SONAR X2 Producer - major exporting volume issue

Hey, guys... newbie here. So, I've just recently started using SONAR X2 Producer Edition and I've run into a potentially crippling issue. All of my audio exports are extremely loud. Now, I know from reading on this and other forums that a lot of people want loudness. The problem is that it's overbearingly loud to the point where everything becomes muddy. I don't have this issue if I bounce a track (or several) to audio within Sonar - all the levels stay at where they're supposed to be. But as soon as I try mixing it down to export it - no matter what format or bit rate or sample rate I use - the entire mix is loud and muddy. I've even tested it on individual tracks and it's like SONAR's ignoring my volume faders and setting everything to +RIDICULOUS.0. I know this is vague, but what I'm aiming for is to have my exported audio sound like what it does when I play it back within SONAR and that's not happening. Anybody have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Setting it to -12dB actually takes a bit of the edge off, but it's not actually overly quiet after export. It's quiet within SONAR playback, but exported, it's still a bit louder than it should be.

there is a setting in export,it gives you some options like:
"what you hear"
"master fader"
"all tracks and buses"
"live mix"
exc,

what do you have this set at ?
is there any dithering going on,exc.

in other words can you tell us quickly your routine settings for export.
it might clue us in as to if theres a problem there.

Yes, that's what I thought. Or are you supposed to route another Master Bus to that Master Bus...? In any case, the mix is still terribly inconsistent. Lowering the volume to -18dB or so gets rid of some of the clipping and allows it to peak reasonably. The problem now is that the volume seems to rise and fall as a unit. That is, if another track with a slightly higher peak introduces itself into the mix (for example, the drums I'm using from SD2 start a few bars into the song I'm using to test this), the volume of the other tracks swells to meet it instead of staying where it is. EDIT: I tried importing the audio mixdown into a fresh project and playback on it was absolutely perfect. Does this help at all?

Yeah, I think I got the volume concept. But that doesn't explain the muddiness outside of SONAR or the strange low compression sound I'm getting. Or the fact that something that I've panned 100% left in the original project is right about dead center in the mixdown. It's a bit like my music's being squeezed through a very narrow funnel when I export it... no me gusta. :-(

Your problem sounds like one I've had to overcome. I've used M-audio Fast Track Ultra and M-audio ProFire 2626... I could work for days getting everything sounding the way I like... export.... and choke on what I'm listening to. Didn't matter if it was Sonar, ProTools or Ableton, it was the same problem. When you are in console view, on the extreme right is a set of faders for your output. Make certain those are at UNITY (double click on the faders and they should set themselves at unity). My work around to get control of this is to work with all tracks going into a buss that I named SUBMASTER. At this stage, I will use a Concrete Limiter NOT to boost signal but to catch transients and keep them from peaking. Then for the MASTER bus, I do not do ANY FX or EQ processing whatsoever. I use that meter as my visual representation that nothing exceeds -.3 dB. By doing this, I've had better luck with my mixes. This mix will always seem weak and leave room for mastering. I have found that mastering (for me) works better after the mix in a separate file rather than trying to mix and master in the same file.

sharke

John


Welcome to the forum Spitfire.

Look at your routing within Sonar. Create a master buss to route all your tracks and sub buses to. Bring down all the faders on all the track and start mixing from there. Watch the levels in the master buss you created. Don't let its level go above -3dB peak.

Avoid letting a track become too loud on its own. Whatever you do avoid allowing any track or buss to getting into clipping even though Sonar wont distort if you do. 

Use a limiter on the master buss to avoid peaks that go to clipping. But its best to use that for insurances only keep the overall mix below -3 dB. Many like to keep it at around -12 dB. 

You can have as many buses as you want for all sorts of reasons. One reasons is to group like instruments together. 

There is a lot to know about mixing but this very short post will get you started.

Sonar creates a master bus automatically and routes new tracks to it by default, does it not? It's not like Pro Tools where a newbie can go for a whole week without realizing you're supposed to create a master bus, and wonder why in the hell his audio is distorted 

That would be news to me. You may be using the normal template that may come with a master buss. 

Okay... tried Danny's method and pretty much everything else. Not having volume problems so much anyway... but I simply can't get an export/mixdown to sound true outside of SONAR. Maybe it's my playback? I have an HP Envy m4 running Windows 8 with Beats Audio and I'm starting to think that it's on that end that's the problem. Is there another program I could playback my mixdowns on besides Windows Media Player / iTunes? I heard those can be problematic for mixdowns for whatever reason.

Danny Danzi


See if doing this helps any Spitfire. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/AudioExport.wmv

Turn down your sound...my mic was a bit hot and made my voice sort of max out in a few spots. Sorry about that...was in the middle of another project and forgot to make "video adjustments". Try this and let me know if it works.

-Danny

great vid danny,as always brotha,
 
im going to give this a shot and see how much it varys from what im doing,
i do almost the samething as you w/the exception,i dont highlighting everything and
in my preset i choose "what you hear"
 
im going to give your a way a shot and see if it makes much of a difference.
because i may yeild better results your way,or its possible there is 2 ways to skin a cat if you know what i mean.
 
as always bro,im always all ears when it comes to anything you have to say,cant argue with your finished results,there magic.
 
peace and thanks for sharing this with all of us and not just spitfire.
 
peace,
 
Charlie

Could be an icon in the notification area or control panel > hardware and sound > sound then open the properties|enhancement tab for the default speakers

I do not have Win8. The laptop must have some audio control software especially since it has an enhanced audio system.

Hey guys... thanks for all your help. I actually found it wasn't a problem with SONAR or (to my great surprise) even my mixdown. My HP envy m4 laptop (yeah, I know... but I like composing on the go and, more importantly, I don't have the budget or the space for a full desktop rig with studio equipment. But I will one day...) came with an IDT High Definition Audio Driver... which, through looking at other forums, I realized had some built-in bleed and overdrive which resulted in very high, pushed mixes and loss of stereo quality, as I mentioned before. So I uninstalled the bugger and my computer released it with a regular 'High Definition Audio' driver. And now everything plays back more or less dead-on. Still, though, thanks for all of your help, and ESPECIALLY to Danny Danzi for going through the trouble to do a video. You guys rock. -71

Yep. I know all about ASIO4ALL. I've actually been using it this entire time in my DAWs. It's just that I don't believe it works on playback programs like WMP and iTunes. It switches to the default driver and it was the default driver that was given me. I'm not gonna pretend to be an audio expert, but I have taken a couple of classes, and whoever the heck set up the drivers on this computer was obviously from the modern "LOUDER IS BETTER" school of thinking... which I don't subscribe to. Comparing the two, you're talking probably a gain of at LEAST 15-20dB, really hard compression and stereo bleed. It's like the audio version of trying to force a watermelon through a funnel at a high rate of speed. :-\ I'm just glad I was able to fix it through uninstalling the driver. I got this computer in the first place to be able to do more composing/production stuff with the better specs. My old computer: Core 2 Duo processor, 3GB RAM (I later upgraded to 6), and 320GB HD. My new computer: Intel i7, 8GB RAM, 1TB HD. So, suffice it to say, if that driver issue would've been a persistent thing, I wouldn't have been too happy. :(