Extremely loud audio files when importing CD files

[Walter Biscardi]

Yep this is normal. CD’s are generally compressed to just about digital 0 so they’re incredibly loud. The first thing I do when I bring a CD track into the Viewer is drop the audio to -10db.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Bob Flood]

walter

what i dont get is the difference between a ripped cd and digitized audio?

Even with good levels and a pretty hot signal into FCP, my on camera stuff is always a lot softer compared to ripped music

One thing I have started to do is rip CD’s through soundtrack, then i can apply a volume adjust to knock the level down.

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Bob Flood] “what i dont get is the difference between a ripped cd and digitized audio?”

Again, a CD is compressed to play back at an almost constant digital 0db. The absolute loudest you can get without overdriving. And it has absolute compression on the entire CD to get the loudest possible audio.

Your digitized audio is whatever level it was originally recorded on the tape and there is zero compression.

For example, when we sent our audio mixes off for our shows, all our audio is pretty much normalled to -6db. When we get the shows back from our audio designer, they’re still -6db but it sounds MUCH louder because of the compression.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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Read my Blog!

[Larry Asbell]

How would you like to work on a system that:

1) Had faders that couldn’t turn anything up? Or,

2) Recording an unexpected loud sound blew through the roof with no headroom?

If the audio tracks in your editor were at the level of a produced CD that’s what you would have. Remember digital audio has no way to represent levels higher than the range provided for.

Both FCP and Avid capture and work with audio below that level. That’s why you have +12dB gain possible on your faders.

So it’s not just that commercial recordings are produced with dynamic range compression and maximum volume. It’s that the rest of your audio in your FCP or Avid is not at the same full level.

– Larry Asbell

[Russ Johnson]

The reason music CD audio is so loud is that it is in its release state. It isn’t that the audio has necessarily been “compressed”, it is “normalized” for release, which means the entire program is boosted in gain proportionately so the highest peak is at 0db. Before release, when recording, mixing, etc., the music industry works the way we do at a lower level to deal with an unpredictable dynamic range. “Broadcast” audio is usually field recorded and mixed at around a -14db or -12db reference point to avoid clipping (0db) by transient peaks. As I understand it, the music industry uses -24db to record and mix classical music due to the wide dynamic range of an orchestra playing a symphony.

Just a clarification for an otherwise informative thread.

-Russ

[Reid Caulfield]

More & more music is coming out of mixing at about -6 on the digital scale. They leave 6dB for the mastering guys to add EQ or processing. These days, most pop comes out of mastering at -2 or -1. It’s all about the loud. Straight normalizing rarely happens after the mastering step because wholesale level changes affect balance & EQ, which changes the whole aesthetic.

Reid C

[Josh Thomson]

so – is there a way to apply a gain reduction of say, -10, to a whole bunch of audio files in the bin window to save me having to do it each time i drop it into the timeline?

ie – highlight all my music in the bin view and tell it to all be -10 gain?