Render problems in Reaper

[youngmanblues]

Hi all,

I'm having some rendering issues with Reaper.
When i listen to my mix through playback it all sounds transparant, defined, clear and punchy. However as soon as i render it it loses transparancy, punch and volume. It loses over 10db and becomes barely hearable.

I render it in wav format, 44,1 k, 24bit (default option in my window) and in "good" quality.
I already have ticked off the anticipation fx processing and made sure there are no effects on the masterbus. I've also already turned down the general volume of my tracks so the master bus definetly doesn't clip.
I've tested all different vst's a'd fx solo and found no harmdoer

If i open the rendered wav file with Reaper there aren't any issues, but as soon as i upload it to soundcloud or play it in windows media player the mix gets all flunky as described above.
I know there's a difference in quality between these media players but my final goal is to have it uploaded in soundcloud having the same quality and volume as in playback.

I really hope that there's somebody on this forum with obvious more experience than me and who can provide me with advise.

[Markku]

If i open the rendered wav file with Reaper there aren't any issues, but as soon as i upload it to soundcloud or play it in windows media player the mix gets all flunky as described above.
I know there's a difference in quality between these media players but my final goal is to have it uploaded in soundcloud having the same quality and volume as in playback.

If you play rendered file with something else than Reaper, is it OK? Because I suspect that the problem isn't Reaper at all, it's the conversion to Soundcloud.

Possibility: you render a very loud file and Soundcloud conversion lowers it (10 dB is a lot!).

Also, does your media player work well in other purposes?

There are tools and VST plugins to maximize compatibility to a platform (i.e. YouTube etc.) but Soundcloud has very little requirements .

From Soundcloud pages:

"When you upload a track on SoundCloud, we optimize it for streaming. As part of that process, we resample and transcode it to a high-performance codec. These codecs are highly optimized, but they can increase peak levels, which can cause clipping. We recommend that you leave between -0.5 and -1 dBFS of headroom to prevent artifacts like clipping during transcoding. Make sure to check the resulting stream in the rare case where more headroom is required."

[Markku]

...and just to be sure, you say it doesn't clip, but how high the master meter in Reaper rises? I don't know if I have done some adjustments, but generally the measurement stays on the highest peak in Reaper.

edit: What I mean here, with Reaper, you just might have very quiet file.

This might or might not help:
https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/qu ... udio-13446

Good Luck!

[dupont]

It happened to me last week, the render track was less louder than the original.

I forgot to set Reaper master volume at 0 db !
Also Soundcloud set the loaded tracks to -14 LuFS, so don't expect to have the same volume than your track mastered at -9 LUfs.

[Delta Sign]

This may sound insanely stupid, but check if Windows is running some kind of "audio enhancement" thingy. When I got a new laptop a few years ago, it took me ages to figure out why stuff suddenly sounded different after rendering. It turns out the laptop had some stupid Waves "enhancement" thingy enabled by default that kicked in as soon as I wasn't using ASIO drivers anymore.

[neverbeeninariot]

It happened to me last week, the render track was less louder than the original.

I forgot to set Reaper master volume at 0 db !

Heh - I've done this more than once... took me a while to figure it out out the first time. Live and learn.

[youngmanblues]

This is solved! The internal volume of windows seemed to be irrelevant when listening to playback in reaper. IT does when listening to spotify/windows media player/browser.

Thanks for the help guys!