I'm opening up this discussion here because, even though it refers to music I've posed in the User Showcase, I don't think it's appropriate to start a discussion there.

I've posted links to a few of my tunes up at Soundcloud.com in the User Showcase sub-forum and I've just noticed something.

I went back and listened to the original .wav files that I recorded -- before converting them to mp3's, which were what I uploaded to Soundcloud. I used Realband to check out the .wav files and I noticed they were kind of quiet, so I used the PG limiter and 10-band EQ to punch up the sound quite a bit. Well, I loaded a couple of these remixed tunes to Soundcloud, and guess what? I couldn't tell the difference between the new ones and the original ones that I'd recorded at a much more quiet level. I mean, I was ping-ponging back and forth between two versions of the same tune -- one supposedly recorded at a more quiet level, and one remixed to be hotter -- and I couldn't tell a difference. So, I'm thinking that Soundcloud actually adds some limiting and compression, at the very least, to uploads to bring up the levels to where they ought to be.

I'm just wondering if anyone else here has noticed this and if you might know exactly what Soundcloud does to a piece of muusic once it's been uploaded onto their site.

After A-B'ing a couple of tunes of mine, it's really got me curious now. So, any info you might could pass along would be appreciated. Thanks.

Everything uploaded to soundcloud, including mp3's, gets trans-coded to 128kbps mp3 for streaming playback.

They recommend that you upload WAV files to get the best playback results.

If you are uploading an MP3, I guess what you are hearing is the audio file being compressed twice?

I found this to be useful.

https://www.justmastering.com/article-mixingformp3.php

Bud

Thanks for the feed back, guys. Janice and Bud, that link was especially helpful.

every upload server site for music, with a few exceptions, uses compression on the files.

As pointed out above, they compress to 128. So upload the best quality you can and then check the upload for quality.

I think Box.com lets you upload waves

Soundcloud also accepts .wav's, but I prefer uploading mp3's there to save disk space.

No, you should definitely upload wav file there to get the best playback quality, as I said they auto-compress everything you upload no matter what format, so uploading an mp3 will give you compromised results because of the double compression.

Uploading mp3's will not increase the number of songs they will allow you to upload, they care about the number of minutes you are using, not the amount of disk space you are using. You are allowed 3 hours total playing time for the free account, 6 hours for the pro account.

Amen to that. I have the free account - always upload wavs.

Oh, okay, thanks for the clarification. I guess i should replace everything, although it appears I will lose all comments if I do.

I generally upload 256kbs MP3 files and they sound fine to me. Wav files are too big! I guess I could upload a FLAC file if I want uncompressed files to be downloaded. FLAC files can be about 1/2 the size of WAV files.

Studies on a 5 minute audio file: http://dsd-guide.com/size-comparison-chart-various-formats-dsd-wav-flac-mp3

Interesting link Kemmrich
What, no monkeys audio?

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

The truly lossless compression for sound.
You can bring it back to an exact bit for bit copy of the original source if desired. None of the others can do this .. pretty amazing. I'm surprised more true audiophiles don't prefer this one.
Been around 15 years and 10 million downloads, yet is never mentioned in these types of comparisons.

Thanks Bob, I had forgotten about that and never checked it out. The web page is very convincing.

Are there selectable bit rates? Any suggestions for using it? Any compatibility problems to look out for (work in my car, work on cheap CD players etc. )?

Appreciate the suggestion. Maybe put a post in Tips and Tricks when you get time?

Interesting, but I don't see anyway it would improve the SC issues??

Matt,
Which devices support it will vary, though most Windows stuff seems OK with it.
I use it for transferring and backing up. There are a few choices on size.
At default it seems to cut file sizes almost in half, yet in my testing I get an exact file match when uncompressed .. seems like it would have caught on more for that reason alone. I can backup twice as much audio on a given device yet lose nothing.
(plus source code is freely shared for Windows and Mac)

I have been pleasantly surprised to find it works in devices I wasn't sure of, but can't say every device will work. Have to experiment I guess. The creator went on to contribute to jriver, if you are familiar with that.

Janice & Bud,
Sorry I should have specified my reply was to Kemmrich's link. I edited it above.

I was surprised to see that no Mac app is available. The PC world is much larger but Macs have a pretty big presence in the music arena.

Mac source code is available (as well as Visual Studio).. I'm pretty sure there are Mac apps out there..

"Monkey's Audio 4.18 SDK (with source code) (recently edited to fix an int/intn problem on Mac)"
This version was released 8/6/16. There were Linux and Mac fixes back in 2013, it's been available for most OS's for a while.
XLD is one Mac app (10,000 downloads this week?)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/xld/
Last updated about a month ago.
It's still kickin'

Apple has ALAC (apple lossless codec), which is roughly like FLAC.

.. and XLD works with ALAC, FLAC and MAC.
you can easily have it all.
We live in good times.

Monkeys Audio is the only one I've personally used that can bring back a true bit-to-bit exact copy after the fact.
FLAC is very good, as is ALAC, but if you want to be sure ..

I tried it. One thing you have to make sure is to turn off the monkey sound when compression is complete! I noticed on a short 36 MB song it saved about 50% space, and each of the five or six compression levels was nearly the same size.

Adobe Audition 1.5 will not read an .ape file. I'll try it a few more places.

It does seem that Monkeys Audio is relevant to this thread about SoundCloud, because you can upload a file of half the size without any loss in sound. Then you know any compression mangling is caused by SoundCloud, YouTube etc.

You are verifying APE works for SC upload for you?

No. I don't use SoundCloud. I don't know if this works. I rather assumed you might.

Nope, not a SC user either.

Like I said, I use APE mainly for backups to save time/space (and yet know I can have an exact copy when needed). I've also used it to collaborate with some Linux users.. we could send tracks back/forth efficiently.

I copied this from SC:

"What types of files can I upload? You can upload AIFF, WAVE (WAV), FLAC, ALAC, OGG, MP2, MP3, AAC, AMR, and WMA files. The maximum file size is 5GB. "

So no SC will not accept APE files.

Wow. Keep it up, guys. I'm learning a lot here.