Frustrating .wav creation problem

[Lunch Money]

OK... I don't know if this is a dithering issue or what. I don't have a dithering plug-in so it's a moot point anyhow, and I'm fairly confident I've been working in 16-bit 44.1k anyhow.

When I'm playing back my project in Tracktion, it's sounding fine. The meters show no evidence of digital clipping, and no farty sounds come through my headphones.

Yet, when I export audio to a 16-bit 44.1k .wav file, and play it back, it's clipping like mad down in the bass regions. I've been very conservative with the bass in my track-- even though the sample sounds are 'massive', I've lowered the level on those tracks, and have taken the master level down to -3.5 db. Again, as mentioned, NO evidence of digital clipping.

To be honest, it's beginning to drive me a bit starkers. I'll get back to you if I sort it out; in the meantime, any pointers would be nice. I guess this is the first time I've done tracks with really 'lo-fi' and 'trashy' samples way down in the subs zone... and something in my setup doesn't like it.

[Lunch Money]

Bah.

Couldn't solve it until I ran a high pass filter with the cutoff at 40hz. It IS a dither issue, because 32-bit sounds fine, and 16-bit render turns it to shit. I tried the Foobar dither and it didn't work so well, either. Now I know why people BUY dithering plugs-- I used to think they were nuts!

In case you're curious, here's the file I was working on... it's just a demo for a few Dopetwistas drum presets in WusikStation. Check the Wusik.com forum for complete details. The piano/pad is in WS as well.

Dopetwistas/WS demo

Greg

[Sicklecell666]

Just curious, but if you load the midi files & recreate the track in eXT, would you have the same problem?

[Lunch Money]

I wouldn't be able to recreate it in eXT. At least, not easily.

It would all depend on eXT's dither. Does it even HAVE dither? Otherwise, it should be an identical problem, as the maths are the same. I'm using a sub-bass sample that apparently extends beyond the scope of the CD-standard bit rate/depth, and therefore it's getting truncated, causing digital distortion.

Love eXT... but I still can't write songs with it.

[Sicklecell666]

I don't know if there's a master out you can toss it in, but have you tried the MDA dither plug?

Alot of people swear by it.

I never dither personally; I haven't run across this problem in any of the hosts I use, which says nothing, of course..I think dithering is built in to some hosts' export..

Is there possibly a preference you might have missed?

[Lunch Money]

Anything's possible, but I've checked and don't see it. I'll check out that MDA thingy you mentioned, and see if it helps!

Cheers,
Greg

[IIRs]

If you cured the problem with a high-pass filter, that implies it was some sort of DC offset.. I doubt it has anything to do with dither (which is just about making the very quiet bits sound smoother)

[rockstar_not]

Greg,

While I agree somewhat with the previous post, I still would run the rendering/dithering trapline. It sounds almost like a word size truncation type thing.

I don't have this issue with Tracktion, since I do everything native at 16/44.1. However, at work, I do automotive sound analysis and recording; at 24 bit 44.1k, and sometimes, when I send 24 bit data to the 16 bit external D/A converter that I have on my desktop, I get farty output, not unlike what you describe.


Here's the URL for SmartElectronix/MDA, where their free dither plug is located. Make sure to download their help file as well.

-Scott

http://mda.smartelectronix.com

[Lunch Money]

The dither plug helped a little, but a bit of farting still ensued. I still think it's truncation, but the dither only slightly reduces the edges of a very sharp clip.

I haven't tried removing DC offset, which I'll attempt later. The high-pass works, but I didn't really want to eliminate that information down below, because it'll sound lovely on a system that can reproduce it.

Greg