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After I mix my song then upload it to myspace, the volume is really weak compared to what I hear on some of your guys' page. Am I missing something?

Myspace only changes the bit rate, the volume that you've mixdown at should stay relatively the same. must be your mixdown?

What are your export settings? Bitrate?

That's what I am thinking. I thought I was pushing the volume as high as I could without anything clipping, but it still sounds weak compared to lots of other people. Do most people have mastered tunes up on myspace?

Not sure what my export setting or bitrate is at. What should it be at?[/quote]

What sequencer you using. Try resetting the volume for starters. Nothing to do with the quality so it's probably your mix. Why dont you try cross referencing

anything above 6 point hermite should do it

Reason 2.5

my guess would be that you are mixing down with either your sub levels to high or your tops too low, and when they are converted to 128 the tops take a further battering.
if you are mixing down on a relatively flat system though it shouldnt really be causing this problem.

I am mixing on shitty stereo speakers so I will have to listen to the mix in my car and see if the tops or lows are an issue. Thanks for the tips.

One more question. When adjusting the levels on a reason mixer do you want your loudest tracks to be in the yellow just below the red, or in the green and just below the yellow. I read that you want to leave some 'headroom' if you are going to master your song, but I can't say I'm clear on how much.

Also, do you want your master volume on each 'device' ( subtractor, malmstrom, etc..) maxed out, your mixer master all the way up, then your loudest track as high up as possible before clipping. Or does this cause any unforseen problems?

As you can tell, I'm new to the world of doing a proper mixdown.

Are your tracks compressed and limited to boost volume? If not then they are probably just quieter.

Myspace converts everything to 64kbps. The best thing to do is upload a track that is already 64, then myspace won't fuck about with it too much. I don't use Reason but I can bounce tracks out at 64kbps and then upload them - they usually sound fine (although they are basically just converted AIFs). Converting from an uncompressed WAV or AIF to a 64kbps mp3 in iTunes (for example) sounds considerably worse than one converted in Logic.

have the same problem, even AFTER tracks have been mastered (professionally). always assumed that ppl with real loud tracks did versions of their tunes crushed to fuck specifically for myspace

deadly, will def try yr logic tip next time round. thanks

There not compressed yet, I think I just did a shitty mixdown.

Can someone help with my other questions? I think this is where I am messing it up.

do a 'myspace mix'

no-one is gonna notice that the mix is smashed by over-compression when its in that player.

tryna do it straight from reason is gonna make life hard.

Grab REAPER - its 'free', dont worry about ReWire just yet, but start reading up about it, after you've got used to working with audio outside of reason it'll make alot more sense.

REAPER has sick plugins as stock, one you want is called eventhorizon2, which is part of the JS suite, basically a brick wall limiter in the vein of the WAVES L1/L2. There are other plugs that will do the same thing, but EH2 sounds good & only has 3 sliders to f with. Just lower the Threshold until it sounds like a mess... then back it off bit by bit until its loud but not destroyed.

For peoples in other hosts / that like fancy GUIs chk the stillwell plugs;

http://www.stillwellaudio.com/

A great tool for this stuff is a plug called RMSBuddy by DestroyFX;

http://www.smartelectronix.com/

What you are wanting to do is raise the RMS or average level whilst keeping the peak under 0dBfs

... purely inside reason I would run a scream 4 in tape mode (with the damage control all the way down to begin with) + maximiser with soft clip on after what you usually use, and creep the damage control up until it breaks up and then wind it back.

Render to wav and use EAC (PC) or MAX (OSX) to encode the mp3 with LAME.

The idea is to degrade the audio before giving it to myspace, that way its sounds shit but yr in control of the 'character' of the shitness

I just realised that I said 64kbs in my post above... I meant 96.

Correctamundo!

MySpace defaults everything to 96kbps/44.1kHz CBR.

So I will take the advice that I should do a final render/mixdown into CBR 96kbps/44.1kHz mp3.

And as somebody else has mentioned on this very thread, REAPER is the fukkin' truth. I think it rivals SONAR 7 PE (although it doesn't have POW-3 dithering) and Cubase 3 no doubt!

Deadly wrote:I just realised that I said 64kbs in my post above... I meant 96.

I was sure it couldn't be that low lol :p

put it in soundforge and check the wave pattern to see if its at the right db level, if not normalize it, most of my tracks i put up are 192kbps then myspace obviously converts them, but they still sound ok and the volume is about right

don't know if anyones had this problem, but check the weird aliasing on my tracks - www.myspace.com/nativeflux - I'm gonna try re-uploading them at 96k. been trying to solve this for ages, hoping it will work.