Why does Soundcloud ruin my upload?

[Dystinkt]

I make a tune on my DAW, the mixdown sounds punchy and just right, rendered it and it still sounds the bollocks, upload to soundcload and bam it sounds shit. Why does this happen?

[filthy_]

did you turn normalize off?

[Recessive Trait]

there's no sub bass.

[bubblypatrick]

on one of my tracks I fixed it by using a 90000+ sample rate instead of 48000, shitty, but it fixed my bass which was having similar problems

[+verb]

its just the shit transcoding that soundcloud uses.

[harveykartel]

Anytime Soundcloud has messed up one of my uploads, it seems to be a bit depth/sample rate issue.

[Depone]

If you upload a .wav or high quality mp3, sound cloud still had to transcode it to a 128mp3 quality stream. So.. If you want to get maximum quality, make your own decent sounding 128mp3 and upload that...

[deadly_habit]

why have i never had this issue...

[Echoi]

its just the shit transcoding that soundcloud uses.

Is it though?

Some peoples tracks sound perfect, others it sounds like the highs and snares are breaking up. A common problem with my uploads.

My sig track is the best upload ive had from soundcloud, sounds almost exactly how it does when i play back the mp3.

But my next track i upped sounds like turd.

[gnome]

its just the shit transcoding that soundcloud uses.

Is it though?

Some peoples tracks sound perfect, others it sounds like the highs and snares are breaking up.

I get this all the time. All my snares sound rubbish because of it!

[phrex]

why have i never had this issue...

same here

[Echoi]

its just the shit transcoding that soundcloud uses.

Is it though?

Some peoples tracks sound perfect, others it sounds like the highs and snares are breaking up.

I get this all the time. All my snares sound rubbish because of it!

Yup, tell me about it. Hats too, hats seem to have the same problem as some snares on peoples work.

Im quite sure it has nothing to do with clipping on mine.

[staticcast]

If you upload a .wav or high quality mp3, sound cloud still had to transcode it to a 128mp3 quality stream. So.. If you want to get maximum quality, make your own decent sounding 128mp3 and upload that...

Are you sure that 128k mp3s don't just get transcoded again?

I'm not familiar with exactly what "transcoding" entails (or if it's actually a standard process) but it seems feasible to me that it might just involve decoding to WAV and encoding again to whatever format they like. If that's the case, then 128->128 transcoding would still be pretty damaging.

[paravrais]

why have i never had this issue...

[Biscuit]

I've had similar problems too with some bass and things sounding like ass after I upload.

[Debaser1]

I used to get this problem, but ever since reading the 'moneyshot' gain structure thread, it's been less evident. If your output volume of the track is too high then soundcloud simply can't cope. Just a matter of turning stuff down and it worked for me. I'm not saying I'm presenting the definitive solution here, but it helped.

[nowaysj]

Totally have this problem. I've uploaded wav's, mp3, nothing I've uploaded sounds like it does here. No clue what it is about, I gave up on trying to figure this one out. Maybe you've got to pay to have your tracks sound okay?

[vazt]

This has happened to me a few times. I noticed things I side chained sound fucked up on soundcloud. Sounds perfect in the wav and or mp3. Really annoying.

[OlzaMK]

It's because your mixdown is piss

[makemerich]

psychoacoustics and lossy compression