My rendered songs sound pretty crappy.

jonathanmarchan · Post by **jonathanmarchan** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:12 am

Why is it that my rendered songs sound way tinnier and harsh during playback than they did in Live? The source is set to Master and I choose the highest quality settings to make the file. I feel like I'm missing something. Or is that to be expected? Also, I only seem to be able to play them back in itunes; WMP tells me I'm missing some codec 3 something-or-other, and it's not dl'able.

macdeath · Post by **macdeath** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:18 am

If you render your songs to S/Rs higher than 44,1 its obvious that WMP can't play these files...

Its a bit weird, if you make the rendered file to higher sampling rate-bit analysis, to have a harshed audio file...

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:58 am

WMP can't play 24bit files without some external patches.

pev · Post by **pev** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:48 pm

Have you tried playing back the rendered files in your sample editor or something else (e.g. Quicktime Player) instead?

~Pev

jonathanmarchan · Post by **jonathanmarchan** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 8:28 pm

Okay, I got it to play in Quicktime, but it still sounds hollow and harsh. Am I really the only one with this problem? It's quite noticeable.

kent_sandvik · Post by **kent_sandvik** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 8:32 pm

jonathanmarchan wrote:Okay, I got it to play in Quicktime, but it still sounds hollow and harsh. Am I really the only one with this problem? It's quite noticeable.

I'm only on the Mac platform, but I have not noticed any audio differences with the final master renderings between 5.0 and 6.0. Check if your output values are close to 0dB or not, in case the master levels don't push to that level, and you are working on dance music where everything seems to have to be close to 0dB if possible. --Kent

jonathanmarchan · Post by **jonathanmarchan** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 8:53 pm

I actually haven't rendered in Live 5; I got 5 just before 6 was released, so I got the free upgrade. I wasn't clear on that. The difference I hear is the Live set vs. the rendered file. I'm a bit new to digital recording, so I'm not sure what to expect. According to the manual, the rendered file should sound identical to what I hear in the live set.

kabooty · Post by **kabooty** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 9:03 am

i've also got problems with rendering. rendered a midi-part => first note is rendered much to loud. when i record the midi-part in an audio-track, everything is fine. have to contact ableton-support.

scyhte · Post by **scyhte** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 5:26 am

i've experienced this as well with live 5.
i rendered and reimported a set to cut out a few short parts and do some fx stuff with an external program. after putting these processed bits back into the first rendered wav-file and re-rendered it again as a whole thing.
the resulting wav-file really sounded a bit different compared to the set playing in live. it kinda had less low-frequencies so the bass sounded very weak after rendering, especially when heard over headphones.
i had no limiters/eqs/etc. switched on the master track and i set the volume low enough to avoid clipping.
it seems live did/does some kind of normalizing to the master track when rendering.
to avoid this, i just record the master output with a resample track and save the corresponding file that appears in the live recordings folder.

cheers

somejerk · Post by **somejerk** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 5:28 pm

this issue is relative to the sample rate. you cannot play back files larger than 44.1 khz. in most audio apps (itunes, winamp, WMP, etc).

i was having this issue a few days ago playing my mixdowns in winamp. when played through live or waves or audition, they sounded okay. winamp appeared to make the track sound harsh and less full.

i am still having huge mix down issues though. i can never get my tracks to mixdown as loud or full as they sound in live. so much for it rendering identical to what it sounds like in live.

i think it's time to consider other software options.

Pepehouse · Post by **Pepehouse** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 5:48 pm

I always use a sound editor to play my rendered files, mp3 players sound quite crappy, maybe is that the problem.

$4mU3l · Post by **$4mU3l** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:19 pm

If you render your songs to S/Rs higher than 44,1 its obvious that WMP can't play these files...

this issue is relative to the sample rate. you cannot play back files larger than 44.1 khz. in most audio apps (itunes, winamp, WMP, etc).

WMP and Co. can play files with 48kHz by default.... It depends on the bit depth, this should be not higher than 16 bits .

darkenedsoul · Post by **darkenedsoul** » Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:27 am

Hmm, so what am I supposed to do on a laptop that has Conexant HD 48k audio? I had to bump everything (all NI apps, Ableton, etc...) to it to get things to play normally/sound normally. Ableton was not even playing anything at 44.1k till I bumped it to 48k. Running with latest ASIO4All as well which brought this issue to the forefront. I haven't done any tracks yet with it (messing around with Massive which runs about 31% CPU usage as a VSTi!). We'll have to see what happens when I get something put together and render it. I then bring it into Sound Forge 7.0x to redo it so that WMP will play the file. Have had to do that pretty much since day one of any rendering. Anyone else see this as well with WMP after rending a wave in AL?

Mike

tylenol · Post by **tylenol** » Thu Nov 23, 2006 6:49 am

kabooty wrote:i've also got problems with rendering. rendered a midi-part => first note is rendered much to loud. when i record the midi-part in an audio-track, everything is fine. have to contact ableton-support.

I've also been having trouble with this -- it also happens the very first time you play the song upon loading. (Presumably rendering resets its state to this.) It's really a problem as I can't always get around it. Edit: the problem seems to have to do with grain delays that have high feedback. I'm sending a set to support that hopefully will demonstrate the problem. Further edit: I've found that you can work around at least my version of this problem by automating a ramp of the grain delay(s)' feedback, so that feedback is set to 0 when it first gets audio.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 3:01 am

Get some good mastering plug-ins and run them in a program like Wavelab or Soundforge to get mixes sounding better. Read some good books on mixing and mastering by Bob Katz or Bobby Owswinski or similar etc.

Compression/Limiting/EQ and other enhancements in mastering are what put the oomph and gloss into commercial sounding releases, a mix right out of the DAW without this treatment will sound a little flat and lifeless except through cans while running the DAW program.