flat sound after ableton audio export
hello!
recently i decided to mash up heads will roll (atrak remix) and kidsos (wippenberg remix) to have something new instead of playing the atrak remix all the time.
however, after i exported the track and loaded it up in traktor, it sounded flat.
i don’t know really what to do, i bought the .wav from kidsos but this didn’t help either..
greets
the volume or amp of the track you made needs to be brought up the level of your mp3 collection.
you can see in your picture that the wave amp of your song isn’t as high as the other track.
i’m not sure about it in ableton but is there volume or normalize export options?
otherwise a program like audacity could do it.
yeah, there is a “normalize” option but that doesn’t help..
maybe i also have to get a .wave of heads will roll? because that’s a 320.
it isn’t about wav vs. 320, they are just different levels of accuracy of the waveform relative to the theoretical perfect version of the track, it shouldn’t be affecting the average volume, most likely it is just that one track has been mastered higher than the other. What has happened is that since the two tracks volumes have similar peaks the peaks added (logarithmically) and made the combined track have louder peaks, as a result the main level was brought down to avoid clipping. To correct this you could use a compressor set to peak or transient detection and have it compress the loudest parts of the track so that the track can retain a higher level. However when this is done it will weaken the dynamics of the track, but this brings on a whole debate about mastering. So it’s up to you to decide, but it could well help you to add a compressor with a high threshold and shortish attack to reduce your peaks, and then you can bring up your master level.
ps. The issue I mentioned above is that by making music louder we lose the subtle distinctions between loud parts and quiet parts. Think of how classical music has almost inaudible parts when compared with the crashing magnificence of its drops, while modern music is more of an avg. volume level. So you can make the quietest parts louder but at some point the track will sound even flatter.
p.ps on second thought too much compression will cause flatness, so if the peak parts of the track are sounding flat it might be due to the individual waveforms having phased frequencies that are destroying each other, thus resulting in flatness. You could try watching each track with a graphic eq. and then watching the mashup. If that is the problem you could try to make stems from each track and then figure out which frequencies from which stems are causing destructive interference and use a graphic eq to cut out some of the frequencies and make the mix sound less flat because of muddied bass, mids or highs.
wow, great post thank you!
another question which fits good to this thread:
when exporting a file i have some so many options and i really don’t know what some of them are doing.
what is normalizing doing? is it clever to choose a sampling rate above 44100? what about the bit rate? i have a audio2dj soundcard, so would it be clever to chose 24bit/96khz? or even 32 bit?
greets
normalize is a word in almost all math science disciplines that means ‘to average’. The basis of normalizing is to give the sound an average level of loudness. However typical normalizing works via a method called rms (a mathematical operation for averaging useful for sinusoids where values are positive and negative, where squaring the value to be averaged prior to averaging removes the negative, just leaving the magnitude of displacement) (i believe although it can vary for normalization methods possibly).
but i digress, normalizing is averaging the volume, compression could achieve this like I mentioned above, but in a different route. Humans can only hear frequencies of up to about 20khz and the sampling frequency (the rate at which samples are taken) needs to be double the max frequency in your mix. This is why 44.1khz is used for cd’s. Frankly I am not sure why they use 88.2khz sampling rate (I recall hearing that it had some use but I can’t remember what, if anyone reading knows please inform me, mostly it is to satisfy the egos of rich audiophiles afaik). 24/96khz will be fine, the improvement to 32 is negligible to your ears. In short, none of those options need be changed significantly from their defaults and if the mix is sounding off it isn’t because of them. most likely it is frequency clash. which can be fixed to a varying degree based on the amount of time and effort. My advice to you would be to put a graphic eq on the finished track and try to boost certain frequencies. even though for pro applications it would be much more advantageous to use my above mentioned method (make stems analyze frequencies and cut/boost pre mix to eliminate clash) this method will take you far longer and you can still get the track to sound pretty good by using a compressor on your master that is set to bring down peaks not rms, then boost volume (but not too much or the loud parts of the track will lose punch because everything was too averaged (let me know if you get that)) and also use a graphic eq to boost the frequencies that sound flat before exporting.
One more thing is that I’m not sure if you understand the notion of signal chain, but in short if you put the graphic eq prior to the compressor in the chain you will be compressing sounds you have boosted, or you can do it the other way around and do eq boosting/cutting after the compressor.
This might be too much for you if you don’t have any experience with this stuff, but it will help to read and understand it, at the least try finding a graphic eq and playing around with it on your master bus. That should help make it more punchy. If you are feeling slightly ambitious (less so than compression) get a graphical display of the frequency spectrum (shows you the level of each frequency as the mix plays and look to see if there are any that are particularly low compared to those freqs on the individual tracks, if so this is due to phase cancellation, and boosting those COULD help).
ed. I hate how when I stare at the reply box for too long and then look up i have a white box in my vision lol 
also if anyone sees any inconsistencies please correct me (or knows about uses of 88.2khz fs)
^^^^
Props to this massive post, helped me think about my mixing techniques
There’s an easier solution… turn the gain knob up in traktor
The track to the right looks like a compressed version of the one to the left, look at the peaks after about 50% into the track.
The one to the left has a section peaking at about 60%, going into a section around 80% then 100% but the one of the right is smack 100% all the time - making it sound louder bringing us into the loudness debate etc etc
So the left track has more dynamics and contrast than the right one but the right one sounds louder
I dunno if this is because you’ve manually adjusted the volume inside your mashup or whatever caused it but you could compress the track to make it louder or crank up the volume (in Traktor) to keep the dynamics of the track.
Personally I would go half way with both - making it 50% louder and raising the volume 50%
Dont normalize after mastering! Not before as well..
true, but if he isn’t getting it mastered wouldn’t it be advisable for ableton?
I don’t think its wise to normalize an entire track because the sounds you wanted to be subtle get louder and vice versa..
Also, there are many free mastering vsts and I think maybe some built in tools in ableton you can use..
Never normalize…
if you want to do some quick and dirty boosting in live, dip the mids a little and put a compressor set to rms with 30ms attack and moderate release.
Never Normalize! Really 
Thats what i have done with all my vinyl rips! Is this why i dont really like the sound of them?
i’m not sure why people are saying don’t normalize. I think its a better option then compressing. Many many hardware samplers have normalize features, i use the normalize feature on my sampler all the time when sampling*
*please note when sampling, I wouldn’t normalize after a certain stage either.
I really dont like the sound of any of my vinyl rips and i hope this isnt why as so many people say normalize
With reagrds to teh comment re making discreet or subtle sounds louder, is that not rubbish as it makes everything louder by a certain percentage so in the grand scheme of things it will still be quiet in relation to the ludest parts, will it not ?
here is a thread i found on normalizing vs compression:
http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=37683
[QUOTE]Normalization finds the highest peak in your track and raises that to whatever setting you are normalizing to (usually 0 db). It also raises the rest of the track by the same amount. So, for example, if the highest peak in your track is -2db, normalizing to 0db will raise everything in the track by 2db. If you normalize to 0db (or something less, like -0.3db) you should not be getting any “red lights”, since by default all material will be below that point.
Compression, on the other hand, squashes (compresses) your peaks, and reduces the dynamic range of the material (the difference between the lows and the highs). How much of a reduction will depend on the threshold setting (where the comrpession kicks in) and the amount of compression you use. Doing this generally allows you to raise the overall volume of the track more than you can do by just normalizing (since your peaks are now lower, you have more room to go up). Using the example above, if your highest peak is -2db, you might be able to knock that down to say -6db by compressing the track, then you can apply 6db gain to bring the peak back up to 0db. So your track volume has been increased by 6db, as opposed to the 2db that normalizing would have given you.[/QUOTE]
here is another one:
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/346395-normalize-compress-get-consistent-levels.html
this one talks about when and why normalizing can be used and also why sound engineers don’t like it.
here is a good thread too with this quote:
[QUOTE]" you look at normalizing as the process of making your loudest peak, your loudest possible peak, then it isn’t really useful. But if you look at normalizing as setting a level, and then all audio gets turned down and/or up to match that level then it can be really useful in certain situations, especially if you can not only normalize by peak value, but by RMS as well.
A good example of RMS normalization is Dolby decoding. Every piece of audio encoded with dolby has a “dialnorm” metadata tag. This tag tells the decoder what the average RMS level of the material is. The decoder then adjusts the output volume to match your current output levels, basically eliminating the need for “volume wars”. Ever notice how TV commercials are insanely loud compared to a movie you might be watching on cable? If you run your cable through your audio receiver that has a dolby decoder instead of plugging straight into the TV (and the audio from the station is dolby encoded) , then the commercials will playback through your system at the same level as the movie you were watching.
Another very handy use for normalization is when putting together a library of sounds or sound effects. You recorded them all, but there might be slight variations in volume from day to day… so instead of making them all as loud as possible, you set the normalizer to a median level, that way the few that were a hair too loud get brought down and the few that were a hair too soft get brought up. This way you still maintain the dynamic range and low noise floor that you originally recorded, but have slightly adjusted the files so they are all the same average level.
[/QUOTE]
http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=236798
the last use is what’s its being used for one samplers.
we are all trying to help but there are so many things that could be affecting the audio in question. It maybe as simple as needing volume leveling something like mediamonkey can do where all your tracks are brought up or down to the same level.
good luck
edit, not trying to come out blasting with all these links, just sharing this info, not trying to booster my side’s argument or anything…there is a right way and a wrong way do use most of this stuff.
Yeah normalizing is just amplifying the entire track by the same amount, has no effect on dynamics in the track
It’s important to note that normalizing is applied on the individual channels in a track i.e. on the Left and Right channels separately. This means that if one channel is intentionally louder or has a different peak level (like a huge crash panned all the way to the left), normalizing will skew the stereo image you intentionally made while producing!
So is normalizing then the same as turning open the gain?
Edit. I quote from ‘dance music manual’, second edition by Rick snoman. Page 420/421
[Quote] Do not normalize a mix.
All normalizing algorithms look for the highest peaks and then increase the volume of the surrounding audio, but the eae doesn’t respond in the same way. Rather, it judges the loudness of music by average level.
[/quote]
normalizing = gain
It won’t screw your stereo image. When the left channel was -6 db and the right channel -4 db it will be -4 db and -2 db.
However it won’t make your track sound louder. Average volume is what we hear as loudness, and that you will only gain by having a nice mix and usage of a compressor/limiter.
