did soundcloud change something?

[chaosWyrM]

I've never been happy with the sound of my stuff on SoundCloud, and I haven't posted much because of it.

But does anyone know if the sound quality improves with a paid account as opposed to the free one? Pandora does (and other sites do) this, though I haven't seen where SoundCloud mentions anything like it.

Steve

well i doubt it since thats how i figured out it sounds different. i had run out of space on my free account so i bought the first (read cheapest) tier of payed accounts. i added a track and went to listen...it sounded odd so i listened to my other stuff and its all off.

pisses me off a bit as small guys like me use that shit. i just pointed tympanik audio to my soundcloud page, as thats what they want instead of a demo cd. now i have to sit here and know that they listened to music that isnt what i uploaded. i dont know if they know soundclouds sound quality went down. as far as i know they think i made it like that.

shit.

[jancivil]

for quite some time I wouldn't use SC because of the fact that a pro account does not have better than 128kbps mp3 for widgets. on principle. I have never liked the look of it and it's been hard to embrace. I have noticed that mixes that are louder suffer more. I do believe it's worse now, of course I can't prove it, you could say my ears are different but a couple of things seemed worse.

[@l3x!5]

Would someone know of some alternative with better sound quality?
Just curious.

[OzWozEre]

Would someone know of some alternative with better sound quality?
Just curious.

The only way to control your sound quality and terms is to roll-your-own.

But then the ease-of-use and social media aspects of SC is what makes it soo appealling.

It's a dilemma!

[herodotus]

I haven't uploaded anything recently, but I can't say that I have noticed a change in what is already uploaded.

One thing that really helps with soundcloud is to upload wav files instead of mp3s. The soundcloud compression is going to degrade whatever you send to it, so it is best to start with the best quality upload you can. As far as I know they only allow 16/44.1 wav files, but they sound much better than mp3 files after soundcloud does its thing to them.

[4damind]

The streaming audio quality is horrible and this has not changed with the new interface or the HTML5 player option. I asked about better quality for the premium users but there is nothing planned in this direction (Afaik).
A alternative option (no re-encoding!) and a embedded player eg for Facebook and stuff, a artist/song page is official.fm. Unfortunately official.fm has no replace option to upload and replace a file.

[Wormhelmet]

This is some bad news indeed. The only consolation is that its a blanket change so all artists will sound shittier. Still got a good chance that someone might think a track is less shitty than someone else's.

[seismic1]

As far as I know they only allow 16/44.1 wav files, but they sound much better than mp3 files after soundcloud does its thing to them.

I have downloaded 24-bit WAVs from SC within the last 6 months

[Sparky77]

As far as I know they only allow 16/44.1 wav files, but they sound much better than mp3 files after soundcloud does its thing to them.

I have downloaded 24-bit WAVs from SC within the last 6 months

+1

[Sendy]

I dislike the possibility of negative changes to Soundcloud's fidelity, but up to a point, surely strong music will shine through on any medium and as any artifacts will be common to all Soundcloud audio, this won't reflect on the artist any more than a tape demo having hiss will reflect on the band recording the demo.

In a way it could be considered a good thing if you're selling music, those that really like it might be more likely to get the wav versions.

[an-electric-heart]

Yeah, it sounds shit, I've got my catalogue on there, but I normally direct people to my Bandcamp, Bandcamp's streaming is top notch. Soundcloud made me do a survey recently, I just said something like "For a site that's one and only purpose is to stream audio you sure do a shit job of it"

[jancivil]

As far as I know they only allow 16/44.1 wav files, but they sound much better than mp3 files after soundcloud does its thing to them.

I have downloaded 24-bit WAVs from SC within the last 6 months

I have always uploaded 24-bit, except for a 32-bit fp out of curiosity, which worked. I lost two 24-bit masters of mine and downloaded them from my account in the last week or two. I've been asked how I avoid the bad sound, I don't know except I upload that quality. I do believe a file that's closer to clipping will suffer more but that's kind of obvious.

[jancivil]

Bandcamp's streaming is top notch.

It isn't. I think it does more harm than SC.

[Sampleconstruct]

If you have the upload speed to do it, upload wavs as produced, uploading MP3s will convert the MP3 to MP3 again which produces digital rubbish. I always produce in 48 Khz/24 Bit and upload those wavs to the Cloud, it gives better results to convert only once. Quality hasn't changed since the de-improved new cloud though.

[an-electric-heart]

If you have the upload speed to do it, upload wavs as produced, uploading MP3s will convert the MP3 to MP3 again which produces digital rubbish. I always produce in 48 Khz/24 Bit and upload those wavs to the Cloud, it gives better results to convert only once. Quality hasn't changed since the de-improved new cloud though.

Well, I'm not doubting you... in fact I'm pretty sure that is the case, but yeah, that's the f**kin stupidest thing I've ever heard! Why do I need to upload a 60MB Wav just for it to stream in Mp3 format?!... Why not upload a high quality Mp3 and it streams as a high quality Mp3?!... Why re-sample anything?!