Soundcloud not cooperating with my audio. : /.... please help.

V

vincent t.

New member
Hey guys,

Over the past few days I have been trying to master this song just right so that I can upload it to soundcloud without it sounding terrible. It has not been working out for me too well. First of all, the song is not loud and is nowhere near clipping so I have no idea why it sounds like it is clipping when I upload it to soundcloud. I am aware that soundcloud converts audio down to 128 kbps, but I was told that if you have a good enough mix your audio should not suffer too much. My mix is is below 0 db, every sound has it's low frequencies cut, every sound is eq'd, iv'e put effects into the mix, etc. I mean, the song sounds pretty clean. When I try to upload it to soundcloud though , the quality of the song greatly decreases, especially the hi hats, claps, and other higher frequencies for some reason. Iv'e tried mastering it and have watched tons of tutorials on youtube. After all of the compressing, limiting, raising of the volume, etc. the quality of the song still sounds the same no matter what on soundcloud. Even the softest parts of the song sound like they are being clipped. I have no idea what to do anymore lol. It is so frustrating. If anybody can give me some tips, tricks, secrets or mabey even help master my song, That would be AMAZING. Any help would be much much appreciated.

Thanks guys :)
 
I've never had the "clipping" issue before, however you can try cutting some of the higher frequencies of in the mix your uploading. I'm not familiar with what SC does to audio, but 128 kbps data compression is primarily affecting higher frequencies.

Have you compared your track to other tracks on SC to see if what you are hearing exists elsewhere?
 
what is your upload file format? mp3? wav 16/44.1? wav 24/44.1?

your best solution is properly dithered 16/44.1 wav
 
Adrian-MarQ: Yes, I have compared several times.
bandcoach: I have tried uploading in 320 kbps mp3 , 32-bit wav, 24-bit wav, 128 kbps mp3...I've tried just about every format. All sound identical when uploaded to soundcloud .

Adrian-MarQ & bandcoach: Here, I will show you guys what I mean. This is the song uploaded...dithered 16-bit/44.1 wav...exactly how bandcoach recommended ... https://soundcloud.com/ohhotdamn-1/keys-test

As you can hear, there is still clipping present in my audio. You can see too that the audio has huge peaks and looks nowhere near compressed. This is my song without any mastering done to it. This is my song just after I finished and then lowered the volume to it... alot. Even though the song is not compressed or limited or anything, you still should not see any clipping and it should not look that loud because the mix is under -6 db in my master db meter in my DAW (fl studio). The volume is very low.
 
Please upload your song on soundcloud and google drive and share the links to make sure it's the soundcloud's player fault :)
 
looks can be deceiving - the image is what soundcloud believes they should present and in their new view does not come close to representing what the waveform looks like

I'd also add that soundcloud re-normalises tracks to their idea of what "hot" audio should be

as for your track, I could not access it even though I was logged in - the dreaded "Oops sorry we can't find that track message was all I got"
 
SwagProductionz said:
soundcloud encodes files and compresses it's own way on the site.. it's beyond your control
Click to expand...

There's no excuse to really destroy and alter his mp3 like that though.

I upload 320Kbps mp3s all the time and there's 0 conversion from soundcloud from wav to mp3,
cause I make the conversion myself and sounds exactly just like the 320Kbp mp3 I have on my pc.

You can't say it's soundcloud's fault for literally destroying his song, otherwise no one would use it.
 
bandcoach: Yeah , I have actually recently read up about that on the internet.

....Here guys. This is the song on google drive. It is a wav and has not been uploaded to soundcloud yet:


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Z-Oqv8LaBaNG9PWC1jaWNYbDQ/view?usp=sharing


And this is the song after it has been uploaded to soundcloud. It is the same exact file, but sounds noticeably different:


https://soundcloud.com/ohhotdamn-1/keys-test


....Let me know if the links don't work.
 
so downloading from google drive as I write this

the soundcloud link is still not working change your sharing settings on it please
 
You are not alone. Soundcloud's compression makes the hi-hats in my songs sound truly awful. But most of the other frequencies in the mix are not tampered with too badly.
 
Excio said:
You are not alone. Soundcloud's compression makes the hi-hats in my songs sound truly awful. But most of the other frequencies in the mix are not tampered with too badly.
Click to expand...

Guys let me give you an explanation so i can help you solve your soundcloud problems.

When a streaming service (being youtube, soundcloud or anything) receives a format, it will change it to its needs.
If you give the system what it wants, it won't change it, since it's ready.

For example, youtube needs .mp4 files. If you upload an .mpg file, it will convert it into .mp4 to make it playable. It's in this step, is where soundcloud/youtube destroys everything.
If you want to experience as less changes as possible, then give the streaming service what it want.

Soundcloud needs mp3 and youtube mp4 formats. My settings for youtube are 1920x1080p and 1024Kbps audio in mp4 format.
My settings for soundcloud are always 320kbps mp3s.

With these settings the video/audio I see/hear on the internet are 99.9% same with the files played on my computer.
Even if there's a difference it's not really visible/audible to the human eye/ear.

This is what I do and never experience problems with the above mentioned websites.

Hope this helps you out solve your problems,
Let me know if you got things working :)
 
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sorry; regardless of what format you upload to soundcloud it will transcode to its required 128kbps mp3 format even if the file is already 128kbps mp3
 
krushing: You see how you placed a track under your reply? I want to know how to do that. I have been trying to do that instead of giving you guys the link, but I don't know how to do that. Can you show me how to do that please?

.....also, is it just the sc link that doesn't work, or is it the google drive link too?
 
bandcoach said:
sorry; regardless of what format you upload to soundcloud it will transcode to its required 128kbps mp3 format even if the file is already 128kbps mp3
Click to expand...

Still it's better to upload it at 320kbps in mp3 format, cause it does less damage to convert from mp3 to mp3, rather than wav to mp3,
you don't know what soundcloud will alter from the wav -> mp3 conversion.

Also, in case you enable downloads in the future, the mp3 quality while downloading is at 320kbps and not 128kbps such as streaming,
so it's better to upload the best possible mp3 from your DAW, just in case someone decides to download it to his computer. :)
 
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vincent t. said:
krushing: You see how you placed a track under your reply? I want to know how to do that. I have been trying to do that instead of giving you guys the link, but I don't know how to do that. Can you show me how to do that please?

.....also, is it just the sc link that doesn't work, or is it the google drive link too?
Click to expand...

to embed a soundcloud player widget use the following

[soundcloud]your soundcloud url[/soundcloud]

googledrive link was fine but I had to download as it was too big for googledrive to stream

Paschalis I. said:
Still it's better to upload it at 320kbps in mp3 format, cause it does less damage to convert from mp3 to mp3, rather than wav to mp3,
you don't know what soundcloud will alter from the wav -> mp3 conversion.

Also, in case you enable downloads in the future, the mp3 quality while downloading is at 320kbps and not 128kbps such as streaming,
so it's better to upload the best possible mp3 from your DAW, just in case someone decides to download it to his computer. :)
Click to expand...

I would disagree on this - mp3 to mp3 conversion from higher bitrate to a lower bitrate will almost always attack material that already has space monkeys in it (twitters and gurgles and the like) and make those space monkeys even more noticeable

and as for the download: if you upload wav then the download will be wav with no loss of fidelity
 
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Paschalis I. said:
Still it's better to upload it at 320kbps in mp3 format, cause it does less damage to convert from mp3 to mp3, rather than wav to mp3,
you don't know what soundcloud will alter from the wav -> mp3 conversion.

Also, in case you enable downloads in the future, the mp3 quality while downloading is at 320kbps and not 128kbps such as streaming,
so it's better to upload the best possible mp3 from your DAW, just in case someone decides to download it to his computer. :)
Click to expand...

I upload 320kbps MP3 to SoundCloud. I've seen and heard distorted tracks on there, and its been well-versed here at FP that people hate what the site does to their music, usually citing hi-hats.

That said... lemme give you some examples. I don't hear as heavy a change with my songs as others seem to experience, and again, this is all at 320kbps MP3... Sometimes my louder cymbals will get the alleged "treatment" on SoundCloud, but I'm not really unhappy with how my music sounds on that site.




 
bandcoach said:
to embed a soundcloud player widget use the following

[soundcloud]your soundcloud url[/soundcloud]

googledrive link was fine but I had to download as it was too big for googledrive to stream



I would disagree on this - mp3 to mp3 conversion from higher bitrate to a lower bitrate will almost always attack material that already has space monkeys in it (twitters and gurgles and the like) and make those space monkeys even more noticeable

and as for the download: if you upload wav then the download will be wav with no loss of fidelity
Click to expand...

Do you really want to give to the listener a huge WAV file in 2015,
instead of an 320kbps mp3 which sounds 99.9% the same?

I agree that a WAV is better than an mp3, but who's going to burn your soundcloud track to a cd?
He will mostly complain about making him do the conversion and even if he does, the online converter he'll end up using will be worse than your quality 320kbps export from your daw & daw settings.
 
sorry those arguments are specious

- just because the consumer does not know any better does not mean that we as professionals should devolve to their level of quality

- such attitudes (devolve to the lowest common denominator) are why we also had/have the loudness wars
 
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