Poor Quality Audio after Exporting to Wav

what are the levels at your soundcard buss in the project before you export? digital distortion can sound horrible...make sure those are less than 0.
then what settings are you using to export; which dithering option and to what bit/sample rate? putting the .wav into an audio editor or importing it back into sonar does it look right?

CJaysMusic


Well SONAR will export exactly how you tell it to export. When I export my mixes, they sound exactly the same as they do in sonar.
With that said, what are your export settings and levels, because this is where its all wrong.

If Sonar changed the mix upon export, Cakewalk would be out of buisiness!!

+ many 1's to this response.

I've seen CJ reply like this before, and every time I read his replies, I'm sitting here with my thumbs up in agreement, because what he's saying is absolutely right.

You hear one thing when you play a project before mixing down - that is Exactly what you'll hear once you've exported your 2-track master.

MGH has tried to understand what you could be doing wrong, cbybee, and I'd like to understand also.  I can't imagine what could cause the problem---but are you watching the Console View during playback?  Are you checking that you don't have red overloads happening in your sound card bus (far right)--?  Are you sure there aren't peaks happening in your master?  Dithering should have nothing to do with making things better - Once again, as CJ said - what you hear before mixing down should be exactly the same as what you get once you mix down.

??

Randy B.

I doubt that was the problem.

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I kinda have the same problem, but not always... it's driving me crazy !

When i export the sound 7 out of 10 times it is distorted and overmodulated and 3 out of 10 times it is ok...

When i listen to my mix everything sounds fine, i master with a brick wall limiter to -1db and the sound is great, after i've exported i import the sound and you see immediatly that the wav ,or mp3 for that mather, is to loud.

i use the preset 'what you hear' in the mix enable tab, dithering is traingular.

I did a test, recorded a 1khz tone at -6db, when i play out it sounds fine, i have no plug in's what so ever active, then when i do a bounce and listen to it, it's distorted, when i look at the wav it's blown to 0db and probably goes over the zero db

What really drives me mad is that it sometimes does it right... but most of the time it goes wrong, i can't seem to figure out whats going on... 

Sometimes i work 15 minutes on a commercial and it takes me 30 minutes or more to bounce it right, this is not workable for me anymore...

anyone has an idea ? 

I'd recommend to route all your tracks to Master Bus and use Master as your export source. That is the best way to be sure the export routing is under your control.

My bet is it's distorted mostly when it's MP3. IIRC MP3 requires more headroom.

am i doing something wrong with the bounce?

in source category i select 'entire mix'

But what with the 'mix enables' tab, do i have to deselect something ?

i also tested it by putting the 'category select' to 'track', so i did a direct bounce from that track and that has exactly the same problem...


reading the sonar manual didn't solve my problem either since the export sectio is very brief and doesn't even mention the 'mix enables' tab

Yeah Kalle, these kinds of posts really confuse me too.

...but the double FX thing got me once, then I realized what I was doing and learned to always listen in a fresh project.

This is why we need clarification as to whether the poster is bouncing or exporting, and what software they are listening to the finished product with.

You haven't got your system figured out and your charging moneY?? Oh my dear.
That's like hiring a backhoe for $100 per hour and find him sitting there reading the operators manual while I'm waiting for my septic tank to be installed, oh my oh my...

@ Johnny V: i turn around +-25 commercials a day for radio and television, and if you could read what i've allready wrote, you would have noticed that i've been working with sonar and the vs700 system for over a year now and loved it, this problem pops up now, after a year and keeps getting worse, so yeah i charge money, it's my living ! Never had this kinda **** when i was working on my other systems in the past 20 years. So i would like to have this bug solved asap.

You must be one of them that's got a whole lot of time on your hands , so you can look for months untill you can find the problem ? fine for you, but not workable for my business...
Thanks for the really useless answer you gave, this really helps!


@ Bitflipper:

i made some screenshots in a clean session wihout plugins;





This is the initial recording of a voice, as you can see the fader is at 0,3 the track is routed to the master bus, no plugins, no eq's.





the metering shows nothing wrong.
I exported the sound from theVS-700 MAIN output.




now i've imported the file i've exported in the same session to compare, and you see a difference... it's louder then it goes out the VS-700 MAIN, why is this, and it isn't a constant either sometimes it's like this with a little clipping and sometimes it really maxxes out and makes a block out of it. most of the times this happens doing a fast bouns, but even when i do a realtime audible bounce this **** keeps happening (not always)





Here's a closer look on the clipping... 

the problem get's worse if i use for say a channel of 20 and mix it to the vs-700 MAIN, if i do that and i put the master fader at -18, i get a normal wave...



This how the sound is of a recorded voice after i've exported it.

www.clada.be/Pers/theledshop.mp3



and this is one of the promo's i did before i had the problems, that way you get an idea of my sound.

www.clada.be/Pers/qubz5.mp3

i must say that my VS-700R makes a lot of fan noise lately, had somebody of the store where i purchased it take a look and he said, thats normal... But i have no idea if one has to do with the other neither as why this  is happening when i export files like these ...


any help is appreciated, because if i wait for the guys at the roland shop, i'll probably be old before i get an answer 

Another problem is that i don't find a lot of sonar an VS700 users over here in Belgium... everybody is on pro tools or Nuendo...
So it's hard to find somebody that can come and take a look at it, that also knows the system and the software...     
 

that's another issue with my system, i can not have anything plugged in tot the usb ports but the vs700, if i put in so much as a memory stick or external HD, sonar keeps on crashing, but that was the fact since the beginning i bought it, i mentioned it to the roland support guys, the answer i got was "learn to live with it"...


anyway heres the export window

Hi Randy.

I'm in agreement about the MP3 & Fast Bounce settings, but there's a good case for always using Main Outs, especially if you utilise more than one pair of soundcard ouputs, like I do for creating headphone mixes.

Using Entire Mix in this scenario will give your resulting Export a 6db boost, as all soundcard outputs are summed when Entire Mix is selected.

Using Main Outs will do what it says on the tin and only select your first pair for bouncing.

I've noticed many times in the past that people keep using the 2 terms as if they're interchangeable - they're not! Nothing like it.

I see I was guilty as well in my previous post. Please replace the final word - "bouncing" with "exporting"

I'm in agreement about the MP3 & Fast Bounce settings

 
I think the main issue here is the combination of MP3 and Audible Bounce. Encoding to MP3 doesn't mix with real-time buffering. It can be done if your buffers are high enough, but it's better to use Fast Bounce when exporting to MP3, regardless of whether you've first bounced the entire mix down and/or exported a Master WAV file.
 
OP should change the title of this thread to reference MP3 instead of "Wav" for the benefit of posterity searching for solutions.

brundlefly

I'm in agreement about the MP3 & Fast Bounce settings

 
I think the main issue here is the combination of MP3 and Audible Bounce. Encoding to MP3 doesn't mix with real-time buffering...

+1.  Settings in the MP3 encoder are probably a problem, and skipping the crucial step of making an actual .wav master is definitely a problem.  Not having a dedicated audio editor can make things tricky for people.  I Bounce tracks to work up the mix, then Export the 2-track master out of Sonar, never to return there, doing finishing touches in Sound Forge.  Bringing a master back in to Sonar can mess people up, playing the mix through the same FX by accident.

Randy B.