Sounds great in Pro Tools - too quiet on Soundcloud!

foxcatcher64

New member
Hey all,

Apologies in advance for my lack of knowledge, but I'm just getting my feet wet with regards to recording and mixing. I recorded a simple little acoustic track in Pro Tools using an XLR mic connected to a Scarlett 2i2. Everything sounded great in Pro Tools, and I then exported the song to a WAV file to prepare it for Soundcloud. I then uploaded the song to Soundcloud, only to find that it was incredibly quiet when viewed on Soundcloud, even with the volume turned all the way up.

Did I do something wrong in the mixing/exporting stage?

Any help would be much appreciated.
 
I hope you're not using the Pro Tools main fader as your listening volume control. If so, put it back to 0 before bouncing.

Basically, if you record and mix at proper levels it will be low, but that's typically addressed in the mastering phase when you finalize a file for release. You'd use a limiter to bring down peaks enough to let you raise the level as needed. A mastering limiter makes that pretty simple.
 
There is another detail everyone uploading music to SoundCloud should know. For streaming purposes the platform encodes aaaall music to 128 kb/s mp3 which is violence against good sound lol
A perfect mix I've created for my client after being uploaded to SC has got ineligible sub lows bump and the Bass mids opposite - got lost.
So, the point is that music encoded from WAV to mp3 (specially low bitrate) loses it's quality. So before uploading track to SC one should check if there any issues after it's encoded.
Sonnox' and iZotope's VST real-time encoders make this check fast and easy.
 
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