How to make your SoundCloud uploads sound more professional and less artifact(y), courtesy of our buddy I AM ROBOT (inb4 TL;DR): Couple of things to understand about compression to 128kbps on SC: 1) Similar to regular Mp3 compression, SC uses perceptual coding, meaning the encoder analyzes your sound and removes pieces it deems inaudible. 2) Everything above 16kHz gets automatically cut and replaced with digital noise (that disgusting artifact sound we know and hate). 3) The encoding scheme cannot handle peaks at OR AROUND 0 dBFS (this is where distortion on your transients come from). 4) If you upload an Mp3, SC has to re-encode it. This process is called transcoding and degrades the quality even further. SO, now that the general knowledge is out of the way, lets apply this discuss different ways we can approach making our SoundCloud uploads sound better: 1) Avoid over-use of heavy saturation/distortion/limiting. Distortion is often wide-bandwidth in nature, which creates multiple problems for perceptual coding. It cant distinguish which parts of the sound are intended to be musical and which can be cut. 2) Use an EQ or filter to precision cut/trim 15-16kHz+. You avoid the disgusting digital sound and it puts less work on the encoder which allows for more overall clarity. 3) Upload at around -1 dBFS. You may even want to go down closer to -2dBFS if youre working with a 24 bit file to avoid distortion on the transients. 4) ALWAYS upload a lossless format (.aif, .wav). Encoding > transcoding. And to go even further, how can we apply this knowledge to our PRODUCTIONS? What do we do when we want to enable a download, surely we cant give away a tune with cut volume and high treble? What can we learn from this? 1) The loudness war really has no winner. 2) Take it easier on the 10kHz+ range. I find Im personally guilty of abusing the shit out of it. Be mindful. 3) A clean and dynamic mix will sound better after SC compression than a harmonically full and dense. And now lastly, I give you all a very small example. The first upload is a normal 320 Mp3 file. Completely untreated, just a limiter on the master channel. The second upload was pulled down to -1.5dBFS and given a slight rolloff from 15kHz+. The change between the two is subtle, but if you really tune in you can hear a loss of distortion on the transients, a lot of the digital noise gone, and a lot more breathing room overall. https://soundcloud/iamrobot/sets/how-to-make-your-uploads-sound/s-Ve5Hz Cheers, hope this helps some of you. Definitely going to put this into practice a lot more.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 18:00:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015