You actually completely misunderstood the question. I've been doing home recordings for about 10 years now. I have plenty of books, my best friend studied at Dallas Sound Lab, etc. My question was specific to Vegas. If you'd bothered to read my original post carefully this would have become evident. When I play my files in .veg form, they are at a nice volume. However, upon mixdown to another form, say wav, there is a noticeable volume reduction. I understand how to get the sound I want and am learning more all the time how to use Vegas to achieve it. I am getting that sound in the .veg format when in Vegas. However, trying to take that song outside of Vegas, I'm not getting the same sound. This is what I need help on

One major shortcoming with Vegas 2 is that is doesn't have a master bus (added in Vegas 3). For me this has helped make rendering levels more accurate. I get exactly what I see (and hear) happening in the master bus. This feature alone is worth making an upgrade imo.

drbam

My appologies, you are quite right in that my assumptions were unwarranted. Sorry I can"t truly help you with your vegas 2 issue.
Steve S

Try this: In a Vegas project, take note of where the master meters read while playing back. Now render that project to a wav file, and start a completely new project in Vegas. Load the wav file you just rendered into this new project, and play it back. Do the meters show the same level, or lower?

And I assume while you're at it, you're making sure the channel fader and master faders are at 0.

Also, you didn't mention how you were normalizing, and it makes me wonder if there's another piece to this story. Are you normalizing after the render, in some other program, or normalizing each clip in Vegas?

And what sound card are you using? Do you use the same outputs for listening to Vegas and the rendered wav file, or might you be using the computer's soundcard for listening back?

I think midigod may have hit upon your issue. If after your render, the master fader is still set below 0, when you solo and play back the rendered file the volume of that file will be again adjusted by the master fader dropping your overall level . It's a good habbit to always leave the master at 0 in any case, and adjust your track volumes for overall volume. Anyways try his advice I think he may have found your issue.
Steve S

I'm normalizing the entire track. Should I normalize each track individually? I have a soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinum. I'm using my soundcard for listening back on Vegas and the rendered wav file. The levels are much lower on rendered vers than on the veg project itself. This is after I loaded both into Vegas and looked at them. The project itself is actually peaking at around 3 db, and the rendered file is -3 db at it's height. Any suggestions? One solution I was thinking of is exporting the wav into Cakewalk and normalizing it there. Do you think I should upgrade to Vegas 4? thanks for the help

The classic post *How come my mixes are not as loud as the CD's I have?* has come up numerous times before.

I won't go into detail about how normalizing is bad, but if you want loud tracks you will need to invest in the Waves L2 or similar peak limiter and forget about normalizing (be careful not to abuse the L2 or it can sound bad). This would be used after you are finished mixing to *master* the song.

There is more to this than just using a good peak-limiter. Depending on the type of music you are doing, proper track compression (and EQ) are important. I usually compress most of my tracks individually and some of them quite heavily. I also compress the main buss a bit when I mix and may compress a bit more during mastering with the L2 as the last thing in the chain. You need good compressors and knowing how to use them effectively is not an easy skill to master.

Good luck....

Kanenda:

How is your Vegas mixer configured? How many busses do you have set up and what type of routing to hardware are you doing?

Peter

Again I'd like to point out that this is not some beginner's question of "hey, uh, how come my home recordings don't sound as loud as Nevermind?". This is a legitmate problem I am having with some way I am operating VEGAS. If you need proof, take this example. I recorded a song at a professional studio. Then, when I incorporate the song into Vegas and add some effects, upon mixdown onto a CD, and after comparison to the original vers of the song, the second vers is noticeably quieter than the first. Meaning that somewhere along the line, importing a wav file into Vegas under my set up is actually reducing sound volume.

And as for the real response, from SonicPCH, I thank you. The answer to your question is 1 stereo bus, and I was running everything through Microsoft Sound Mapper. Once you pointed out the hardware routing, I rerouted everything to my soundcard because I assume I'll get better quality since it's a top of the line or so brand. I'll get back to you with the results.
thanks to all who have paid attention to what I'm asking instead of trying to make some haughty condescending point

Travis

As I clicked this topic I thought, "ahhh - I bet this person's using V2..."

Bingo, and ditto drbam... I had the exact same issue in V2 - the lack of a master bus fader/ level display made it impossible to know where the total mix was peaking. Upping to V3 solved it, inasmuch as the addition of the master bus lets you "see" the level of the sum (average?) of all the tracks, and therefore you see what the rendered file will ultimately do. Otherwise it's hit and miss, trial and error. Sorry for such a non-detailed answer, but that's what "fixed" this problem for me.

momo