Finishing out tracks to be LOUDER without Compression?

By tracks I mean a completed song. The only way to get my tracks out right now is to convert song to seq and then record Main Out. However when you record to main out your volume is cut by 69% for whatever damn reason.. one of you probably can explain.

Anyways during my creation I get all my mixer levels perfect and go through various sample attack/decays etc. To get the PERFECT final cut using my grado headphones Only. However when you throw on MASTER compression all that gets stripped away and those little nuances you worked so hard to get rid of... pop right back out at you and the GAIN feature under master Comp is the only way I know how to level up the entire sound.

It seems like when I sit down with that little box and my headphones every thing just comes so crisp and upfront and I construct the beat around what I'm hearing, but as soon as I spit it out everything is duller and more quiet.


Do you guys MIDI everything out to software while playing back your sequences or something or do you use MAIN OUT also??

record it into a daw like an instrument (it is one despite what some people say)
if you do it right it will sound the same as it does on your mp
remember these 2 words "gain staging"

I wouldn't use the mp's master fx.. but thats just me

Which MPC are you talking about?

Im on the 1k. Thanks Bennis I'll try it out

P.S. I was just googling around and saw a topic on some forums about the headphone jack and stereo out having more punch and being somewhat "better" than the rest of the outputs. Could this be the case? I'm really not familiar with DAW is it mostly a Recording to Software deal? Keep in mind i have 0 midi devices at the moment.

By default the 1k applies a -12db (maybe -6db) to master out recordings. I'm quite certain you can set this to 0db if you want to maintain the same volume.

It's more for mixing things so that you can then remix things on the MPC and still have headroom for future additions to your track.

Compressors are meant to reduce the dynamic range of a signal. It essentially makes the loud things quite and the quite things loud when using it on your master buss. This is helpful to create a glued, cohesive mix. Try mixing everything with the compressor sitting on your master buss the whole time instead of adding it later.