A great tip from the Mastering Engineer I use is that low end bass tends to get unruly around 70hz & 120Hz. He suggested/recommends reducing these areas - fairly narrowly & by ear - to help tame things.

Compression can, if used correctly, do some of what automation does...just need to ensure that the automatic "make up gain" isn't on.
Another fairly useful tool is the free plugin VOLA2 - it works rather like a "vocal rider".

In Reaper there's an excellent automation form called pre FX volume. This is great because it controls the level of things going into the various VSTs/plugs on that track. The BEST bit, for me, is that this control visually alters the wave form image in the track to reflect what is done. TOO LOUD in one spots can be, visually, addressed by making the wave form section equal to the others - then an auditory check follows of course.


ITB - in the box

Noise floor - normalizing will lift the noise as much as it will lift the music. Tiny click, pops & interference from lights, the screen etc. will also be lifted. If the normalizing is done as a common gain across the track or section that's probably not going to be too much of an issue but some normalizing lifts everything to the it max level so that the noise in a quiet section could become as loud as a played note.

BIAB use WMA files, (I don't think it's WMA Lossless), which are decompressed/converted into .wav files to work in the BIAB mixer as well as your DAW. The .wav is a format that's easy to work with but having been WMA has A LOT of data was removed based on the usual psychoacoustic standards used etc.and is no longer present in the .wav.
FLAC is a compression/storage system that unpacks "on the fly" when being played back...it takes some more CPU grunt, is supposed to be full original wav quality and doesn't reduce file size by anywhere near the up to 90% an MP3 will do so isn't hugely popular - particularly now that storage is cheap & bandwidth isn't nearly as restricted for streaming up & downloads etc.
How your MP3 sounds will depend on the selected quality as well as the type of compressor (each has its own cut offs).
Generally speaking a LAME 320 MP3 is considered to sound the best to most listeners but stuff below 1Khz and above 18Khz is less resolved and has more noise.

Export your track as a 24 bit .wav file then again as your usual MP3. Load them into you DAW and look at a spec. anayliser to see if there's a difference AFTER having listened to them by A B ing.

M4A is an Apple thing so I, inherently, don't trust it. All the stuff I read about it was comparing stuff compressed at 128kbs and that's really not a great sound in any format.
Nevertheless this summary is pretty tidy.

"Window's Media Audio is Microsoft's contribution to high quality, lossy audio compression. Like most other new formats, M4A and WMA outperform MP3 in terms of quality and compression, particularly at lower bitrates. Consequently, WMA is probably the format of choice for streaming at low bandwidths and preferred for Windows compatibility. .. However, M4A is less platform restrictive than WMA as the latter is notably unplayable in Apple's iPod [that's the proprietary nature of Apple that I distrust].
MP3 (MPEG-3 Audio), a widely supported format, uses lossy compression to achieve reasonable audio quality at smaller file sizes. It's compatible with most devices and media players."(By Abby Poole ｜Last updated on August 31, 2023).

You like the sound of you amp which is a great start but how that is achieved in the modelling software may also be the start of your problems. May not be too!







Last edited by rayc; 09/04/23 03:59 PM.
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe