Imported CD Volume to High

[jlonigro]

Every time I import a music CD the audio off the disk it incredibly hot and is distorting in the track, Why is this and what can b done.

[Tweakhead]

I take it you are ripping the audio directly from CD, not going analog in?

Your only option is to write to the artist, engineer, producer, mastering engineer, label and tell them that their record is digitally distorted. Demand a refund.

There is nothing you can do about it afterwards.

This is a disturbing trend that has no indication of letting up. I have examined many CDs of late that are simply clipping when I zoom in on the waveform. Unfortunately nobody wants their record to sound 'quieter' than anyone else.

Volume Wars. Nobody wins.

We might as well be making 12 bit recordings..... blah blah blah.... don't get me started.

[davip]

As stated above, many CDs these days are mastered with no dynamic range, let alone headroom. That means that if you're going to mix anything with an imported CD track, or if you're going to do any processing (including EQ cut!) you'll need to lower its level. If there's digital distortion, or artifacts due to extreme limiting, there's pretty much nothing you can do to fix it. It shouldn't sound more distorted than than it does on the CD though.

[Barnaby Bristol]

Yeah. What he said. If you're importing to PT through the get audio from movie dialog, and your session is not 44.1kHz, you'll get distortion because the audio on the CD is consistently hitting the ceiling (0dBfs) leaving no computational headroom for the sample rate conversion. Even if you are at 44.1kHz, the first thing you have to do is reduce the gain before any plugin. If it's a 48kHz or better session you're going to be working in, import the track into a 44.1kHz/24bit session first (which will trigger the over LEDs on the meters but sound okay), perform a gain reduction of about 2 dB with audiosuite, and than import that file into your work session.
cheers,
Barnaby

[King Kevlar]

Demand a refund

hihi!