what's up guys. So today i uploaded a track to soundcloud, and when I exported it from FL Studio it looked like the "In FL" picture. Pretty good, right?

When I uploaded it to soundcloud, however, it looked like the "In SC" picture.

The levels looked like they had decreased in soundcloud.
I'm wondering why this is... i got the track to be loud and really dynamic but once i uploaded it to soundcloud it appeared smaller.

I don't know if it's a problem with normalization or something.

Can anyone explain this?

 

Soundcloud encodes at 128 kbps or somthin like that ...... It the shittiest playback device on the internet \m/

 

I don't doubt you one bit, but it's hard to compare two different zooms. It'd be easier to see if they were the same zoom to see how they differed (at least for me).
I'm actually curious to see a comparison like that.

 

Down sampling changes the peaks clipping

 

I´ve also noticed, that my mixes sounds like crap, when I put them on Soundcloud.

One thing I´ve noticed to help myself is that for Soundcloud I shall make mixes with less master comp/limiter and 0,5dB as maximum output. Then at least they don´t get so digitally clipped in their converter.

 

The trick is to upload a 128k.mp3 so they don't encode it. Ozone 7 has a cool dithering preview so you can eq for the lower bitrates.

 

So in FL, it seems that you've made your track a bit hot. Converting to a lower bitrate increases the dynamic range (because things are lost), and also makes it sound crap.

Loud & limited doesn't mean dynamic. It's the reverse. See the numerous other mastering threads.

If you're wondering about half the wave being gone, that is only a visual quirk - the other half is still there. Not displayed, but heard.

 

ever tried juno?

 

Then download the stream again (DownloadHelper, JDownloader, etc.) and check how it really looks back in FL. It will be much more similar to your original. Soundcloud just uses different parameters for a better visualization. But maybe you should leave a bit more headroom (0.5 dB or even more).

No, Soundcloud won't bother checking if it's a valid MP3 file, if the header is correct and really every single frame uses 128 kbit/s. Just like Youtube every upload will be encoded again. That's much saver and easier.

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2016

no bro if its worse than soundcloud ill pass lol

 

ive uploaded many dif codes to sound cloud in the past to see what sounded best on my source files ,and to me i get best results just loading 16bit 44100 files with a lower limit levels of like -0.5 or lower -1.0 even . I mean its nice to have soundcloud dont get me wrong but nomatter what the source loaded playback sounds like its comin from the bottom of the F_ckin ocean \m/ haha ;)

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2016

What happens when a file is uploaded to Soundcloud is that it is transcoded or re-encoded, from whatever format and bitrate the original file is, to MP3@128. The file is thereby compressed or re-compressed, as well.

And no, the secret to less-bad-sounding Soundcloud steams is not uploading MP3@128, but rather, uploading the highest-res file possible – though anything higher than MP3@320 won't make a difference. I have noticed that the files I'd uploaded @320 sounded less-worse than the files I'd uploaded @128 - they had more of a sense of dynamic range, and the sound was less distorted (which is another effect of Soundcloud's re-encoding the file).

No listener should take anything on Soundcloud as sounding how the artists/mixer/masterer had intended. But, unfortunately, most do.

 

eeeuh thats easy, 1 of them uses a tilt eq for better visual representation, meaning: 1 of them is filled with bass cause that is what you would normally see in a waveform, and we think it is much cooler if we can see the transients don't we?

You could try this yourself with wave candy, insert it as a oscilloscope zoom out all the way and put it on slow.
then put put a shelving high pass-filter on the audio before it.

Also the spectrum view got natural weighting, which is kinda the same.

 

Are you saying they sound good BEFORE Soundcloud?? (LOL!)

I just get a kick out of scapegoating SC!! What about all the amazing sounding mixes on Soundcloud? How do explain those?
I know how... they were great mixes from the outset!

 

wow, thanks for all the replies.
So I took Olaf's advice and I redownloaded my track through a soundcloud donwloader and it looks the same before i uploaded it.
i forgot to mention when i first made this post: in this track, I used iZotope's Maximizer plugin for loudness (primarily).
In the future, I'll give my track at least 0.5 db headroom when I'm maximizing other tracks, though, so they don't sound too loud.
Only problem is - why does my track still look like this in soundcloud (second picture)? I know guys who make their tracks super loud and still maintain a sense of cleanliness in their tracks. For example, they have waveforms similar to the screenshots i took in fl studio, and still maintain those waveforms without them changing when they upload to soundcloud.

 

here are the pics

 

I think you can upload in good quality (FLAC) and give permission to others to download in that quality, untouched.

Still, for bandwidth reasons, you always get a 128 Kbps MP3 when you play "online".

Someone correct me if I don't remember correctly.

 

Yes, downsampling will change your peak levels, etc. Check this out:

From iZotope's site:

Mastering for SoundCloud

SoundCloud transcodes uploaded audio to 128 kbps MP3 to prepare the audio to stream from the site. If an audio file on SoundCloud is made available for download, the downloaded version will be in the original format.
Uploading an MP3 is redundant since SoundCloud will transcode it anyway, which could in turn introduce more artifacts to audio that’s already compressed. Therefore, the best practice is to upload an uncompressed, 24-bit .WAV file and allow SoundCloud to process it.
Here are some recommended settings when mastering audio for SoundCloud:

• Use a True Peak limiter, such as Ozone 6, to ensure that the margin is set to –0.3 dBFS. This is an acceptable threshold to mitigate most of the clipping that occurs during the encoding process. However, depending on the source material, you may find a margin of –0.5, –0.7, –1.0, or –1.5 dBFS sounds better, with less distortion. In these cases, you simply have to perform trial and error, perhaps by uploading several versions and deleting all but the best sounding one.
• SoundCloud does not have a feature like Apple’s SoundCheck, so an audio master destined for SoundCloud has more freedom to raise the overall RMS level for competitive loudness. Consider this a practical and aesthetic choice. Make sure to use volume matching, such as the ‘automatically match effective gain’ feature in Ozone, to evaluate loudness increases objectively.
• Using a stereo imaging tool, narrow the high end between 5–20%. 128 kbps MP3 is the lowest commonly acceptable audio quality. As such, a lot of information is lost during encoding and an extremely wide mix is more susceptible to noticeable artifacts. Ironically, some pre-emptive narrowing can help avoid perceived loss of energy and width.

 

Youtube too ;-)

 

Maybe interesting if you want to dig deeper on mastering for soundcloud:

http://www.auralnode.com/mastering-for-soundcloud/

Warning: Shameless self promotion