Distortion after rendering to 16 bit when played on consumer devices

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Crap crap crap. So during the whole process of recording and mixing I've stayed well within - 6 to - 18 db as far as peaks, I've made sure no plugins caused clipping and NOTHING ever got into the red... Everything has been in 24/44.1. When I rendered for cd, to listen in the car, one song sounds distorted! The electronic piano in particular. Everywhere else I've checked my mix, it sounded great. I've brought it to several different monitors and even to my friend's studio, no problems. I realized it was still in 24 bit when I checked the mixes, the only problem was when I rendered down to 16 but and played it in something other than a computer. Side note, I did bring the volume up on each song a little just so they all matched In volume from one song to the next, should I not have done this?

What should i do? The tracks have all been mixed down, I could dig up the stems if I had to but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, I did alot of work to the mix as a whole and it wasn't all at my studio.....
 
If you've got distortion in your stereo "bounce" you'll need to go re-open those projects. You need to dither going to 16-bit, too.

Post a link to one of the files so we can download and listen.
 
Some burning gear 'Normalizes' to a gnat's under 0dBFS by default and some CD players cannot handle that.

My son did everything in 24/44.1 and bounced it down to 16/44.1 with Samplitude SE8 and we just used its default settings but we 'told' Nero not to normalize.

Dave.
 
Crap crap crap. So during the whole process of recording and mixing I've stayed well within - 6 to - 18 db as far as peaks, I've made sure no plugins caused clipping and NOTHING ever got into the red... Everything has been in 24/44.1. When I rendered for cd, to listen in the car, one song sounds distorted! The electronic piano in particular. Everywhere else I've checked my mix, it sounded great. I've brought it to several different monitors and even to my friend's studio, no problems. I realized it was still in 24 bit when I checked the mixes, the only problem was when I rendered down to 16 but and played it in something other than a computer. Side note, I did bring the volume up on each song a little just so they all matched In volume from one song to the next, should I not have done this?

What should i do? The tracks have all been mixed down, I could dig up the stems if I had to but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, I did alot of work to the mix as a whole and it wasn't all at my studio.....

You tested the mixdowns on many sources and only one revealed any issues.......and that was your car system. Car systems might be very familiar to us.......but they're normally suspect as to accuracy. That being said........something on that one song needs to be fixed......so work backwards until you find what the problem is. You made a volume change last. Set the volume of that song back to where it was before you raised it. Lower the volume the same way you raised it. Don't use a different method. That could be it right there.
 
Hi there,

What DAW are you using and do you have a master fader?
I did this once in ProTools and baffled myself. Threw together a quick mic check for somebody and the mp3 kept distorting.
The main audio track did not go into the red, but I was using a compressor with makeup and, without a master track, was unable to see that final output was clipping heavily.\

In the DAW everything sounded perfect, presumably to do with the operating bit depth? I don't know.
 
Thanks for the replies, I'll try to post the song so u can hear it, it'll have to be after Thanksgiving tho. I did everything in reaper but used windows media player to burn the disk, that could be the problem. Nothing hit red on any of the faders at any time. I did just try the cd I'm my home cd player and didn't hear the distortion but my hone speakers are pretty limited as far a frequency range so I don't know if the problem is in the car speakers or not but it'd possible. Thing is, other cd's don't have that distortion present. I didn't use a hipass on any of the mixes so there is some low sub energy there... Anyway, I'll try again, this time leaving the faders where they were originally, at zero, and making sure there's nothing weird going on in Windows Media Player like normalization, and if the problem is still there, I'll post the song and we'll go from there. Thanks yall, happy Thanksgiving too
 
Oh, one thing I thought about I forgot to mention. The electric piano part that's distorting was a file record by a buddy of mine, who has been famous throughout this project for recording in the red. I'm fact a lot of what he sent me was so hot, I had to either perform surgery or repair do the whole thing. The thing is, inside the daw it sounds fine, is it possible that somehow there's something going on in that file that isn't apparent until after its rendered?
 
What Daw are you using and as Steeno stated, what is on your main out?

That also being said, I always set the output of my master limiter at -.14 before mp3 export. Somehow MP3 conversion seems really sensitive to inter-sample peaks when nearing the 0 limit. Even with the FabFilter Pro L which looks ahead and is supposed to take care of those.
 
Also check out what processing is on the piano track, compression? Recently I was mastering a guitar instrumental album, one electric guitar with some reverb, nice sound. However when I was using one of my go to plug ins that I use in almost all masting projects, it introduced some distortion. I changed this compressor to a different plugin and no problems. However the original plug in works fine on everything else. I have no explanation except that the parameters I was using (my standard saved mastering parameters) did not suit the material at all, and the type of compressor plugin emulation being used did not suit the material. So check this out with your track.

Hope there are not too many big words in the explanation LOL.

Alan.
 
I'm using reaper and I don't have any compression or limiting or any effects at all active . Basically what I did was gather the 5 songs, each one being a mixdown I was happy with, loaded them into my daw, adjusted the volume on each to where they were pretty much the same volume (none if them got passed - 3 db), and exported them one at a time to 16/44.1. With dithering checked
 
Hi there,

What DAW are you using and do you have a master fader?
I did this once in ProTools and baffled myself. Threw together a quick mic check for somebody and the mp3 kept distorting.
The main audio track did not go into the red, but I was using a compressor with makeup and, without a master track, was unable to see that final output was clipping heavily.\

In the DAW everything sounded perfect, presumably to do with the operating bit depth? I don't know.
Reaper, and yes I have a master fader, I mean basically the default set up with individual tracks and a master fader, us that what u mean? Sorry, still learning all this....
 
Idk, I worked backwards and adjusted the volume faders. It must be something with the car stereo, I played it in the office, the living room, thru a boom box, in my studio, thru headphones and my friends studio, sounds great in everything but the car, where it sounds distorted, almost broken. The thing is, I played commercial cd's in the car and I don't hear it.... Maybe there are some frequencies my music has that just happen to be absent from the commercial cd's. .
 
Just thought I'd share what I learned so we can close this or mark the issue as 'fixed' or whatever...
Turns out it's the car stereo. I called my mastering engineer and he suggested getting a sweep tone and burning it to a CD and playing it in the car to see if certain frequencies are distorting, I did and yes, I'm several spots. The reason the commercial cds didn't sound like that was because apparently none of the songs I happened to play had much going on in those frequencies, but yeah... I'm very glad it wasn't my mix. Thanks for all the input, live and learn I guess
 
I must ask though, if you don't hear your car stereo 'distorting' with commercial CD's, then why is yours? Brings in a question there doesn't it?
 
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