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?

You are probably overdriving your audio interface. I say this because your internal bounces don't distort - because the destination is a 32-bit file, you cannot overdrive a track or bus internally. However, once you get to the outside world, you're in integer-land, and going over 0db is strictly verboten.

To test this hypothesis, simply turn your master volume down by 12db and export. It'll be overly quiet, sure, but the objective is to determine if the distortion is gone when you do this.

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.

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.

 

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.

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 

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?

Yes, that's what I thought. Or are you supposed to route another Master Bus to that Master Bus..

no, you should have 1 Master bus. Thats' why it called the 'Master' bus. Its where all tracks and buses go to.

Its easy cheesy: 

• Tracks go to the master bus
• Buses go to the master bus
• Master bus goes to the main outs 1/2

If you route it correctly and bounce it correctly, you'll never ever ever have any volume and sound issues.


There is never ever a need for any track or bus to be clipping in a project. The more tracks you have in a project, the lower each track needs to be. Because the sum of 2 tracks at -10db will be less then the sum of 10 tracks at -10dB. Thats mixing and proper gain staging know how


Cj

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. :-(

Spitfire, give me 10 minutes. I've created a little video for you with something to try. If this doesn't work for you, I have no idea what could be going on here. Gimme 10...

-Danny