Originally Posted By: rokq22
I have noticed a small drop in volume with the BIAB songs I have converted to MP3 (compared to the professional karaoke/instrumental tracks) but it's not too big a deal for me.


It has now become the norm to add a lot of compression through the various stages of recording and this is undoubtable the reason your pro recorded karaoke tracks are louder.

This is a really interesting topic for me.

Google "Loudness Wars" and do a youtube search on "Loudness Wars".

Over time the professional recordings have become more and more compressed (using compression and limiters). I believe the primary reason is to have your song play louder than the other songs on the radio (or now just to compete wiht the loudness of other songs because it seems everyone is compressing songs to the max).

This is what is also done with ads on TV, those adds where the volume will jump up when the ad starts. It can be hard on the ears and annoying.

All this compression is to the music's detriment in my opinion. For example, the crispness and the pop of a loud snare drum is lost with all this compression.

If the listener wants more volume all they have to do is turn up the volume, we don't need compression for loudness.

This compression for loudness is different than the judicous use of compression that can create various benfits including hearing all the parts more clearly in a multitrack recording.

It's a good thing that the BIAB tracks aren't highly compressed in that this leaves it to us users to determine how much compression we want to apply when we move it to a DAW.

In your case, you might need some more volume out of your tunes if your street cube isn't playing them loud enough. Experiment with a compressor and/or limiter in the final mix down if you need to eek out some additional volume.

Frank

Some tunes from me and my collaborator: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvGqM6ktMW5ltTnyit1KWPg/videos


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