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I'm consistently losing my bass frequences after I mixdown and render out to wav or Mp3.
Live 8
When I'm mastering I can see plenty of energy in the lows on my spectrum analyzers and as far as hittin 0 on the meters its there.
I definitely here it in the room through my sub which I have setup with the crossover at around 50 mhz
Theres no dither and I usually export out at 16/48 wav and the convert to 320kbs with Itunes or dBpoweramp
but when I listen in my car or on a friends stereo it always seems to be missing. I've compared my stuff to pro stuff and the pro stuff of course sounds awesome.
Like in the track in My Sig
there are like 3 or 4 falling sine basses but they dont show up??? I can only really here them in my studio.

Anybody got any advice or help they can offer??

Try loading up your wav in audacity, and doing bass boost by about where those bits are by about 3 db, then export to mp3, youll have to download lame_enc.dll for audacity, just look on audacity webpage, ill provide links if you cant find it!

I can hear it on my headphones right at the drop and 1:16 and 1:40.

I like that song!

Ive been told my sub starts to vanish mid way through a track afer exporting from ableton aswell

How low does the speakers in your car go? How low does your friends stereo go?

Now sine waves only contain the fundamental harmonic which means that if the whole part disapears on systems that don't go that low, one way to get around the fact that not everyone owns a sub is to add harmonics to sine subs so that the part can still be heard (try subtle distortion/saturation, or using low passed square or saw waves instead of sines).

A/B your wav and track in ableton live.
It could be how you're producing - if you're using subs you won't hear them on a lot of systems without adding harmonics ontop of your sub.
Try layering - it's probably not your export process but rather your monitoring equipment and technique.
Not a worry for a big system It'll sound fine.

WingWeaver wrote:Try loading up your wav in audacity, and doing bass boost by about where those bits are by about 3 db, then export to mp3,

wouldnt recommend doing that tbh, but by all means use audacity to convert your mp3s. Dont know why you are losing frequencys after exporting though. Maybe check your settings in abelton.

Never had that problem. I am always going back and taking my sub down a few db.

Also I've never had that problem at all, I wouldn't really use Audacity to encode to mp3.
I use Wavelab to convert to mp3. Does the trick. ( With a little more tinkering done in it too)

Might be that the car stereo and friends device can't go down that low for the sub, quite common.

You're doing all the mixing down and mastering on Ableton too?

jaimelee wrote:Also I've never had that problem at all, I wouldn't really use Audacity to encode to mp3.
I use Wavelab to convert to mp3. Does the trick. ( With a little more tinkering done in it too)

Might be that the car stereo and friends device can't go down that low for the sub, quite common.

You're doing all the mixing down and mastering on Ableton too?

Why would you say that? Audacity uses LAME to encode MP3 it's widely regarded as the best codec out there.

BlackMath wrote: but when I listen in my car or on a friends stereo it always seems to be missing.

What speakers are you producing on?

Maybe your mates speakers just ain't as powerful?

If you can't hear the bass on multiple systems turn it up, or turn the rest down. Learn to produce for every system. Listen and reference everywhere you can, like you seem to be doing

Audacity does a fine job and Audacity with Lame is free!!
"Free Mp3 Wma Converter" is freeware and faster to use as well.

thanks for the advice everyone....guess I just need to keep experimenting and practicing with different methods

If you hear stuff in your room and it disappears elsewhere, it's almost certainly a problem with your room acoustics and/or speakers. I wouldn't have thought ableton would have any problems with a simple export

Have you tried checking it on headphones? Try referencing against the 'pro tracks' you mention and see how they compare there. Make sure to level match the comparison, of course (ie turn the pro track down)

abZ wrote:Why would you say that? Audacity uses LAME to encode MP3 it's widely regarded as the best codec out there.

Because it's just the software I choose to encode to mp3, granted LAME is amazing as I use it for my mixes but in production I turn to the other one.
Nothing against it at all, I'd recommend it surely.

decklyn wrote:Audacity does a fine job and Audacity with Lame is free!!
"Free Mp3 Wma Converter" is freeware and faster to use as well.

If you want quick. I have been using dbpoweramp you can batch convert any format to any format. Will do an lP in under a minute on quad core.