newbie with tinny, thin, weak track

F

flyinggurnard

New member
Hello.
I have a song I have recorded and it all

sounds good in the DAW but when I export the sound is thin and tinnny and lacking depth.
So far I have made space for each instrument through volume and panning, added compressors and EQ which I have been playing

with and tweaking for a week or so. As I say it sounds great in the DAW.

My question is what is the normal thing to approach in a mix when it is thin and tinny on mixdown? What should I be

looking at/for and experimenting with? I tried increasing the bass on guitar and vocals to not much difference. The drum

track is a sample.

thanks for reading.
cheers
Martin
 
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What DAW is it though. You have to make sure you are exporting to the right file format (.wav for full quality) and to the right numberz, i.e. if you are doing an mp3 then you want the full 320 not a 96. If you are using Propellorhead reason, give up all hope lol because that happens to everybody, if it is FL Studio, Logic or pro Tools etc it should be easily fixed. What DAW are you using? When it comes to mixing, less is more, seriously, you have named a lot of effects, e.q. compression etc, it is better to build it one by one using only a few little tiny tiny mods to the audio building it it one by one very slowly.
 
Thanks for the response Good Times ahead
.
I am using Presonus Studio One 2.5 (artist).
At the moment I am aiming just at mp3 but I have to export from Studio One in WAV and then convert. But the WAV is the same as the mp3 anyhoo.
So what sort of resolution and sample should I be aiming at?
Currently I got 16bit 44.1kHz which is for CD is it not? The Sample Rate only goes up to 192.0 kHz but I'll try that.

Thanks for the tips with building up one bit slowly at a time. I think I will need to re-do this track at some point it is my first real track so happy to start from scratch at one point it is all a learning experience. :)
 
after you have exported the song from the DAW, what are you playing it on to listen to it back? off of a cd in your car, in a program, etc?
 
Charade said:
after you have exported the song from the DAW, what are you playing it on to listen to it back? off of a cd in your car, in a program, etc?
Click to expand...

Hello thanks for the response.
Well I am playing it on the intended target format, so on a laptop, and an MP3 player. I understand it will sound different on different devices, even different computers I presume. But that is my concern it sounds good in the DAW, going through the same laptop speakers and audio hardware and codec, but once exported it is thin as poop.

cheers
 
flyinggurnard said:
Hello thanks for the response.
Well I am playing it on the intended target format, so on a laptop, and an MP3 player. I understand it will sound different on different devices, even different computers I presume. But that is my concern it sounds good in the DAW, going through the same laptop speakers and audio hardware and codec, but once exported it is thin as poop.

cheers
Click to expand...

Ah ok, I thought it might be a Winamp issue or something because for some reason everything I play in Winamp is a lot quieter on my comp.

Unfortunately I know nothing about PreSonus Studio One so I'm not much of a help here. Might be a good idea to post on their forums to troubleshoot (if you haven't already).
 
flyinggurnard said:
Hello.
I have a song I have recorded and it all

sounds good in the DAW but when I export the sound is thin and tinnny and lacking depth.
So far I have made space for each instrument through volume and panning, added compressors and EQ which I have been playing

with and tweaking for a week or so. As I say it sounds great in the DAW.

My question is what is the normal thing to approach in a mix when it is thin and tinny on mixdown? What should I be

looking at/for and experimenting with? I tried increasing the bass on guitar and vocals to not much difference. The drum

track is a sample.

thanks for reading.
cheers
Martin
Click to expand...

It is because you get phase issues during the higher system load during mixdown, so basically you end up with more frequency cancellation - parts of the music literally vanish. That is one part of it. Another part is that when you are inside the DAW you listen at full bit depth, but when you play the printed track you no longer have that quality. So don't compare what it sounds like inside the DAW against what it sounds like outside the DAW, it is always going to be worse sounding outside the DAW. And when you are inside the DAW you cannot hear the over-compression as easily, leave some headroom. And if you on top of this apply some bad dither and noise shaping algorithm and have a few dB signal difference inside the DAW vs. outside the DAW software, then the combination is going to make you focused on this. Beyond this, software like Pro Tools gradually decay in memory when running a session over and over. Shut down Pro Tools (even better your entire DAW), turn off the audio interface, turn it on, start Pro Tools and bounce.

To solve the issue you should do mainly these things:

- Cold boot your DAW
- Change DAW software (e.g. use Pro Tools instead of Cubase)
- Upgrade the CPU capacity
- Replace the audio interface with one that has lower latency
- Keep track of track level delay size and minimize it through smarter use of plugins
 
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