Months back, I had several problems and questions while trying to do my
final CD album preps, mostly concerning getting all of the songs to have
the same percieved listening level, as well as having a lot of power too.
Quite a few folks here came up with lots of good advice, and I tried
several methods. However, I finally opted to use some simple tools that
were suggested here. Rather than using the suggested Waves tools, which I
tried, I opted to finalize my masters in three simple steps. First, I let
the "WaveGain Frontend" adust all of the percieved listening volumes
automatically, and then I tweaked some of the tracks a tad for personal
taste. Of course, this put all of the songs way below db, although they
sounded fine in relation to one another.. Again, rather than use the L1 or
L2 in Waves, I settled for using the PSP VINTAGE WARMER to finalize all of
the tracks and bring them up to nice "crunchy" sound, at about 98 percent
of full gain. The added EQ in Vintage Warmer gave my tracks an even sound
that I wasn't able to achieve in Waves. The Vintage Warmer has three
"Finalize" modes, and I pretty much used the stock presets, with some mild
tweaks.

I released the album last month, and I'm starting to get some pretty nice
reviews on it. Sorry I can't single out the folks by name here that helped
shape the final directions that I took in processing the final tracks, but
actually, all of it helped, because it made me try a number of methods, and
I feel that I'm much better prepared for my next project. I gained a world
of experience by trying the methods that were suggested.
I'm really not hawking my album, but in the event that any of you want
to hear the final results of how the project turned out, you can go to
www.cdbaby.com/leatherwood. Those are only MP3 128 samples, but I built all
of the album around the first track (Remember the Alamo), and I think it has
a pretty powerful sound. I owe that to this group..
Thanks again.
alan cassaro