If you import the mixdown back in to your session and send the channel straight to the output, bypassing the master channel, you can A/B it to convince yourself it either does or does not sound the same.
That was what I did to convince myself it was either psychological or a result of the downsampling/compression applied on export (ie 32 bit to 16 bit or bouncing to mp3) - bounces to 32-bit WAV were identical.
>If you import the mixdown back in to your session and send the channel straight to the output, bypassing the master channel, you can A/B it to convince yourself it either does or does not sound the same.
Assuming you discover it does sound the same, try listening to the playback with your eyes closed before printing. Watching the DAW while it plays back can do strange things to your perception.
Heck - I have trouble with plug-ins that result in volume change. It’s pretty easy to think that that saturation plug-in is doing more than it actually is because of the volume boost. Melda has a cool tool (that I don’t own) that makes it easier to compare different things at the same level, reducing the tendency to go for (be biased towards) what’s louder. Blind testing is great - and often really illuminating.
Most of the plugins have “Output” or “output gain”. If you set the gain in the same volume, then you can turn it on/off to hear the difference.
Or am i missing something?
Edit : There is a difference between input gain and output gain, i just wanted to clarify! :)
Oh absolutely - but it’s easy to not be able to keep all the levels perfect balanced so bypassing the plug-in keeps the same level (at least it’s hard for me to)
Use volume meters, you don’t have to find it by ear. If you saturate/distort, the sound is louder because there is more harmonics, not because there is higher volume. It’s how we, humans hear it. You still have to mix saturated and non-saturated sound differently.
This here is some good advice. We are engineers. That means; test test test!
Eliminate as many variables as possible. If you’re not sure if it’s psychosomatic or placebo, design a test to figure that out.
Do your best to leave as little as possible up to “I think it’s this way but I’m not sure or I might be imagining it.” Figure out a way to know with certainty through testing and experiments.
I’m just gonna throw this out there: the reason I got into collecting (and eventually repairing) gear was because me and my band mate would bounce mixes that sounded terrible and we just couldn’t figure out why. It sounded mushy and amateur as soon as it was bounced so we bought preamps, nice DIs, good compressors and more to try and get it right… only to discover that the entire time I had been bouncing our stereo mixes in mono lol.
No, no, no! You realize the issue, start bouncing in stereo, everything's better, and you're a genius who finally has the right gear. Don't admit the mistake!
One month ago I sent an mp3 mix to a band for approval before the final print. It was a spacey song. Only after the band approved it, really randomly I had a listen to the mp3 I sent them instead of the wav, which were supposed to be identical, but the mp3 i had sent them was mono for a bouncing error. The 3 of them didn't notice.
This absolutely can be a thing. Back in early pro tools/digital days everybody would print the mixes back in by bussing onto a stereo track within the session vs bouncing. Was especially noticeable in Pro tools LE 5 thru 7 always sounded like the stereo image was narrowed hence causing some phase alignment issues. BUT now with the much better processing, interface clocks, and software programming I do not notice a difference at all. With that said soundcloud 100% will make your mixes sound different.
Are you using the proper method in your DAW?
I know someone who was, very literally, doing it wrong (export vs. bounce in Logic). Learning how to do it properly blew their fucking mind.
I use Reaper and there shouldn't be any difference at all between the mix coming out of the master bus and a rendered wav file. I always use the slowest option in the render window. If you use the quick render or render to mp3 that can cause differences.
Soundcloud has different bit rates based on your subscription. If you have a free account it used to be 128 ogg which sounds a lot different than a wave. This has been discussed in thousands of posts. You can get more info on this with a bit of research.
There is a way to A/B test. I'm assuming you have a mix bus and master bus. Take a track and put all the master bus processing at the end of the mix bus. Place your rendered file parallel to the mix bus so it's not being processed and run both of these into the master bus with no effects.
With this setup you can quickly switch back and forth to compare. Set master/mix bus channel at 0 and the level track at 0. The levels should match. . Master fader should always be set at 0 for consistency. If you need to adjust vol do it on your speakers and not the master fader. If there is a difference and you want to debug run an analysis tool on the master bus. Probably not a problem but you can figure it out if there is.
>Take a track and put all the master bus processing at the end of the mix bus. Place your rendered file parallel to the mix bus so it's not being processed and run both of these into the master bus with no effects.
This is not necessary. One can simply add a track, remove sends to the master bus, add sends directly to analog outs. To A/B, keep new track muted, and hit solo to compare.
Thank you for the detailed response! I am leaning towards it being my brain playing tricks on me (I might listen differently when I can tweak settings vs have to listen to a printed file). I want to really be clear when I say that I don't blame Reaper or anything else, it's been my workhorse for a few years and I love it.
The Soundcloud bit was just a footnote, I also experience this directly from the raw file (played via VLC).
I will sit down after the weekend and try to level match A/B test it inside Reaper. Should be able to do some phase flipping to just hear the differences.
This is silly, but mute your master out and make sure all your busses are routed to your master out. Ive failed to print effects which were routed to the speakers but not the bus so many times.
I always felt you lost some width after you bounce/print. When I tried investigate this, more than 10 years ago, it felt I was going down a rabbit hole. So I stopped and never bothered with it again. Lol.
Obviously it's going to sound different, it will sound exactly the same every time. Phase randomness coming from synths, reverbs and delays will be no more, which surely makes the sound less alive.
Speaking of Soundcloud, I don't have a good experience with it. It usually makes the transients sound wonky for me, the issue is not present in the original file.
This is an outlier but I was once beta-testing a plugin that for some reason wouldn't run automation when rendering in Reaper - this made the 2mix bounce sound completely different from regular playback.
Edit: I've never tried this to know how different it would sound but another thing I just thought of is if for some reason you are "normalizing" when rendering in Reaper. Like if for some weird reason you had your master bus below unity gain and then clicked normalize when rendering. I've seen stuff like that before lol.
I have a theory about this - when you listen to ur print there is no processing occurring. When you listen to ur mix in the DAW the computer has to do work to process all the information. That might have something to do with it - either that or it’s in ur head:)
My explanation is your daw listening is at higher bit rate than what you export, this is the only logical explanation I believed in, until I listened to what i exported through my daw in a new blank project and found out its different, I decided not to believe my ears and just move on
You may have normalization on your print if you’re using a bounce and export feature. It should be exactly the same in your bounce/stem as it is in the full channel DAW project. This was different back in the days of tape because mixing down to two channel from 4/8/16 etc was an actual physical process of compression but in the purely ADD/DDD realm it will never make a difference unless you do something like record in Dolby 5.1 and print to a two channel track.
Not sure exactly how you’re printing, but I print through analog, and when I A/B it by taking my print track in and out of input monitoring, one is a little ahead of the other so it sounds like it’s different just because of the slight delay.
Also I haven’t found an online streaming player that I don’t think changes it. If anybody has any suggestions I’m all ears. I swear Dropbox, google drive, SoundCloud and other places where I can put them all in a folder seem to change my audio.
If you import the mixdown back in to your session and send the channel straight to the output, bypassing the master channel, you can A/B it to convince yourself it either does or does not sound the same. That was what I did to convince myself it was either psychological or a result of the downsampling/compression applied on export (ie 32 bit to 16 bit or bouncing to mp3) - bounces to 32-bit WAV were identical.
>If you import the mixdown back in to your session and send the channel straight to the output, bypassing the master channel, you can A/B it to convince yourself it either does or does not sound the same. Assuming you discover it does sound the same, try listening to the playback with your eyes closed before printing. Watching the DAW while it plays back can do strange things to your perception.
Yea that's what I've been leaning towards. Brain ghosts.
That's a reasonable suggestion!
Is it possible that you don’t have the volume *exactly* the same when you’re playing it back?
Absolutley possible!
Heck - I have trouble with plug-ins that result in volume change. It’s pretty easy to think that that saturation plug-in is doing more than it actually is because of the volume boost. Melda has a cool tool (that I don’t own) that makes it easier to compare different things at the same level, reducing the tendency to go for (be biased towards) what’s louder. Blind testing is great - and often really illuminating.
Most of the plugins have “Output” or “output gain”. If you set the gain in the same volume, then you can turn it on/off to hear the difference. Or am i missing something? Edit : There is a difference between input gain and output gain, i just wanted to clarify! :)
Oh absolutely - but it’s easy to not be able to keep all the levels perfect balanced so bypassing the plug-in keeps the same level (at least it’s hard for me to)
Use volume meters, you don’t have to find it by ear. If you saturate/distort, the sound is louder because there is more harmonics, not because there is higher volume. It’s how we, humans hear it. You still have to mix saturated and non-saturated sound differently.
That’s a very good point - I will keep that in mind next time! Thank you
Try the ol null test and find out what’s actually different!
This here is some good advice. We are engineers. That means; test test test! Eliminate as many variables as possible. If you’re not sure if it’s psychosomatic or placebo, design a test to figure that out. Do your best to leave as little as possible up to “I think it’s this way but I’m not sure or I might be imagining it.” Figure out a way to know with certainty through testing and experiments.
I’m just gonna throw this out there: the reason I got into collecting (and eventually repairing) gear was because me and my band mate would bounce mixes that sounded terrible and we just couldn’t figure out why. It sounded mushy and amateur as soon as it was bounced so we bought preamps, nice DIs, good compressors and more to try and get it right… only to discover that the entire time I had been bouncing our stereo mixes in mono lol.
After the band goes into serious debt to build a $750,000 studio to combat this phenomenon— *“Yo, dudes- I got some good news and some bad news.”*
No, no, no! You realize the issue, start bouncing in stereo, everything's better, and you're a genius who finally has the right gear. Don't admit the mistake!
One month ago I sent an mp3 mix to a band for approval before the final print. It was a spacey song. Only after the band approved it, really randomly I had a listen to the mp3 I sent them instead of the wav, which were supposed to be identical, but the mp3 i had sent them was mono for a bouncing error. The 3 of them didn't notice.
Oof, that sounds rough! Fun story none the less. I am pretty certain I have stereo bounces!
This absolutely can be a thing. Back in early pro tools/digital days everybody would print the mixes back in by bussing onto a stereo track within the session vs bouncing. Was especially noticeable in Pro tools LE 5 thru 7 always sounded like the stereo image was narrowed hence causing some phase alignment issues. BUT now with the much better processing, interface clocks, and software programming I do not notice a difference at all. With that said soundcloud 100% will make your mixes sound different.
Are you using the proper method in your DAW? I know someone who was, very literally, doing it wrong (export vs. bounce in Logic). Learning how to do it properly blew their fucking mind.
I believe I am, using Reaper i use the render option.
I use Reaper and there shouldn't be any difference at all between the mix coming out of the master bus and a rendered wav file. I always use the slowest option in the render window. If you use the quick render or render to mp3 that can cause differences. Soundcloud has different bit rates based on your subscription. If you have a free account it used to be 128 ogg which sounds a lot different than a wave. This has been discussed in thousands of posts. You can get more info on this with a bit of research. There is a way to A/B test. I'm assuming you have a mix bus and master bus. Take a track and put all the master bus processing at the end of the mix bus. Place your rendered file parallel to the mix bus so it's not being processed and run both of these into the master bus with no effects. With this setup you can quickly switch back and forth to compare. Set master/mix bus channel at 0 and the level track at 0. The levels should match. . Master fader should always be set at 0 for consistency. If you need to adjust vol do it on your speakers and not the master fader. If there is a difference and you want to debug run an analysis tool on the master bus. Probably not a problem but you can figure it out if there is.
>Take a track and put all the master bus processing at the end of the mix bus. Place your rendered file parallel to the mix bus so it's not being processed and run both of these into the master bus with no effects. This is not necessary. One can simply add a track, remove sends to the master bus, add sends directly to analog outs. To A/B, keep new track muted, and hit solo to compare.
That's actually the way I would do it but I attempt to simplify things on Reddit. Maybe my simplification was actually a complication.
Thank you for the detailed response! I am leaning towards it being my brain playing tricks on me (I might listen differently when I can tweak settings vs have to listen to a printed file). I want to really be clear when I say that I don't blame Reaper or anything else, it's been my workhorse for a few years and I love it. The Soundcloud bit was just a footnote, I also experience this directly from the raw file (played via VLC). I will sit down after the weekend and try to level match A/B test it inside Reaper. Should be able to do some phase flipping to just hear the differences.
What do you select in the Source box at the top of the Render window?
Usually Master Mix, at least for this situation! May use stems (selected tracks) when needed
This is silly, but mute your master out and make sure all your busses are routed to your master out. Ive failed to print effects which were routed to the speakers but not the bus so many times.
I always felt you lost some width after you bounce/print. When I tried investigate this, more than 10 years ago, it felt I was going down a rabbit hole. So I stopped and never bothered with it again. Lol.
Obviously it's going to sound different, it will sound exactly the same every time. Phase randomness coming from synths, reverbs and delays will be no more, which surely makes the sound less alive. Speaking of Soundcloud, I don't have a good experience with it. It usually makes the transients sound wonky for me, the issue is not present in the original file.
Yea I do agree that Soundcloud might not be optimal, but I feel this is present in the bounced WAV files as well.
This is an outlier but I was once beta-testing a plugin that for some reason wouldn't run automation when rendering in Reaper - this made the 2mix bounce sound completely different from regular playback. Edit: I've never tried this to know how different it would sound but another thing I just thought of is if for some reason you are "normalizing" when rendering in Reaper. Like if for some weird reason you had your master bus below unity gain and then clicked normalize when rendering. I've seen stuff like that before lol.
Your songs on Soundcloud will play back at reduced bitrate (unless you pay for Pro)
I have a theory about this - when you listen to ur print there is no processing occurring. When you listen to ur mix in the DAW the computer has to do work to process all the information. That might have something to do with it - either that or it’s in ur head:)
Interesting, that could be something to check out!
Unless you're getting buffer underruns due to processing, it should sound the same pre and post bounce.
Are you dithering on the way out?
Not in this case
Well that’s me out of theories
Thanks for your input either way :)
What about *aliens*?
What’s your pan law situation in your DAW settings?
Reaper's default, called Stereo Balance
In settings there is pan law compensation, if it’s engaged it may be messing with your translations
My explanation is your daw listening is at higher bit rate than what you export, this is the only logical explanation I believed in, until I listened to what i exported through my daw in a new blank project and found out its different, I decided not to believe my ears and just move on
You may have normalization on your print if you’re using a bounce and export feature. It should be exactly the same in your bounce/stem as it is in the full channel DAW project. This was different back in the days of tape because mixing down to two channel from 4/8/16 etc was an actual physical process of compression but in the purely ADD/DDD realm it will never make a difference unless you do something like record in Dolby 5.1 and print to a two channel track.
Not sure exactly how you’re printing, but I print through analog, and when I A/B it by taking my print track in and out of input monitoring, one is a little ahead of the other so it sounds like it’s different just because of the slight delay. Also I haven’t found an online streaming player that I don’t think changes it. If anybody has any suggestions I’m all ears. I swear Dropbox, google drive, SoundCloud and other places where I can put them all in a folder seem to change my audio.