Losing sound!

What up MPC fam,
Yo I just had a quick question. How come my beats be knocking when I play them straight from the MPC, but when I dump them on disc they loose there umph. I record my sounds into digi 002, and then to an outboard cd burner. I run the sounds through a plug in compressor on pro-tools before it goes to the burner. Any suggestions would be wonderful.



On a side note:
I wrote a post a minute ago saying I felt I was ready to start doing shows. I got a lot of feedback from you guys saying that I wasn't. I just wanted to say thank you! If I wouldn't have listend to you, I would have embarassed myself. LOL. I know that now!

maybe on the eq on your mixer you have the low freq turned down

...Or youre compressing it too hard.And by "compression" i mean compression,limiting or gating.

Doesn't matter if you using a Digi002 or a $50 sound card.
Unless you have boutique converters running 96K/24bit,
you will notice a difference. Every DAW, even the ones you
can't afford, has it's own sonic nuonces; it's own sound.
So, no, you not gonna get exactly what you put into it.
I would say, just get the best level possible into the 002,
pump the limiter, and then do some kind of wide-curve
mastering eq on the st mix as well. You gotta put a little bit
back in of what digital takes away. You can't really add what's not there
tho...
Some more ideas: always double check your cables and your panning.
Even w/ just a stereo mix, if they differ from machine to machine, the result could drop the volume and/ or intesity of the joint significanly. You could have unbalanced 1/4 inch jacks where you need balanced. You could have the output of your burner in an input that's not made to carry that signal. These are things people don't think about; they plug in and expect it to work. This stuff wil definately change the sound when you a/b it back.
Also, many minor problems in a mix that aren't solved by a limiter will be the type that get accentuated. Phase cancelation is one of these, which can occur when the gain structure and panning are not jiving properly.
Furthermore, and I believe this to be the main culpret, you are burning to an external burner. So here you convert digital to analog out the MPC, then back again into ProTools. Then you convert again out of protools, then again into the burner, then again out of the playback outs of the burner. That's 5 coversions with all different grades of a/d-d/a converters, and it's enough to drain the life out of any track, unless it's an all digital chain with a solid clock. Unless you have some sweetening devices like outboard tube amps that sit before the final burner, then your better off bouncing the mix to disk from ProTools, and using a burner hooked up to your computer. Maybe your standalone burner has scsi, or maybe your computer burns cds. If not, you should go digital out of the 002 to the burner. Use spdif, and get a good cable; only a 75ohm gold tipped rca is a real spdif cable. A regular rca cable has different wire inside, and is not made for digital transfers. It'll work, but you may have electronic anomolies, so cop the real deal!!
Peace

JBeats wrote:What up MPC fam,
Yo I just had a quick question. How come my beats be knocking when I play them straight from the MPC, but when I dump them on disc they loose there umph. I record my sounds into digi 002, and then to an outboard cd burner. I run the sounds through a plug in compressor on pro-tools before it goes to the burner. Any suggestions would be wonderful.



On a side note:
I wrote a post a minute ago saying I felt I was ready to start doing shows. I got a lot of feedback from you guys saying that I wasn't. I just wanted to say thank you! If I wouldn't have listend to you, I would have embarassed myself. LOL. I know that now!

Yeah I have the same problem...coming straight from the MPC, the mix sounds lovely, but when I record into my computer (via Goldwave) it loses its life like a snitch in a Mafia family...

like a snitch in a Mafia family...


...aye nothing a little eq cant fix?

or is it....

Yo,
Thanks for the tips. I am definately goiing to try these. I never thought about all the conversions that the sound had to go through before. Thats is probably the main culprit. Ill keep yall posted.