Hi Experts,
Would anybody be able to offer up some possible explanations to the following,which is driving me to distraction and spoiling several weeks of work...I'll use bullet points to be as concise as possible..
1.I have a relatively simple 10 track guitar instrumental project in Cakewalk,comprising Bass/Drums/Keys/Strings as RealTracks from BIAB and 6 live guitar stems.
2. All tracks have some EQ and compression applied to get a basic mix I'm happy with.
3. Peak level at the Mix bus during playback is -14.3dB,with all the stems at similar levels with no clipping evident at any point.
4.No evidence of clipping or transient muting is evident during playback of the pre-mixdown version.
5. After mixdown however to a basic 44.1kHz/24Bit .WAV file,I can hear occasional very short term clips/mutes lasting only milliseconds but definitely audible and deleterious to the quality of the piece,despite no clipping evident on the meters and seemingly plenty of headroom.
All the guitar tracks have been "repaired" at some points using Cakewalk's AudioSnap to correct some minor timing errors,and I suspect this may play some part in the problem,as by moving one transient marker from it's corrected position back to it's original location,one of the clips/mutes was removed.
If this is the problem,I have the onerous task of hunting for and repositioning a lot of corrected transients in the six guitar stems.
Does anyone else have any experience of a problem like this after using AudioSnap,or any other proprietary Audio Quantisation tool,and if so why it may be happening?
This is my first experience of using AudioSnap,so wondering if I've made a fundamental error.
The issue is unrelated to any VST plugins applied as I've done several "vanilla" mixdowns with no effects and flat EQ and the problem persists.
Many Thanks,
Neil Cummins
Warrington
UK
You might try and mute separate tracks and do a mixdown to see if it is a certain track that is causing the problem.A
Also if you have them sub to a buss you can try muting that buss. I have not used Sonar in a while but I believe you can disable all plugins with a button. You certainly have plenty of headroom.
Have you soloed each track and listened all the way through?
Edit: In Studio One Pro I use Audio Bend function which is like what you are using in Sonar. Once you edit a track it is doing this in real time stretching and compressing the audio. This takes some CPU power, it is wise to consolidate or bounce them tracks in case it is causing your computer to struggle. Also you might check your buffer latency setting and try increasing this if you need too.
Brian
Thanks for replying Brian.Yes,I solo'ed each track and there's not a hint of the issue I mentioned,which is the annoying part.
I haven't tried specifically freezing the tracks,so this is another angle of attack I can employ.
Let's see.
BR//
Neil
Neil, soloing one track at a time may not expose the problem. Most audio clipping and distortion comes from gain. Thus your combined tracks may exhibit the problem while individual tracks do not. Here is how I mix.
In the mixer mode turn all volumes to zero. Then bring up the drums followed by the bass then the other tracks one by one. Carefully watch your output master while doing this. If it shows in the red start over.
Your song may not be as loud as you are use to but the clipping and distortion should be gone. Then you can mix master effect in, usually EQ & compression, again carefully watching your master levels. Note some use a pre-master channel for this.
I hope this helps and good luck.
Thanks Mario....I'll give this a try alongside the track freezing suggested by Brian.
I think the best guess at the moment is that the audio quantising is the culprit,as it's the first time I've used this technique,and as I mentioned,I carefully located the point at which a very audible mute occurred in the master track and narrowed it down to one guitar stem exactly at the point where I had moved an audio transient from it's original location.
When I returned it back to it's original location in time,the issue on the master was removed when this new version was mixed down.
I have another related question which I'm going to start a thread on,on this forum.
Cheers!
Yep.
I get that from time to time when I run Melodyne. The track looks and sounds good on playback but gets clipped on the render.
So.... to find it..... In CW.... simply freeze or apply the effects to one track at a time. It does the same thing as the render but does it in the tracks where you can now SEE where it's clipped.
It might be coming from the rendering of the multiple tracks at the same time.
The way I get around this in Melodyne is to go to the audio sections that are clipping and use the gain control function in AUDIO dropdown...... lower the original volume by -3dB and do a render. Check it.... undo and drop the gain as needed. Set your resolution and put markers there.... split the track if needed, to apply the gain to a limited area of the track. Look for the quiet areas in the phrasing.
Of course you can also simply envelope it out as well instead of the gain drop render repeat routine.
Anyway, I experimented to see what works and this worked for me on a few tunes. I have not figured out yet what is the root cause of this issue.
Two thoughts: 1) As you sliced tracks to move audio around did you manually or automatically perform cross fades between the start and stop positions of each clip? By default Cakewalk automatically performs a cross fade between clips but that feature can be disabled in settings. 2) Once you complete all edits you need to combine all the audio in a track into one audio file. Highlight a track, move the cursor to the track area, right click and select the "Bounce to Clips" command.
In Sonar set your theme to Mercury (I say this because it looks different in Tungsten and I’m not used to it but the same rule applies anyhow).
Go to the mixer panel (Console View). Run the song keeping an on both the little symbol next to the post button in the Pro Channel indicator. Assuming you are using the Pro Channel this should say reasonably green. If you are clipping you’ll get a red glow on the clips. Also keep an eye on the figure at the bottom of the volume indicator. It will show you the actual peak level per channel and or the master channel.
Also make sure that your track outputs are going where they should. It is possible for example to be sending a channel directly to the sound card and not via the Master. If such a track is clipping you might not see it in the mix.
Edit: an afterthought also check any hard panning or extra stereo width. For example it is possible to push cymbals out wide where they can really clip and not be noticed in the daw.
Edit: set your theme to Mercury
Just some thoughts
Tony
Further thanks to everyone for some great ideas,some of which I had considered but others very novel.
My poor brain is fried yet further now as the problem completely vanished when I mastered to MP3 at 320/High Quality,but still there when .WAV.
Probably worth another thread at another time,in the interim I need to get those user manuals out again!
Happy New Year!
Neil Cummins
Warrington
UK
Good luck with the Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) user manual. CbB does not include a pdf file as all documentation is online. The last pdf file published for Sonar was about 1,645 pages! I was going to have an office supply store print out a copy until they told me it would cost almost $40!
Two more thoughts, 1) Post the individual wave files online and ask a few people if they can find out what's going on. 2) Download a free wave editor. Import the wave files into the editor.
+++ Audacity +++ will have a red highlight wherever as little as one sample tries to be higher than 0dbFS during the import.
These days there is not much about in books that I can see. However there is still the odd Sonar X3 book about and it covers more than just the basics. Most of this stuff has not changed all that much. There are some changes you can look up on the web manuals but you’ll get the gist. Learning Cakewalk by BandLab is a big job.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dmusic-intl-ship&field-keywords=Sonar+X3+power&rh=i%3Amusic-intl-ship%2Ck%3ASonar+X3+power
You might find more on the web look up Scott R Garrigus he had heaps of stuff on getting the best of Sonar.
Just a thought
Tony