Another thing to try is play your fav CD through the same studio system you're mixing with. Do direct A/B comparisions using several different songs and EQ your recording until it matches the CD. It's also helpful to record parts of your CD and look at the waveform in the Audio Edit window, then look at your preliminary final mix track in the same window. Just comparing the waveforms can tell you a lot. Many times with a commercial CD you'll discover it has been compressed and limited to death and the thing looks like one solid mass with a hard cutoff right at -0.2db. Hardly any dynamics at all. I hate that but if you really want to match the CD then that's what you need to do as well.

Bob

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