Hiya, I'm a learning noob..... and having a problem.

I followed a tutorial to make a song on reason 5, including mixing and making it sound ok. it sounds ok to my ears when played back.

I saved it as an audio file (wav 16bit, 44.100hz dither on).

When i burnt it to cd and played it on my cd players it sounded terrible. Nothing like what i was hearing when playing on my laptop (on my laptop i used my laptop, and hi-fi speakers to check it sounded ok).

The cd sounded quite muffled, and like there was an undefined murky bassy sound clogging up the mix. What have i done wrong? Im totally confused - i followed a tutorial including mixing/overall sound and the 'tutors' sounded ok, and it sounded on laptop.

Welcome to the world of audio mastering. The sound of your track is determined by the soundcard+speakers combo; so, anytime you play it on a different system, expect it to sound differently.

For example, there may be a very deep bass sound in your mix that your laptop speakers simply cannot play (but your cd player can). Or, your laptop may have a built-in equalizer that your cd player doesn't have, and so on. The goal of mastering is to make a track sound "good" on as many systems as possible.

Try these simple steps first and see if you can figure out where the problem lies:

- export the song at 24 bits, and play the wav file in a media player (does it sound the same as in Reason?)
- play that wav file again, but listen to it with headphones on (does it sound the same as your speakers?)
- play that wav file again, through your CD player's speakers (most CD players have an AUX input for the computer) -- (does it sound the same as your laptop speakers?)
- try burning a well-mastered track (not yours) and play it on the CD player (does it sound the same as your laptop speakers?)
- try using an MClass Mastering Suite in Reason

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What are you using for reference monitors? also definitely export at a higher quality as stated above. I usually export at 24bit 96k