Muffled far off drums

[thokus]

Hey Gang .. I hope I can get some tips here.. How come when I record a tune it sounds great on the mixing board but when I load it to a wave file its totally messed up.. drums sound far off the bass is muffled.... Why cant I get the same sound for a wave file as on the mixing board ??? I'm Perplexed.. Just an idiot I guess .. you guys have great recordings, sounds sooo good and crisp and clear, which I think mine are too till I turn them to wave .. whats the deal???? I'm listening through the same speakers for both,
Starting to pull my hair out .. I compose a song in a day or two then take a week to mix and it still sounds like crap.... Somebody help this man!!!
Tom

[Fullertime]

Can you post your studio setup?

It could be a million different things! Give as much detail as possible as to your setup, routing and hardwre. There is something definitely wrong going on.

Fuller

[thokus]

I'm using Reason 4 with Record . I have JBL studio monitors.. I'm using Records mixing board and effects. Dithering.. Sample Rate 44.100HZ bit depth 16.

[Fullertime]

Are you mixing "everything" in Reason? Are you using any outboard gear?(compressors, etc) If so, how do you bounce or render it to a stereo mix?

[thokus]

Im mixing everything in Record/Reason... When I get it all sounding good thers a simple click to export to Auio file and "Voila"... finished ,but it sounds different..

[mojobone]

Tell us about your audio interface and your mixer, please. How are they connected to your computer?

[ibanez468guit]

Hey Thok!

I've noticed something similar to that too! When I export as a .wav file, it doesn't sound like crap so much, but it doesn't have the same "energy" that it has when listening to it in Record. Have you looked into the upgrade for Record 1.5? There are a number of fixes in there according to what I saw on the Propellerhead website. I haven't done the upgrade yet, but I did download it. Just a matter of getting it done.

In the meantime, I plan on spending the weekend trying to figure out how I can capture the mix "as is" from Record without exporting the mix. I don't like the loss that I'm getting from the .wav file, so I'll try running an out from my computer, and try to capture the mix on an external CD recorder or something, and see if I can get the results I'm looking for. If that doesn't work, then I'll probably have to load the upgrade, and see what's going on with that. Hope you get the problem resolved.

ibanez468

[Len911]

Tom, that is funny you mention this, because a day or two ago I noticed the same thing after preparing my mix in cubase and then after rendering to a wave file. I noticed that part of the drums and bass lost some thump. I tried rendering in real time and it didn't make any difference. When I open the wave file in wavelab, and use the sonnox transient modulator plug-in I can return some or all of that, so it almost seems like any material with transients are softened. I am still trying to determine if the subsequent wave file loses the transients after I render the new wave in wavelab. I got sidetracked, but I am also going to try going back to cubase and remixing, and trying to mix in the red those elements of the drum and bass that seemed softened.

Well I went back and turned up the toms, kick and snare drums into clipping red, and I didn't get any distortion, but now everything else is lower,lol, and i hear more drums than anything else. I probably noticed this more on this track because I don't normally do rock, and this song was rock. Before I just had to make volume adjustments and everything else stayed relative. It didn't affect the crash cymbal or the ride though.

[jonathanm]

Is it possible that you're monitoring a bus, but rendering a mix based on the complete mix of all buses?

I'm not familiar with the rendering dialog in Propellerhead Record. Perhaps you could show us a screenshot of what it looks like and what options you're choosing.

I know in Sonar you can choose what to render (the main bus, subs, individual channels, etc.) and if you're not monitoring the same thing you render, you'll obviously hear a result different than what you've been monitoring.

[thokus]

Hey Guys Thanks for the input.. I ve been racking my brains .. went to the Propellerhead website ,watch every tutorial, and every article..Got some good info from the forum there too.. It all came down to High pass filtering and too much compression . plus a couple other mixing blunders .. I adjusted the HPF to around 80HZ on all the tracks, set faders to -10db to start, adjusted the HPF for the bass and kick at lower or higher HZ, 20-80 or 50-80, so they wouldnt collide in the mix... got rid of a bunch of compression, that seems to be the enemy too if you have a good strong original recording... After that there was very little fader movement needed to bring in the levels I wanted... and now they sound pretty much the same on Record and on the WAV file .. Plus Ive learned My recording needs lots of work too..Thanks soo much for the help..
ibanez468, Im gonna load the updates today for Record/Reason. sound like a lot of learning needs to go on to get this stuff right . Try those tricks I learned and see if that helps you...
Thanks again to all.
Tom