Daw? or monitors?

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sk8a123

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so i'm recording in reaper and come across a very weird prolblem. After i'm done tracking and mixing and such, i render my file. And when i listen to it after rendered, it sounds different . For example, while reaper is open and i am playing my song, i can barely hear the bass. But when its rendered to a mp3, the bass is VERY loud... is the problem with reaper? or my monitors?
 
Just guessing, but that problem is normally caused by the program or device you are using to play the file.

Import the file back into reaper and see if it still sounds different.
 
sk8a123 said:
so i'm recording in reaper and come across a very weird prolblem. After i'm done tracking and mixing and such, i render my file. And when i listen to it after rendered, it sounds different . For example, while reaper is open and i am playing my song, i can barely hear the bass. But when its rendered to a mp3, the bass is VERY loud... is the problem with reaper? or my monitors?
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Its the monitors and the acoustic treatment of your room mate try fixing your room and what type of monitors do u have?
 
sk8a123 said:
so i'm recording in reaper and come across a very weird prolblem. After i'm done tracking and mixing and such, i render my file. And when i listen to it after rendered, it sounds different . For example, while reaper is open and i am playing my song, i can barely hear the bass. But when its rendered to a mp3, the bass is VERY loud... is the problem with reaper? or my monitors?
Click to expand...

Now are you talking about playing the file in the same room on the same computer through the same monitors?
 
izman said:
Its the monitors and the acoustic treatment of your room mate try fixing your room and what type of monitors do u have?
Click to expand...

Hmmm... i have some bass traps but thats all,... and i have the M-Audio bx5a's

TetraFish said:
Now are you talking about playing the file in the same room on the same computer through the same monitors?
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Yes same room on the same computer through the same monitors
 
99.99% sure it is the monitors and room treatment.
 
I dont think it would be either the monitors or the daw. it might the lvls or the treatement of the room.
 
Yeah what do you have on the master bus? Seems to me like your just using a low setting for exporting to MP3. Have you tried bouncing to .Wav yet?
 
If you took it to a different room or car, no, it would not sound the same if you had a monitor or room problem.

Even on the same computer it would not sound the same if your media player was set to a different volume. Fleisher Munson and all that. Many media players also have "enhancers" that change the sound. With something mixed in a good room on good monitors, the enhancers won't be that obvious. If the monitors and room were a problem while mixing, the difference could be huge.
 
stealth_prod said:
. Have you tried bouncing to .Wav yet?
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no i have not.... thats brings me to an interesting point.. i never really noticed this problem until i changed the default rendering setting to mp3... it was originally WAV. that might be the problem
 
I do agree that taking your mix to different environments will give you different sounds, but on the same system you mixed on and even through a media player at default settings should not give you a squashed sound. I can see if you set the players eq or something to do this but I think he would know if he changed it.

I just think its happening while converting to MP3. If you can, raise the settings to something like 320 or a little lower. I think 128 is whats commonly used and it completely gargles your song. Play around with and see if there is a difference between a bounced .Wav and the MP3. If the problem is still the same I would check your player settings, and then try like someone said above and import it back into reaper and check if it still happens. That will at least start defeating some of the causes.
 
stealth_prod said:
I just think its happening while converting to MP3. If you can, raise the settings to something like 320 or a little lower. I think 128 is whats commonly used and it completely gargles your song. Play around with and see if there is a difference between a bounced .Wav and the MP3. If the problem is still the same I would check your player settings, and then try like someone said above and import it back into reaper and check if it still happens. That will at least start defeating some of the causes.
Click to expand...

I just exported one as a wav. and one as a mp3... the mp3 sounds a bit thinner than the wav... not sure why.
 
So it sounds better? Your OP said when you exported as a MP3 the bass was really loud. Is it loud anymore? Did you do some more mixing on it?

When you are exporting as MP3 you are converting it from its original wave form to compress it for size. Exporting as a .Wav is just basically taking all the waves and making it into one file (depending on how you do it).
 
stealth_prod said:
So it sounds better? Your OP said when you exported as a MP3 the bass was really loud. Is it loud anymore? Did you do some more mixing on it?

When you are exporting as MP3 you are converting it from its original wave form to compress it for size. Exporting as a .Wav is just basically taking all the waves and making it into one file (depending on how you do it).
Click to expand...

Oh sorry. I forgot to mention that i did some other mixing to it.
 
Ok so does it sound better or still completely different? Check what settings you are converting to.
 
sk8a123 said:
I just exported one as a wav. and one as a mp3... the mp3 sounds a bit thinner than the wav... not sure why.
Click to expand...
Because a wav is full quality and an mp3 format is less quality. They will not sound the same because mp3 format throws away over 75% of the information. The first thing it does is get rid of anything over 12k...
 
Farview said:
Because a wav is full quality and an mp3 format is less quality. They will not sound the same because mp3 format throws away over 75% of the information. The first thing it does is get rid of anything over 12k...
Click to expand...

thanks. that explains ALOT
 
i've expereienced the same issue. I'd render a song to a .wav file in reaper. Then after opening it in iTunes, the track would sound quite different, such as the bass frequencies being more pronounced than when i listened to the track in reaper.
 
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