Sound Quality goes down...

[alex1fly]

... when I export the song. Play it in Ableton, its boomy and crisp, in a good way. When I play the exported song, it is quieter, with noticeably less bass punch and the highs are weak.

I'll bet I need to adjust some preferences, like my sample rate, but I just don't know that much about this area of music production.

[alex1fly]

Maybe I should clarify: its not so much the decrease in bass that bothers me, its that what Ableton plays and what iTunes plays sound so different from each other. Or what Preview plays.

The whole EQ is different. I never noticed before, but now that I've set up my monitors properly and put up some acoustic paneling, I can tell there's a world of difference between the sound on my Ableton session and the sound of the exported track.

I'm pretty sure I need to tweak some settings in the Export Track window. Will try Normalize and see if that helps.

[alex1fly]

I'd really be surprised to find out that I'm the only one who has ever had a difference in sound quality from their Ableton projects to their exported files...

[Skirtchaser]

yeah why does this happen?

in ableton it sounds great, export as an aiff, open in itunes, its almost half the volume of other tracks in itune :/

[kanuck]

yeah why does this happen?

in ableton it sounds great, export as an aiff, open in itunes, its almost half the volume of other tracks in itune :/

taht's cause you're comparing your own amateur mix to a pros mix and a pros master.. there are a lot of reasons why your volume is half a pro's mix.

I for one have never noticed this.. I'm not sure why yours is doing this.. and seeing how nobody's replying I'm guessing others aren't sure why as well. Perhaps contact ableton's support?

[cotdagoo]

and seeing how nobody's replying I'm guessing others aren't sure why as well.

I'd say the opposite.. sounds like an all to common issue of someone not understanding what mastering is, and noticing their exported audio sounds quieter next to professionally mastered material. I'd even guess that that 'quality' issues mentioned are simply volume related and not actually sounding worse.. just quieter..

Or maybe the audio is exported with normalizing.. Not too many details given on what settings were used though, or what sample rate the project is, etc..

here's the default reply to most of these threads:
http://tarekith.com/assets/mastering.html

[simmerdown]

you are probably working with your computer's volume up, but not noticing that the master volume is low...then you export get a low vol track....

[alex1fly]

Actually it was all about bitrate.

When you use a variety of samples, they are sometimes at different bit rates.

You have to match your bit rate in the export settings to the bit rates of your samples.

And then there's Live's default bit rate you deal with.

If you read my post, you'd see that the issue wasn't volume - it was a decrease in QUALITY, with LESS BASS and LESS TREBLE. What you hear in Ableton should be what you hear in your exported track. There are a million threads on mastering, but this wasn't a mastering issue, because I was never comparing my track with another track... just my track with itself.

I hope that this thread can help some folks out. People have posted about this on other forums, only to be lectured about proper mastering technique. With this issue, MAKE SURE YOUR BITRATES are correct. When you click on an audio file, Live will tell you the file's bitrate.

Audio production is an ever-learning process. After correcting my bitrates upon export, my song sounded exactly the same in Ableton, in iTunes, in Preview, all that. Important stuff.

[cotdagoo]

Actually it was all about bitrate.

When you use a variety of samples, they are sometimes at different bit rates.

You have to match your bit rate in the export settings to the bit rates of your samples.

And then there's Live's default bit rate you deal with.

If you read my post, you'd see that the issue wasn't volume - it was a decrease in QUALITY, with LESS BASS and LESS TREBLE. What you hear in Ableton should be what you hear in your exported track. There are a million threads on mastering, but this wasn't a mastering issue, because I was never comparing my track with another track... just my track with itself.

I hope that this thread can help some folks out. People have posted about this on other forums, only to be lectured about proper mastering technique. With this issue, MAKE SURE YOUR BITRATES are correct. When you click on an audio file, Live will tell you the file's bitrate.

Audio production is an ever-learning process. After correcting my bitrates upon export, my song sounded exactly the same in Ableton, in iTunes, in Preview, all that. Important stuff.

Yeah, I did read your post.. it sounded really similar to 99% of every other post regarding low volume on export and people suggesting poor sound quality.. Usually by people who have no concept of mastering.. So might as well throw it in the mix in the event you too didn't have a clue, and it puts you in the right direction.

You also said you didn't know much about your sample rate/prefs.. so why would anyone assume your knowledge of mastering is not the issue?

In my reply I also mentioned not much detail was given on settings, sample rate, etc.. Had more information been given it might have been easier for someone to make a better educated guess on the actual problem instead of suggesting anything possibly related.

Incidentally, what was the sample rate of your audio files, and what WERE you exporting your project as? Curious to know what process made your exports sound so bad.

[oddstep]

so are you saying, if you use 24 bit/32 bit samples you need to export at 32 bits? what happens when you need to burn a wav for a cd or what ever. get the concept, but not sure how anyone overcomes this issue.

[Tarekith]

Yeah, not sure how the bitrate was making that much of a difference, unless you were exporting at like 8bit or something?

[friend_kami]

Yeah, not sure how the bitrate was making that much of a difference, unless you were exporting at like 8bit or something?

i'm curious too, especially since i work with several samples at different bitrates (since noone (including myself, incidentally)) can't figure out a recording standard that everybody uses). i have however noticed that live have a tendency to mess up my soundcard when it needs to downsample; soundcard changes samplerate without my telling so. o.o

[alex1fly]

I ain't the 99% bro especially now with bitrates figured out. Bam!!

Yeah, I did read your post.. it sounded really similar to 99% of every other post regarding low volume on export and people suggesting poor sound quality.. Usually by people who have no concept of mastering..

[cotdagoo]

I ain't the 99% bro especially now with bitrates figured out. Bam!!

That's great & all.. how about letting us know what bitrate your files were, and what bitrate you were exporting?

Curious to know how this managed to make things sound quieter, less punchy, whole EQ being different, etc.. ?

[ollyb303]

Yeah, I'm curious too. I often use samples at different bitrates and I never noticed this phenomenon.