I find the only way to avoid sound-cloud from making your tracks suffer from artefacts is to upload everything as FLAC at 2496 quality, I could hear big differences because I am uploading audiophile style classical guitar recordings, and the high end in particular suffers from mp3 space monkeys when I have tried uploading as WAV, AIFF and especially MP3, so for me FLAC is the way forward.
A/B Comparison: Mix and Master
- Thread starter killthepixelnow
- Start date
Rod Norman
New member
Gwar fan. Go back to your mix. group all those guitar tracks and add a parametric EQ, drop out the 1k and listen to it as you move the Q more open or tighter until the vocals stand out better without losing the midrange of the guitars too much. Then remaster. But before you master, drop the levels on the mix final so they do NOT crunch and clip. The highest should always have headroom. Then apply the identical mastering settings and you should be good to go. Right now the vocals sound like someone in the audience is trowing up in the background. Good luck,
Rod Norman, engineer.
Rod Norman, engineer.
Rod Norman
New member
Gwar fan. Go back to the mix. group all those guitars and add a parametric EQ with the 1k dropped out and slide the Q back and forth until you can hear the vocals better without losing the guitar midrange too much. Then remaster at a lower level (headroom, dude) and see if it doesn't help. Right now the vocals sound like someone in the audience is throwing up. (a mix that isn't clipping should get rid of the artifacts.) Good luck,
Rod Norman,
engineer
Rod Norman,
engineer
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
Well, that's weird because FLAC is just a more compact way to package the same data as a wave. It doesn't makes sense that compressing a wave to a lossless format would make any difference.
There is no advantage in using WAV when FLAC is the same quality but a lower filesize, you won't hear an increase in resolution between WAV and FLAC or ALAC, I certanly can't even through high end AD/DA converters. The problem with soundcloud is the streaming is still in 192kbps MP3 when you upload WAV or AIFF files, but when you upload a FLAC file, and listen to it back, it definitely sounds better, try it and see.
Bobbsy
Boring Old Git
If Soundcloud leaves your uploaded file as FLAC then it should, indeed, sound better. However, this would be a much larger file size than the MP3 they normally use.
If, on the other hand, they decoded the FLAC and re-encode it as MP3 then it shouldn't be better than WAV.
So, if your perceptions that FLAC is better than WAV (on Soundcloud) are accurate, then it is important to know what Soundcloud is doing differently. On the other hand, this could be another case of and "audio placebo".
If, on the other hand, they decoded the FLAC and re-encode it as MP3 then it shouldn't be better than WAV.
So, if your perceptions that FLAC is better than WAV (on Soundcloud) are accurate, then it is important to know what Soundcloud is doing differently. On the other hand, this could be another case of and "audio placebo".
VomitHatSteve
Hat STYLE. Not contents.
killthepixelnow
Do it right or dont do it
Hello again, I've tried not to jeopardize my mix with weird settings. This is a new master test:
PS: Pro Tools only allows me to export uncompressed [.wav] and [.aiff] files. I used the first.
PS: Pro Tools only allows me to export uncompressed [.wav] and [.aiff] files. I used the first.
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