Exporting sucks !!!! Please help !!!!!

[vanil2]

Hi friends and happy new year.

I have this recurrent problem. My mix sounds very good when in Live on my Focusrite sound card and Adam Speakers, but when I export it a s a wave file it sucks !!!! I loose a lot of the basses, sound is mushy and muddy, as if every mixing used on the work (EQ's, Limiters, Compressors, etc...) where not listen to !!!! I have try everything and cant seem to find the problem. Does anyone has a clue what may cause this huge loss of sound quality ? Any help will be greatly appreciated. My eventual solution is to record all midi tracks as audio before mixing, would this help ?


Still waiting for your answers but I think the speakers hooked to my computer sound card are a good part of the cause. They could be responding quiet more badly than the Adam speakers, thus making me "feel" my mix is not good ?

[6uold]

I'm guessing that you're using the default, 16-bit depth. Try upping it to 24- or, better yet, 32-bit. If 16- or 24-bit, play around with the dither options. I don't know if this will help, but at least it's something you can play around with.

[yur2die4]

Make sure that when you do your mixdown, you are kind of comparing to other similar material. You'd be surprised by what Seems great on nice speakers, but can't really be played elsewhere. Professionally mixed tracks tend to take into account that sort of context. I wouldn't necessarily try to be as Loud as professional recordings, but really take into account the balance of bass, and other instruments. If your track is quieter, you can always just listen to it louder

[cotdagoo]

If I'm getting this right..


You play it in Live on a Focusrite, and Adam speakers and it sounds good..

Then you play it back through crappy computer speakers and your mix doesn't sound as good?


If that is indeed the case, seems this is exactly what should be happening.


Are you playing the WAV back through your Focusrite/Adam combination at all?

[jestermgee]

If I'm getting this right..


You play it in Live on a Focusrite, and Adam speakers and it sounds good..

Then you play it back through crappy computer speakers and your mix doesn't sound as good?


If that is indeed the case, seems this is exactly what should be happening.


Are you playing the WAV back through your Focusrite/Adam combination at all?

Might need to re-read the guys post there....

I think "6uold" is on the right track and this seems to be a common oversight with a lot of people when they complain about Abletons sound quality when they export.

Ableton (like most DAWS) uses a very high internal bitrate to mix with (32bit float). When you make a track using VST and other instruments, they may have a bitrate of 24/32 bits and you may be using samples of the same. It is fine to mix bitrates within Ableton (using 16 and 24 bit samples for instance) because this can all be mixed just fine.

When you then export your mix, you are trying to downsample the higher bitrates into a 16bit file. Think in terms of taking a Bitmap image using 24 bit colours (millions) and then exporting to an image that only uses 256 colours. You still get the image, but you loose a lot of detail.... Bitrate.

As a test, export to 24bit and listen again. It should sound just as it does in Ableton. If this is the case, do as "6uold" suggested and then try exporting using DITHER. The Dither adds some background "noise" when exporting that you cannot hear but it helps to shape the sound (as far as I know, i'm no real expert)when you are taking a higher bitrate mix to a lower bitrate file.

I have a feeling that some other applications (Logic and Pro Tools for instance) handle this step a bit better than Ableton so this may be one part why many export their high bitrate stems and do final mixing and rendering in other applications.

Do some research on dithering and bitrates.