I noticed a few things about my mixes, when played from CD elsewhere. The base seems to be very present and there are some odd left to right side compression.
The base, it turns out is a bug in my surround sound mixing system. The subwoofer is derived from a combination of the left and right channel, left+right. If the phase is +left and +right, the base cancels out in the subwoofer. To overcome a light base mix, I pump up the base to get a sound I like.
To fix the ‘too loud base’ I have been using the phase button on the DDA mixer to invert one of the stereo channels. The base is then very loud or at least present, and I can adjust it as needed, the reset the phase. Another way to fix it and to have the base track, and 2 copies of the base trace. Then invert one copy and pan copy a to the left and copy b to the right a bit. Then lock the channel gains together and this seems to allow mixing without getting too much base in the final product…. btw you need to mute the copies when its time to bounce down the mix.
The other thing I have found is that ITunes just sucks for making masters of CD’s. I had never given it any though, just assumed it was good, because everyone is using it. Bad move. When compared to Waves, ITunes is just junk.
There 2 problems with ITunes. 1 the final sound is muted a bit, like a blanket is on the speakers, and 2 the stereo image is compressed, like someone sawed off the outside of the sound.
Anyway, its WaveLab from here on out.
