#1
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The problem with soundcloud...
Not sure what group this belongs best to, but I suspect it'll be most understood by those of us interested in recording...
Just saw something very enlightening. I was looking at a track Barry posted using soundcloud using the spectral view in iZotope RX. And it looked rather odd. So I did a quick exercise to see just how much soundcloud's streaming mucks with the sound quality. I took the first few seconds of a demo I posted a few days ago and compared what the spectrum view looks like of my original vs what comes back from soundcloud. Hope you can see this with an embedded image. Here's my local, original track: Original.jpg If you don't know RX, what this shows is time on the X axis, frequency, 0 to 20KHz on the Y axis, and color is intensity or volume. This is just the left track. The sort of vertical stronger lines represent the attack of notes, and you can see the tails of the notes as they decay. Now here's what comes back from soundcloud for that same few seconds: soundcloud.jpg it's hard to see the detail in what's getting posted here, but look closely. Everything's cut off the extreme highs, no surprise - that's at about 15K. Not a huge deal, there's not a lot there, and you might not hear it anyway. But what's striking - and probably more so if you could see the full-resolution image is how frequencies and intensities are mangled across the board. It's like looking at a low resolution image that's all pixellated. The decay of notes in my original look nice and smooth, soundcloud's version has little holes everywhere. The transients are all smeared. What a mess.... I always try to make sure anything I post is also downloadable, which I believe gives you the original file (I guess I should verify that). Soundcloud's certainly convenient because we can embed it here and it's quick and easy to play a track in a post. But, clearly that convenience is coming with substantial cost. I knew it didn't sound as good, but even with that, this amount of file damage surprised me. Probably shouldn't have, but...
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |
#2
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Does anyone have an idea for an alternative? Is this why some people use YouTube?
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Furch Yellow Master’s Choice — Cedar over EIR |
#3
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Doug,
I’m glad you confirmed what my ears always hear. Thanks for sharing this.
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Doerr Trinity 12 Fret 00 (Lutz/Maple) Edwinson Zephyr 13 Fret 00 (Adi/Coco) Froggy Bottom H-12 (Adi/EIR) Kostal 12 Fret OMC (German Spruce/Koa) Rainsong APSE 12 Fret (Carbon Fiber) Taylor 812ce-N 12 fret (Sitka/EIR Nylon) |
#4
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Doug, that's really insightful visual example of an audio problem, and one that was instantly recognizable to me as an RX user. Thanks for posting and for the soundcloud caveat.
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AKA 'Screamin' Tooth Parker' You can listen to Walt's award winning songs with his acoustic band The Porch Pickers @ the Dixie Moon album or rock out electrically with Rock 'n' Roll Reliquary Bourgeois AT Mahogany D Gibson Hummingbird Martin J-15 Voyage Air VAD-04 Martin 000X1AE Squier Classic Vibe 50s Stratocaster Squier Classic Vibe Custom Telecaster PRS SE Standard 24 |
#5
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Quote:
-Mike |
#6
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I remember watching a video about a loudness meter plugin that optimized a track for various platforms. They had a few examples of of minimizing the effects by keeping the LUFS at a certain point and limiting the peaks to minimize the effect of the streaming algorithms "correction". Not sure if that would help in the above example? I'll see if I can find that video and post it here.
EDIT: I couldn't find the video, but I did find this: "Although there is no absolute loudness to which you should master your track, a great range when mastering for Soundcloud is -18 LUFS to -10 LUFS. Keep in mind that Soundcloud will normalize your track to -14 LUFS, so keeping the loudness around this figure will work well." Also, on this page, they do offer a high quality streaming service, although I'm sure you'd have to pay something for it: https://help.soundcloud.com/hc/en-us...lity-streaming Last edited by jklotz; 01-23-2022 at 08:21 AM. |
#7
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Couple thoughts and question
Question -Doug when you say "comes back from SoundCloud" can we assume you mean the realtime compressed streaming file Yes all the small rectangle looking holes in the SC would seem to probably make the sound less smooth and more distorted (how much and if we would notice it is the question) But it has always seemed to me that SC streaming can get more distorted more quickly particularly in the highs compared to listening back on my system to the original WAV file. I think Sound Cloud has switched to ACC 256 which is better IMO than the 128 bit they used to do But it seems still not up to uncompressed as per Dougs example . Yes the Nugen MasterCheck plug in I use has settings for specific streaming platforms for example I think YouTube wants to see -14 to -12 LUFS max over that it will automatically reduce it here is an excerpt from the Master Check web page "Playout services essentially have a ‘letter box’ through which they deliver your audio; if it doesn’t slide through then the service will force it to fit. A super-loud master might win the loudness war on CD, but will simply be turned down on any major streaming service. This leaves valuable headroom which you could have used for transient detail and punch. It is important to be aware of how True Peak clipping can cause downstream distortion in encoded audio. Heavy compression will result in audible 'fizzing' and loss of stereo definition, especially with lower quality codecs."
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Enjoy the Journey.... Kev... KevWind at Soundcloud KevWind at YouYube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...EZxkPKyieOTgRD System : Studio system Avid Carbon interface , PT Ultimate 2023.12 -Mid 2020 iMac 27" 3.8GHz 8-core i7 10th Gen ,, Ventura 13.2.1 Mobile MBP M1 Pro , PT Ultimate 2024.3 Sonoma 14.4 |
#8
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I had noticed that the differences in my recordings i.e. using large condensers vs small condensers, sort of faded away once I uploaded to SC.
My Reaper "Render to File" settings are: Sample Rate: 44,100 Channels: Stereo Resample mode : Sinc Interpolation 384Pt without any normalization WAV bit depth: 24 bit PCM I wonder if there is another public sharing site and if it even matters. They all must do some sort of file limiting.
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Barry My SoundCloud page Avalon L-320C, Guild D-120, Martin D-16GT, McIlroy A20, Pellerin SJ CW Cordobas - C5, Fusion 12 Orchestra, C12, Stage Traditional Alvarez AP66SB, Seagull Folk Aria {Johann Logy}: |
#9
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When I posted things on Spotify, I was testing it out and after a time I felt that listening to Spotify slightly improved my sound. Went back and forth from Soundcloud.
I googled it, and sure enough they have info that I believe verifies this! And if you're at a higher level of membership in Spotify, they enhance this a bit further. I was pleased that my ears didn't lie to me! LOL!
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1993 Bourgeois JOM 1967 Martin D12-20 2007 Vines Artisan 2014 Doerr Legacy 2013 Bamburg FSC- 2002 Flammang 000 12 fret 2000 McCollum Grand Auditorium ______________________________ Soundcloud Spotify |
#10
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Maybe I missed it did you post WAVs to SC? What was the LUFS?
If you pay for premium SC service (whatever they call it), people can download the same files (WAV?) you uploaded, if you don't pay for premium, they can only download the SC-compressed file.
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Mike My music: https://mikebirchmusic.bandcamp.com 2020 Taylor 324ceBE 2017 Taylor 114ce-N 2012 Taylor 310ce 2011 Fender CD140SCE Ibanez 12 string a/e 73(?) Epiphone 6830E 6 string 72 Fender Telecaster Epiphone Dot Studio Epiphone LP Jr Chinese Strat clone Kala baritone ukulele Seagull 'Merlin' Washburn Mandolin Luna 'tatoo' a/e ukulele antique banjolin Squire J bass |
#11
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Thanks Mike,...interesting.
My SC is the "Pro", so it's above basic and below premium (good enough for me at this time!). Nearly All files are WAV and are mixed/mastered professionally and are at "commercial levels" when uploaded.
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1993 Bourgeois JOM 1967 Martin D12-20 2007 Vines Artisan 2014 Doerr Legacy 2013 Bamburg FSC- 2002 Flammang 000 12 fret 2000 McCollum Grand Auditorium ______________________________ Soundcloud Spotify |
#12
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Soundcloud does mangle the uploaded audio file quite audibly. I have noticed that I get a better sounding file on SC if I upload a Wave file. If I upload an mp3 file the SC result is really horrible.
- Glenn
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#13
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Yes as as I noted SC now streams in AAC 256, so if you upload an MP3 it gets encoded twice
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Enjoy the Journey.... Kev... KevWind at Soundcloud KevWind at YouYube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...EZxkPKyieOTgRD System : Studio system Avid Carbon interface , PT Ultimate 2023.12 -Mid 2020 iMac 27" 3.8GHz 8-core i7 10th Gen ,, Ventura 13.2.1 Mobile MBP M1 Pro , PT Ultimate 2024.3 Sonoma 14.4 |
#14
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Quote:
Yes, I posted a wav file, 24 bits, 44.1 (this was from the guitar comparison I posted a few days ago). LUFS for that track was -15.7. I suppose some of this could be from loudness normalization - tho it does not appear to me that they brought this track up to -14, but I suspect that it is more from the compression/bit-rate reduction. I know we'd get something like this just from looking at mp3 vs wav, and that other services will have similar issues. The one that sounds noticeable worse to me is Spotify. But I was just surprised by the extent of the damage and that it was so clearly displayed by the visual.
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |
#15
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Quote:
Quote:
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |