quote:

INTRODUCTION
You’ve just finished recording what you think is a pretty good song in your project studio. The playing is good, the recording is clean and the mix is decent. So you burn it to a CD and proudly pop it in your CD player. But when you hear it played after a “commercial” CD, you realize that something is wrong.

What’s Wrong With My Song?
· It’s not loud enough. It sounds wimpy next to other CDs. Turning it up or mixing down at a higher level doesn’t solve the problem. It sounds louder, but not, well LOUDER.
· It sounds dull. Other CDs have some kind of sparkle that cuts through with excitement. You try boosting the EQ at high frequencies, but now your song just sounds harsh and noisy.
· The instruments and vocals sound thin. Commercial songs have a fullness that you know comes from some sort of compression. So you patch in a compressor and turn some controls. Now the whole mix sounds squashed. The vocal might sound fuller, but the cymbals have no dynamics. It’s full…and lifeless.
· The bass doesn’t have punch. You boost it with some low end EQ, but that just sounds louder and muddier. Not punchier.
· You can hear all the instruments in your mix, and they all seem to have their own “place” in the stereo image, but the overall image sounds wrong. Your other CDs have width and image that you just can’t seem to get from panning the individual tracks.
· You had reverb on the individual tracks, but it just sounds like a bunch of instruments in a bunch of different spaces. Your other CDs have a sort of cohesive space that brings all the parts together. Not like rooms within a room, but a “sheen” that works across the entire mix.

Don’t worry. It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong. There are just some things you still need to do to get that “sound”. You just need the right tools and an understanding of how to use them. You won’t become Bob Ludwig overnight (or probably ever) but you can make dramatic improvements in your master recordings with a little work and some good mastering software.