it sounded just fine. What else is there for me to do? I am using Digi 001 on a QS 867 Mac, and PT 6.1 (although I originally started this on 5.1 with the same results).

Given the nature of this particular project, paying a mastering engineer is out of the question. And this is only for my personal aural pleasure in my car and on my Hi-fi, not for any form of distribution. Thanks.

[valvebrother]

You're confusing loudness (which is mainly a perception) with peaks.

These two concepts don't necessarily coincide at all.

For instance, a 30 second clip of a square wave at -48 db, with a 1 second peak at -.3 db will have the same peak value as 30 seconds of a square wave all at -.3db. Guess which sounds louder? Granted, this is a very simple example.

You can increase the loudeness in a number of ways if you're hell bent on it. But they pretty much all affect the dynamics of the music, which you say you don't want to do.

But I say just normalize all of the tracks to -.3 db and call it good. You have now set the peaks as high as they can safely go.


D

[PeterR]

you need to bash the audio up against a mastering limiter or a compressor to make it loud. Waves L1 will do ok, or the stock digi limiter. It will affect the sound tho'. Like Valve said - you cant avoid it. this is where the term "re-mastered" comes in.

[shendrie]

I also read of, but never heard, the Sony Oxford Inflator...

http://www.sonyplugins.com/

Stuart

[where02190]

turn volume control of your listening system up. Any other method will change the dynamics of the music.

Hope this is helpful.

[Park Seward]

Originally posted by clockface:
Louder as in higher volume and more decibels, nothing else... I don't want to change the dynamics of the music at all, I just want to make it louder.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Easy. You can't.

If you set the peak for 0 dbFS, then that is as loud as you can make it without distortion.

Chopping off some peaks may not be too audible, depending on the limiter used and how agressive the settings are. But that will change the dynamics.