Is there a secret to making songs sound good on ReverbNation and similar sites?

Bassman Brad

Bassman Brad

New member
I just completed my first mix on a DAW, and had it sounding pretty good on my two pairs of monitors. There were still a few minor issues that I haven’t quite have figured out how to fix, but I thought it was a pretty solid mix, overall. So, I uploaded it to my ReverbNation page - Brad Lee Uebinger | Crawfordsville, IN | Country / Americana / Adult Contemporary | Music, Lyrics, Songs, and Videos | ReverbNation

When I checked it on the site, it sounded HORRIBLE! The guitars sound phasey, like there is some comb filtering going on. When I double checked the main mix on the DAW, I could still hear this a little bit, but not nearly as prominently. So, there truly IS a problem with phasing of the guitar mics, but it is VERY exaggerated on the mp3 at ReverbNation. To fix the problem completely, it appears that I’ll need to go in with some sort of phase scope and figure out how to realign the phase on the guitar mics, so they don’t comb filter.

Furthermore, there is a little bit of this fuzzy, phasey quality going on in ALL the songs on the site, not just the one that I recently posted. The others are all much rougher, more primitive mixes, that I put together on a small home multitracker. They certainly have some issues (mostly performance flaws), but they certainly don’t sound as bad as they do on the ReverbNation page. And there is a bit of this phase shifted sound going on even for instruments (such as soft synths) which clearly would NOT have been recorded with mics that were slightly out of phase.

Is there some trick to make sure you don’t lose quality when you post to one of these types of sites? Did I do something wrong with dithering down to 16/44 perhaps, or when the wave file was converted down even farther to mp3? I’ve checked other artists pages and they don’t sound like that. I’m very frustrated and totally befuddled about this.

Thanks,
 
OK. Thanks. I'll try that. I also have learned (from Bob Katz's book Mastering Audio) that I should have used one of the more sophisticated dither processing available in Sonar, rather than a simple triangle dither. Would that have had something to do with it?

p.s. I also just did a simpler "Song Demo" mix of the song, which only had the primary acoustic guitar and voice. No phase irregularities there. If there are any, then they would be in the interaction between the main acoustic guitar and the second guitar. So, it's looking less and less like there was a problem in the phase relationship of the mics used that is causing the bad playback.

You said 320 may be "too much." So, do you mean converting it to a higher or lower rate?
 
He probably meant that the file size may be bigger at 320 than the allowed 8MB per download on reverbnation.
 
Bassman Brad said:
OK. Thanks. I'll try that. I also have learned (from Bob Katz's book Mastering Audio) that I should have used one of the more sophisticated dither processing available in Sonar, rather than a simple triangle dither. Would that have had something to do with it?

p.s. I also just did a simpler "Song Demo" mix of the song, which only had the primary acoustic guitar and voice. No phase irregularities there. If there are any, then they would be in the interaction between the main acoustic guitar and the second guitar. So, it's looking less and less like there was a problem in the phase relationship of the mics used that is causing the bad playback.

You said 320 may be "too much." So, do you mean converting it to a higher or lower rate?
Click to expand...

Here is a link on dithering, Although I dont think that is the problem.
What I meant was, When you convert a wav file to mp3. It will give various resolutions to choose from,
Example: MP3 files will range from 56kbps, which is way to low. To 320 kbps, which is probably to high for reverbnation. upload your song to reverbnation at 256kbps or 224kbps. for the mp3. See If that works.

Hope that helps..
take a look over this "dither for dummies" article:
http://www.earlevel.com/Digital Audio/Dither.html
 
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Of The Sea said:
Here is a link on dithering, Although I dont think that is the problem.
What I meant was, When you convert a wav file to mp3. It will give various resolutions to choose from,
Example: MP3 files will range from 56kbps, which is way to low. To 320 kbps, which is probably to high for reverbnation. upload your song to reverbnation at 256kbps or 224kbps. for the mp3. See If that works.

Hope that helps..
take a look over this "dither for dummies" article:
What is dither? | EarLevel Engineering
Click to expand...

OK. I'll try that. Thanks for the suggestion. I don't remember what rate I used, but I always go for the highest rate possible, unless I'm going to email the file to somebody, then I'll cut it down.

I do think that I understand dither now. In addition to the Bob Katz book, I've also read Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki. That one comes with an audio DVD that has audio samples. In one, they took a low level signal and applied various dithering methods, and then boosted the signal till you could hear it cut out. Very enlightening!
 
Reverbnation probably dithers down to 128 Kps MP3 to save disk. You will suffer from this problem on almost all websites. Even if you upload at 320 Kps there's nothing preventing them from reducing that to a lower rate and thus destroying your mix. I upload to Soundclick for convenience but I now upload a 320 MP3 to lightningmp3 and post the link here if I want anyone to enjoy a mix. I might switch to wav once I find a convenient site. Do try and fix obvious problems but don't be so hard on yourself - these upload sites could care less what your mix sounds like....
 
Anything under 200 will have artifacts of some sort - the lower you go the worse it gets.
It depends on what revnat uses to convert as well. In some instances it's worth you while finding out what they convert to & doing it yourself, adjusting the mix to compensate then uploading to minimal intervetion.
Ido is right though; use the streamers but make a download option available. Soundclick converts for its streamer but allows a reasonable quality for MP3 downloads for members.
Using something like Dropbox or LightningMP3 allows people who are interested in your music to hear it in reasonable quality.
Oh, additionally different programs convert to MP3s in different ways garnering different results. It's worth doing a little digging to find out what's best. I left a post on the clinic a few months ago on this topic. Use the search function!
 
ido1957 said:
Reverbnation probably dithers down to 128 Kps MP3 to save disk. You will suffer from this problem on almost all websites. Even if you upload at 320 Kps there's nothing preventing them from reducing that to a lower rate and thus destroying your mix. I upload to Soundclick for convenience but I now upload a 320 MP3 to lightningmp3 and post the link here if I want anyone to enjoy a mix. I might switch to wav once I find a convenient site. Do try and fix obvious problems but don't be so hard on yourself - these upload sites could care less what your mix sounds like....
Click to expand...

OK. Thanks man! Good to know! I'll make my own 128 mp3 version for upload to ReverbNation. I still want to use the site, since it's a good way to get your music out to people. The thing is, I am hearing other songs on there that sound really good. I want mine to sound good too, since I think the songwriting is pretty strong.

I'll experiment with making my own lower res mp3s and see if I can make them so they don't suck. :(
 
rayc said:
Anything under 200 will have artifacts of some sort - the lower you go the worse it gets.
It depends on what revnat uses to convert as well. In some instances it's worth you while finding out what they convert to & doing it yourself, adjusting the mix to compensate then uploading to minimal intervetion.
Ido is right though; use the streamers but make a download option available. Soundclick converts for its streamer but allows a reasonable quality for MP3 downloads for members.
Using something like Dropbox or LightningMP3 allows people who are interested in your music to hear it in reasonable quality.
Oh, additionally different programs convert to MP3s in different ways garnering different results. It's worth doing a little digging to find out what's best. I left a post on the clinic a few months ago on this topic. Use the search function!
Click to expand...

I'll look for that post too. Thanks for the feedback!
 
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