Production

adriandizyro wrote on 6/10/2013, 9:07 AM

Can't seem to get this - https://www.magix.info/uk/profile/medias/ - to sound as polished as it does when composing it.

We (SpaceMonkeyMafia) have finalised a 1 hour set that we are going to promote at this year's Glastonbury Festival. It is currently on the Magix forum, it is the first track on this site - https://www.magix.info/uk/profile/medias/ - It is there for people to comment on.

It all sounds great on the Samplitude 15 version through the headphones attached to the PC , but when it is saved as an MP3 or as a CD (using the Samplitude CD maker facility) and then played through a sound-system it loses a lot of it's polish and impact.

Any advice?

Please be as simple as you can - we are novices at this game.

Comments

gandjcarr wrote on 6/16/2013, 12:26 PM

Hi,

I listened to your track on show and discuss and, I can see very clearly that your mix is much too hot, especially if you want the music played on a PC. The start of the mix, sounds good, but after that the audio levels drive into clipping which is the distorion you are hearing when you try to play it through a sound system. Remember that any decent audio amplifier is looking to see audio levels at an average of 0db or just slightly higher before you overdrive the preamp and clip the audio.

If you could post a copy of the audio file that I could download or send me a copy, I could show you specifically where this occurs, but I think that if you just back down the audio level of your final mix you might get a better result.

I understand that this music is meant to sound loud when played, that loud sound needs to be created with the power amp section of your audio amplifier not overdriven on the mix so the pre amp distorts it and that distorion is then really amplified by the power amplifier. The audio engineer who recorded this should have picked this problem up and backed it down.

George

adriandizyro wrote on 6/16/2013, 4:09 PM

Thanks for the input.

Not 100% clear on some of the advice which is my bad.

If I briefly describe how the track/project came about then is then it may help refine the advice

Myself and my brother are both amateurs at this and purchased (for £30 each) two, secondhand, copies of Samplitude Music Studio 15. We live 300kms apart and used Skydrive to enable us to work on producing 12 songs that we then convert to MP3s and strung all 12 together as on the project currently uploaded on this forum.

It sounds okay through the PC headphones but not when downloaded onto a CD (using the Samplitude software).

What do you mean by "audio levels drive into clipping"? And what does "... overdrive the preamp and clip the audio mean"?

It was quite funny when you referred to a "audio engineer", we should be so lucky. Every thing you hear was produced on the Samplitude software by us in our ignorance and hope (a lot of learning 'on the hoof' was carried out).

If you can help (and we appreciate your time and knowledge), how would you like us to forward onto you the files? And which files format would you prefer MP3, Wav or Samplitude VIP versions?

We find Skydrive quite useful for large files and to use that we would need to send share the folders/files with your email address. I know it is a lot to ask but we are very keen to learn and we are not afraid to admit our shortcomings. And we only have one more week before we head of to the Glastonbury festival.

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

Adrian Di Zyro and Perkinz