Ableton Forum

Every time I render, something fails to sound how it should sound. Something always lacks. I'll play my track normally in Live, get it how I want then render it. When played back in Live on the same system, the rendered track sounds flatter and loses bass or other elements.
Is this normal? Do I have to render again, overcompensating on the lost elements?
I render on a higher than CD quality setting and leave Normalize function off.

Are you using a 24-bit interface, but render to 16-bit? If so then you have the answer. Try one of the dithering options when rendering with Live 7, they are supposed to help maintain that 20-bit feeling at least for low volume sounds (like reverb tails), whereas precision will still be lower at 16-bit than 24-bit all over the place.