DMusic.com | for indie musicians and fans | Free MP3 music downloads

Forums > The General Forum

mp3 too quiet

sween	Date: January 30, 2007 @ 1:06 PM Hello, does anyone know why the exported mp3 is so much quieter than the track I hear in Fruity Loops? Its doing my head in, Ive tried doing the old compressor but I find its bad for the quality of the song, plus, it still isnt as loud when exported. Rubbish rubbish rubbish!! Cheers Steve
GeneHilbert	Date: January 30, 2007 @ 2:49 PM Push the mix-down outputs. I have found that there is a certain amount of head-room above 0db on certain DAW's..... Try +3db on your mix-down output and go from there (+/-). Push it until you get your desired level or until distortion occurs, then back it off as required.
LegoBreaks	Date: January 30, 2007 @ 8:50 PM If you have a wave editor eg cooledit, soundforge etc, you could fix this up afterwards. ie render down as a wav (you could do mp3 but then you lose quality) then import the song into your wave editor and compress / limit it though there to bring up the volume
LiQuidMetamo...	Date: January 31, 2007 @ 12:15 AM Gene's advice is good. Also try a volume maximzer/limiter plug-in but don't punch it too hard or you will suck the life out of your mix. A great mastering limiter/volume maximizer is Elephant 2.5 by Voxengo, it is really transparent if used correctly or can color mixes like the Waves L2 etc depending on settings chosen. http://www.voxengo.com/product/elephant/ another thought - what are you using to encode your mp3s - maybe try a different encoder and see if there is any difference - i use Soundforge for my mix finalizing and mp3 ripping and that works out great. Try encoding with CDEX a freeware program based on the Lame encoder which served me well in the past... http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdexos/
EvalLin	Date: February 2, 2007 @ 12:33 PM you could just use a soft clipper and raise the volume, or download audacity it's free.
LiQuidMetamo...	Date: February 3, 2007 @ 10:37 AM downloading audacity in itself will probably not fix the levels unless it is purely an encoder issue in which case, like CDEX it can do a job for free. A limiter.volume maximizer raises the volume level it just sets the ceiling to where nothing will pass, depending on how you set it, it can 'soft clip' or brickwall.
sween	Date: February 3, 2007 @ 4:43 PM Thankyou all for the great advise, much appreciated, Looks like there is no set way of doing these things, I muck around will all suggestions and see what happens Thanks again
plungerboy	Date: March 19, 2007 @ 10:49 PM In your fl studio browser side panel, go to effect channel presets, and select general purpose mastering. You can use the compressors to raise the volume of the track. If you go too high you will get distortion in the end result.

Post A Reply
From:	Guest	(Icons - Linking)
Post: