Best quality rendering and CD burning? -ACID Product Family

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Subject:Best quality rendering and CD burning? Posted by: Brasilia Date:4/1/2003 12:34:55 AM Hello, I want to make up some demo CDs to send out to some record labels and I'd like to know how to get the best quality for burning my CDs. Any suggestions? Thanks. (I'm also using Sound Forge 6).
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: DKeenum Date:4/1/2003 8:42:56 AM There are a good many approches. I render the song as a 16 bit wav file and then burn my CDs in Easy CD Creator. If you are not haveing the music mastered you can then "master"it in Sound Forge. You may want to Normalize the wav file and add a little compression (dynamics). You may also want to add a few milliseconds of silence to the beginning of the track. Somehow this helps the CD player it begin the track without a pop or jump in sound.
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: flanneljammies Date:4/1/2003 9:17:46 AM Wave Hammer rocks. Try the "Master For 16-Bit" preset.
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: dkistner Date:4/2/2003 11:47:28 AM What's the magic "normalize to" number? Is there an industry standard? Or should one shoot for an average RMS number instead? I've wanted to know this for years, but nobody ever seems to have the answer.
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: DKeenum Date:4/2/2003 12:14:09 PM I've wondered the same thing. Should we normalize to -1 db or 0db? I tend toward -1db just to be on the safe side. Also, I read something once where normalizing introduces distortion and you shouldn't normalize if it's going to be mastered. Are there any normalizing people out there?
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: coolout Date:4/2/2003 6:33:14 PM my mastering guy told me it's okay to compress the final mix, but not to try to limit it which is what most "normalizers" do. limiting is one of those things where if you don't have proper monitors or aren't paying enough attention can make your audio go bad real easy, introducing all kinds of distortion and digital clipping. most records are too loud nowadays anyway and some pop recordings even have noticable digital distortion from too much limiting, early destiny's childs and eminem's "without me" for examples. of course what really matters is the song, everyone has a volume control. my advice: if you plan on releasing your stuff and taking it to a real mastering engineer compress the final mix carefully and leave some dynamics for the guy to play with. if you're just passing it around as demos and you want to make sure it's loud enough in comparision to other cds then limit it but pay close attention and use your ears.
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: Laurence Date:4/2/2003 11:59:42 PM I usually render to 24 bits, normalize, then convert to 16 bits. That way I get true 16 bit resolution. As far as CD authoring software goes, SF CD Architect is by far the best there is. Laurence Kingston
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: Brasilia Date:4/3/2003 12:44:52 AM Thanks for the advice and taking time to help me out. I'll try your suggestions and see what goes. Cheers.
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: ElektroFitz Date:5/9/2003 3:23:54 AM Normalizing and compression are usually done in the mastering process, altough some people prefer to compress or normalize individual tracks (guitar, vocals, etc) during mixdown. As a general rule, never normalize or compress the main stereo bus unless you're mastering -- otherwise your engineer's flexibility will be limited. Assuming that you're doing the mastering... 0dB is the highest theoretical volume that digital audio can reach. If you are normalizing based on the song's peaks, adjust your normalizer control so that the highest peak will hit 0dB (assuming you want it loud). If it goes beyond 0dB, then you have "clipping," which distorts the sound and reduces audio quality. As a safeguard when normalizing by peak, target 0dB as I mentioned, but apply 2:1 compression with a threshold of -2.5dB and moderate attack and release times. This will allow your peak to hit 0dB (or perhaps -0.8dB) but at the same time prevent against "clipping." NOW, let's assume you're normalizing based on RMS. RMS is essentially just the "average" volume dB of the song and does not take peaks into consideration. RMS sometimes has its place, but is usually less desireable than the peak method. If you're RMSing, set the target RMS to between -6dB and -10dB. This setting "usually" keeps your audio loud while giving some "head room" for peaks (which RMS doesn't automatically provision for). Generally, even -6dB will give distortion with RMS normalization, so stick with the -8 or -10dB range. Also, pay very close attention to your output meters (for clipping) and also apply compression. You'll have to experiment with the compression after RMS normalization, because it can be really tricky and I just don't have time to write about it right now. As for CD-burning, the cardinal rule is to make sure that your burn software puts the songs onto the CD as "cda" format, and NOT WAV or MP3 files. You can and should use uncompressed WAV files (or MP3 as a last resort) to send to the CD; however, the CD-burning software should automatically convert them to cda. If they don't, then your CD is not truly an audio CD. Render your files as 44,100 / 16-bit, which is the standard for CDs. Upping the sampling rate or bit-depth serves no real purpose (in this context), and actually takes away from your original sound because of the calculations and manipulations performed on it. And besides, since CD is 44,100 / 16, the file is going to be resampled back to that rate at the time it's committed to CD anyway (assuming you have good CD-burning software). Also, I've found that the slower the speed at which you burn the CD, the better the audio quality will be. Hope these ideas help.... and good luck on your project!
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: braulio Date:5/9/2003 8:31:16 AM My understanding of normalizing (at least as it applies to CoolEdit), is that 16-bit data can have a value of anywhere between -32768 and 32768 for each sample. These are the maximum positive and negative amplitudes at any given point. Normalizing to 100% takes the highest peak to the maximum value of 32768 and all lesser values proportionally. I think it would be impossible to create distortion by normalizing unless you used a value of more than 100%. Does this make sense?
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: ElektroFitz Date:5/9/2003 9:05:05 AM Yup, same concept exactly (as long as you're basing the normalization on peaks and not RMS), except you're measuring in amplitude and I'm measuring in terms of decibels.
Subject:RE: Best quality rendering and CD burning? Reply by: braulio Date:5/9/2003 9:18:46 AM Elektro, I just re-read your message. It all makes perfect sense.

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