Re: CD Final levels

ummm... no.

I think Ty was referring to the incomparable movie "This is Spinal Tap", where, the lead guitarist said he "turns his amp up to 11".

Or maybe I'm misinterpreting Ty. He does mention compression and limiting. Mastering is the final process of preparing an audio program for replication and distribution. Final levels will be determined, as well as dynamic range. Compression, limiting, volume maximization are just a few of the processes used in Mastering that affect dynamic range.

My car is quite loud. I shouldn't have to turn my radio up to 11 to hear the quiet passages of a piece of music only to be blasted when all the instruments are playing. (At least for music someone expects me to listen to in my car.) So, an audio engineer mastering a recording for my car will use a smaller dynamic range, accomplished with compression. This squashes the volume of louder content, allowing the whole program to be turned up louder without exceeding 0db. The effect is that quiet passages are now louder.

If you rip a pop music CD and look at it on your digital meters, you'll see a *very* narrow dynamic range. A classical CD - a much broader range. Folk - it depends. This isn't just the composition and instruments, it's how the recordings were mastered.

Details of mastering could be many hours or days of study, some people do only mastering as their full-time job.

You're right - there are no hard-and-fast standards. However, you want it heard. I'd not peak at -11db, and I don't think Ty was suggesting that for replication and distribution (could be wrong about that). Most say peaks -3 to -0.3db as you go to CD or encode for the web. How loud the quieter material should be is a judgement call, based on the content. You want it to sound like it should.