I was able to do further testing. It happens on other styles. I installed at level 904, but updated to 905, and the problem is still present. To notice the problem, one does need to listen carefully, and perhaps use studio-grade speakers. On my system, the problem is blatantly obvious, but on other systems, it may not be so obvious. In all cases, the bass is at the expected level in the mix when playing directly under BIAB, but it renders about 6dB higher when you send it to WAV. That is always wrong, but depending on the style it may or may not sound distorted. With _SJAZZC2, it is horribly distorted. With _PROMSP it is twice too loud, but not badly distorted.

I was able to create a very simple song from scratch using all defaults, no special settings, and the problem is there every time. The problem is not strictly related to the rendering dialog. The same problem happens if I render a track by dragging onto the "WAV" part of the widget and then drag the rendered file to my song folder. And it happens every time, only on bass -- the other instruments are always fine.

Here is a guide to the attached files:

  • Loud bass _SJAZZC2.TXT is the BIAB file (in text form) of the file I started with
  • Played from BIAB live.mp3 is what the full mix sounds like when played under BIAB using default mixer settings. Sounds perfectly normal.
  • Played from BIAB live.png is a screen shot of that file in Audacity. Notice that with all the instruments in the mix, it is never close to clipping.
  • Bass line dragged.mp3 is the sound file when I drag-render just the bass track
  • Bass line dragged.png is that same file displayed in Audacity. Notice the bass track alone is much hotter than the entire mix file, and is badly clipped.


I didn't change any mixer settings -- or any other settings -- any time when saving these examples. Also note that I did not request normalization -- indeed, I didn't even use the render dialog. These are the levels that BIAB used on its own.

Attached Files (Click to download or enlarge) (Only available when you are logged in)
Played from BIAB live.mp3 (416.35 KB, 3 downloads)
Played from BIAB live.png (7.48 KB, 125 downloads)
Bass line dragged.mp3 (323.79 KB, 2 downloads)
Bass line dragged.png (7.81 KB, 126 downloads)
Loud bass _SJAZZC2.TXT (950 Bytes, 2 downloads)
Last edited by Pumps2; 12/03/21 11:58 AM.
BIAB: 2023 UltraPak
DAWs: StudioOne 5 Pro, Cubase 12 Pro
Audio: Scarlett 18i20
OS: Win10 64-bit CPU: Haswell 4790 Mem: 24 GB Vid: GTX-760Ti

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