Hi everyone,

I wanted to get some advice on making compilations / fan remasters of albums. I mainly want to make some Prince compilations for personal use, but this could apply for any type of compilation.

As we know, Prince’s 80s albums were all very low in terms of volume after they were transferred to CD (which I appreciate has it’s benefits when it comes to fine detail and dynamic range), in contrast a release such as Crystal Ball (1998) is brick walled to high heaven.

As a result, if I wanted to make a CD with a selection of songs from say ‘Sign of the Times’ and then maybe add Crucial, Sexual Suicide or some bootleg out-takes, then I’ll need to do some adjustments to avoid ear ache.

If you’ve had any experience with this sort of mastering, how would you approach this?

I was thinking that a happy medium would be to aim for the sort of volume levels on the Originals album, with the volume peaking between 0db to -1db, and an average volume of around -10db. This will require increasing the volume of the 80s LP tracks.

Should I…
1) simply increase the volume of each track manually and use a limiter to avoid distortion

2) apply compression to give the waves more body until the volume reaches the desired level (as such reducing the dynamic range)

3) a subtle mixture of both

Software wise I have Samplitude and Sound Forge which should be powerful enough to do a decent job. I’d just like some advice on the best approach. Also if you know any good tutorials or videos on effective techniques then please suggest them. I want to try and achieve the best possible results.

Many thanks in advance.

VC

[Edit - Typo]

[Edited 10/24/19 15:20pm]