Huge Bass Boost Problem

Z

zipline7020

New member
This happens every time. after I spend hours equalizing, setting volumes, and finishing it off with some multi band and a volume boost it sounds punchy and great! So I render it in WAV form to my computer. Once I press play out of the DAW, the kick drum has no punch and is barely audible, and the bass guitar has this sudden HUGE, FAT body that takes up so much sonic space.

Does anyone know why when listening to my song side by side on the computer through the same head phones/speakers/soundcard(Focusrite Scarlett 2i2), one is how I want it, and the other is a bass fest? The only difference between the 2 is one is in reaper and the other is in iTunes. ( My iTunes EQ is set to flat).

any help would be great because I am so stumped.
 
If you are mixing and rendering in Reaper, if you play the render back in Reaper it should sound exactly the same.

I don't know how itunes works, having deliberately avoided using it, but I expect that it is applying its own compression in some conversion process which is messing up all your hard work. It certainly sound like that if the kick is losing its punch.
 
It's not just in iTunes. It just seems the audio file itself has the huge bass boost. Sounds completely different than in the DAW before I rendered it.
Could some effects on the master channel be messing up during the rendering?
 
"So I render it in WAV form to my computer. Once I press play out of the DAW, the kick drum has no punch and is barely audible..etc.
Playing on the DAW- through a clean zeroed feed, or might it be passing through the same master bus and it's settings a second time?
Another one easy to miss, one or some of the tracks or sub busses not actually assigned to the master bus.
 
Tracks not assigned to the master shouldn't be heard either in normal playback or in the rendered mix unless something else screwey is going on. Likewise, any FX on the master should be applied the same either way.

What settings are you using in the render dialog? Can you show us a screenshot of that and maybe the MCP for the project?

Do you by chance have something in the monitor FX? Shift-click the FX button on the master fader and see if there's anything in that window. These will be heard on playback from reaper, but not rendered, and will obviously not be applied to playback from iTunes.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Tracks not assigned to the master shouldn't be heard either in normal playback or in the rendered mix unless something else screwey is going on. Likewise, any FX on the master should be applied the same either way..
Click to expand...

Well no, it’s entirely possible, even easy. When a new sub bus, or track for that matter is made it can default to a physical D/A output- i.e. not passing through master fx, settings etc. In that case when you ‘play’ you hear both. But rendering/export settings (typically) only see what’s on the ‘master bus.
 
I didnt even know you could shift click to see monitoring. No theres no effects assigned there. All thats on my mastering is a multi band comp and a volume boost.
and things can be played but not sent to the master track? how do I check that. I thought everything went to the master track unless you muted it.
 

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mixsit said:
Well no, it’s entirely possible, even easy. When a new sub bus, or track for that matter is made it can default to a physical D/A output- i.e. not passing through master fx, settings etc. In that case when you ‘play’ you hear both. But rendering/export settings (typically) only see what’s on the ‘master bus.
Click to expand...
I think that falls into the "something screwey" bin.

Based solely on the information in this thread, and the screenshots, I'm stumped. If you load a new project in reaper with nothing on the master and insert the rendered file, does it sound right?

Maybe post the sound?
 
I loaded the rendered WAV into reaper and it sounds super bassy, just like iTunes.

But whats interesting is when I Played the tracks (pre-rendered) and when it was rendering, no clip warnings came up, its highest peak was -0.2 dB.

But now that Ive put the finished WAV back into reaper, with all volumes set at 0, its clipping as high as +0.3 dB at times
 
What all effects do you have on the master bus in your project? I've had issues with ReaVerb doing weird things if I use impulse files that don't match the sample rate of the rendered file. It renders with different volume than what I hear while listening to the project itself.
 
zipline7020 said:
I have a multiband comp, a volume boost and a slight stereo widen.
Click to expand...

I would go through the process of elimination. Render the song without any of that stuff on your master buss. If nothing changes, at least you've eliminated the possibility that one of those things is causing your problem. If it does "solve" the problem, bring in each of those things one at a time until the problem comes back.

Slightly off-topic....What do you mean by a "volume boost".

More off-topic....Do you really think a stereo-widener is necessary? I submit that it's doing nothing good to your mix and completely not needed.
 
Wait! Why are you rendering to 64fp? I'm kinda surprised iTunes will even take that. Render it to the bit depth at which your converters are running and see if that changes anything. Still don't completely understand why that would make a difference...
 
I don't know why its 64 fp, thats just what it set to. Im not sure what it even means.

and Idk about the stereo widener, I just used it experimenting one day and liked how it sounded.

and I use a volume boost because I always hear everyone say that you should record at -18 dB, so I do. so then the mixed product is really quiet. So I put a volume boost in the master to make it a little louder. The effect has two sliders, and its just how many dB's you want to raise it, and the other is a threshold knob. Which I normally set at about -0.2 or so.
 
zipline7020 said:
Idk about the stereo widener, I just used it experimenting one day and liked how it sounded.
Click to expand...
It's all good, man. If you like how it sounds, that's what it's all about. I was just asking. Like I said, it was totally off-topic and I don't want to derail the thread from finding the solution to your problem.

I use a volume boost because I always hear everyone say that you should record at -18 dB, so I do. so then the mixed product is really quiet. So I put a volume boost in the master to make it a little louder. The effect has two sliders, and its just how many dB's you want to raise it, and the other is a threshold knob. Which I normally set at about -0.2 or so.
Click to expand...
OK, I'm not familiar with any plug-in like that, I was just curious.

Well, you are recording at proper levels if you're shooting to average around -18. It's totally normal that you'd want to boost the volume after that. Don't listen to anyone that says you don't need to boost the overall volume after. You heard with your own ears that it's way too low if you don't. Again, not to derail the thread, but you might want to try boosting the overall volume with a limiter next time, if you feel like experimenting.
 
Ah, so the volume boost is a limiter of some sort. Not a bad thing to have on the master bus, if used gingerly.

Try rendering to a 44.1 KHz 24-bit WAV file and see how the results are. And as mentioned above, start disabling master bus effects until you find the offending one.
 
Tadpui said:
Ah, so the volume boost is a limiter of some sort.
Click to expand...

Oh you're right. I should have realized that when he mentioned "threshold". OK, then forget my advice about using a limiter instead. Seems you're already using one.
 
I turned the master bus off, and set it to 24 bit, and though the bass boost wasn't as extreme as with it on, it was definitely there. so it seems that theres a rendering bass boost coming from something else,

and the multi band from the master bus is making it worse.
 
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