How can I get higher levels

Ever put in one of your own mixes and/or sequenced tracks you put down and have to turn up the volumn really high to get the most of a bass line or the most out of a treble loop?

Then you turn on the radio, sickened with the production, and the song on the radio nearly blows your ears off because its so loud. Why are my levels so low and the "pro" audio levels so high at the same volume levels?

First I tried getting my bass onto their own mixed levels ( 8 outputs on the mpc4000 helps), and this helped a great deal.

But mainly I think that compressors help, but not all of my modules have compressors built in for effects. When they do its great. Any suggestions on increasing levels to produced more room in recordings?

The key is compression, once you mix your song down and get it all eq'd and everything then compress your whole mix. Let me point out first "dynamic range" ( this is the difference in volume, i.e. the peak and the lowest level volumes played during a song) a professionally mixed song (in rap) usually only have a 6db dynamic range (this is why it sounds louder than your song) and I would guess your song has a 10-12db dynamic range, the less the dynamic range the louder it sounds but the less the range than the less natural the song sounds. Once you compress your song you should see in the gain reduction indicator how much the signal has been reduced, whatever amount is reduced then add it back with output gain (i.e. if you reduce the level of the sound by 3db then add 3db to the output gain). Usually you'll only want to compress 2-4db on your stereo mix.

http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id ... afe2c6d4ff

Go here to read how you can make your mixes sound a lot better. The quest for "louder" music is causing a lot of problems. I have tried a lot of the techniques on this page and my mixes are sounding a lot better than before

cheers

Every song you hear on the radio has been professionally mastered. They use limiters to smash the hell out of the signal. Then when the radio station broadcast the song, the smash the hell out of it even more to ensure that their signal is the loudest on the FM dial.I don't listen to music on the radio here in LA because all of that smashing distorts the audio and drives me nuts.

You can use a limiter on your mix bus, in order to get your signal louder. I don't think any of the solutions you suggest in your poll are going to solve your problem.