Burning makes sound flat...

[GW]

I´m satiesfied with the way it sounds in PTLE using C4 and L1 at the end. But on the way from 24/44.1 to the 16/44.1 on the CD via Adaptec Easy CD creator to HP 9100 CD-writer plus (1x), something makes the sound flat, with more bass and less treble brilliance. Is this a common problem or do I miss something here? I use the L1 dither (by the way). The problem is most noted when I take old LP´s and convert them to CD via Pro Tools.

[J. FO]

I would have no idea why you would lose treble in the burning process. But, you could create a master fader for the session an experiment with using eq there, probably a long shot though.

[IOP Drummer]

rip a track off of a CD you like. Then, burn the track onto another CD and see if it sounds different from the ripped track.

[marcusb]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by GW:
I´m satiesfied with the way it sounds in PTLE using C4 and L1 at the end. But on the way from 24/44.1 to the 16/44.1 on the CD via Adaptec Easy CD creator to HP 9100 CD-writer plus (1x), something makes the sound flat, with more bass and less treble brilliance. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Most important question for you is has your monitoring environment changed ? What I mean by this is if you are mixing using your studio monitors, then burning a CD and listening to it say on your home stereo are you hearing the difference.

What I would suggest to try is this:

* hook your CD player up to the Digi001 inputs 3+4.

* hit play on your mix in ProTools, and hit play of the same track on the CD don't worry if they aren't perfectly synchronised.

* Then, using the 'monitor mode' switch you can do an A/B comparison of the sound of the mix in ProTools vs. the mix off the CD, try and level match both signals so you are doing more fair comparison of the tonality of the mix.

Admittedly you will be hearing the mix 24/44k1 out of PT through the PT D/A stage but you shouldn't hear such a significant difference between the 24-bit master and the 16-bit CD burned master.

For the purists yes there you should, with a good monitoring environment and golden ears hear differences in the bit-depth and the CD player converters vs. Digi converters, but this shouldn't be as radical as boosting your bottom end and killing the top end.

If in your setup you are running say your CD player and digi001 into a mixing desk check that you don't have any radical EQ on the CD player channel.

Lastly, if you ARE listening to your mix on a CD player on another set of speakers and are finding your mixes don't translate from your studio to domestic CD player unfortunately you'll just have to work harder on your mixes. From the sounds of things your monitor speakers could be deficient in the the bottom end department, or your room isn't accurately representing the bottom end. The effect of this is that you are adding bottom end to compensate so when you play your mixes on say a domestic CD player or home stereo you have overblown bottom end which is masking the top end.

If you can provide some more detail on your mixing setup we can probably isolate the problem to one of the factors i've mentioned here.

Cheers,
Marcus

[mattm]

just a thought - you're not playing the CD in your CD-ROM drive are you? those things sound terrible, especially if you're using the digital playback feature with one of the newer Sound Blaster cards...

~matt

[homerg]

Just a thought. If you bounce to disk with the Low Latency Monitoring on and you are using any outboard effects processors or EQs they won't get bounced along with the mix. So your bounce would sound like if you weren't using those outboard processors. Like I said, it's just a thought. Everybody else mentioned all the other obviuos things.

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi,
You can fairly easily figure out where in the signal chain this change is coming from, if you'd like.

1) Do your session with no mastering plugs on your master fader. Get used to the sound.

2) Bounce that to disk at 24-bit and whatever frequency your session is at.

3) Import that track into a new session for mastering.

4) Play it and make sure the sound hasn't changed.

5) Go back to #1 and add mastering plugs to your master fader.

6) Listen to it and make sure you understand how the sound has changed.

7) Bounce to disk at 24-bit again.

8) Import that back into PTLE and listen to it again. Make sure the sound isn't different than #6.

9) Go back to step #6, and bounce again to 16-bit.

10) Import and listen to the sound.

11) Burn a CD and listen to the sound elsewhere.

12) Take your CD and rip a copy into PTLE again.

13) Listen to the sound.

Follow the path and you'll quickly understand where this is happening...

Cheers,
Mark

[GW]

Sorry that I left one importent part out - I mainly do my mixes with headphones (Beyerdynamic DT 250 (my favourit), DT 770, Grado Labs and Sony MDR-V300 (the kids choice for CD-listening), then I play my stuff on different soundsystems expensive and cheap - and the difference is so much greater then for commercially produced CD:s.

But I´ve taken to heart what´s been said above and will moast certainly follow the advice. How do you guys use the L1? What difference would a better CD-burner make?

[yavuzj]

Don't mix with headphones. I have a very expensive AKG headphoone which sounds totally flat but i do not even mix with that.