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Subject:Need some ideas on Mastering
Posted by: buffalosnout
Date:8/17/2002 2:36:46 PM

I have some projects that use SONAR MIDI files, slaved to ACID (with additional loops). Two MIDI sound modules plus the sound card are going into an analog mixer on their way to a stand alone CD recorder. The resulting mix sounds pretty good, but could really use just a bit more fine-tuning in a mastering process.

Would it be better to record the MIDI material into the ACID project, and then render all of it to two tracks for final compression, EQ, etc., in Sound Forge?

Or, should I take the CD, which has all of the tracks, and record it into Sound Forge
for the mastering?

Or, am I missing an even better solution?

Thanks,

James
Subject:RE: Need some ideas on Mastering
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:8/18/2002 1:00:14 PM

Your first solution sounds better than the other.

An idea? You could also render the MIDI track to digital audio in ACID and then edit it in Sound Forge. That way, you could isolate and tweak the MIDI track from the rest of the mix. (Solo the MIDI track, place the Loop Region over the entire MIDI event and then use CTRL+M. Tick the Render loop region only option.)

You could also render the MIDI file to WAV in SONAR and tweak it in Sound Forge as well.

HTH,
Iacobus
Subject:RE: Need some ideas on Mastering
Date:8/18/2002 5:05:48 PM

I would say you need to render the whole mix to a wav and put it in Sound Forge to do some Comp, EQ, Limiting, etc... to it before going to you CD. Or if you have the money, put a finalizer between the mixer and the CD.
Subject:RE: Need some ideas on Mastering
Reply by: buffalosnout
Date:8/19/2002 1:42:09 AM

mD and Matthias: My CD creator has a feature that lets me export CD audio song to a .WAV file (supposedly "CD Quality"). Do you think I "lose" any quality in that transfer, or is it likely to be a bit-for-bit copy?

Thanks,

James
Subject:RE: Need some ideas on Mastering
Reply by: Chienworks
Date:8/19/2002 11:02:33 AM

buffalosnout: ripping a track from an audio CD to a .wav file is a digital copy. There will be no quality lost.
Subject:RE: Need some ideas on Mastering
Reply by: buffalosnout
Date:8/19/2002 11:07:05 AM

Thanks, Chienworks. Coming from the analog school of recording for so many years, I have a long standing fear of losing "a generation" of audio quality when copying or transferring. I wasn't certain that "ripping" would produce a file without artifacts or any kind or compression loss.
Subject:RE: Need some ideas on Mastering
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:8/19/2002 6:12:51 PM

Ditto what Kelly said. In addition, CD Quality is 16-bit, 44.1 kHz. (The standard for CD's.)

HTH,
Iacobus

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