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Topic: Why is Soundcloud making only one of my songs sound distorted? (Read 3196 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why is Soundcloud making only one of my songs sound distorted?

Hey people,

I'm wondering if anyone knows why Soundcloud's transcoding process can occasionally mangle certain .wav files while leaving others undamaged (at least not noticeably).

I'm working on a portfolio for my music, and while I've been lucky enough that Soundcloud hasn't distorted any of my other songs, the last song that I've tried to upload continuously sounds grainy and distorted once it's subjected to Soundcloud's bit-reduction process to a 128 kbps MP3. In particular the acoustic guitar on the song sounds super ugly and warbly compared to its punch and crispness on the .wav file.

Could this be because of a more loud, prominent range of frequencies 'tricking' Soundcloud's transcoding process into cutting out the more crucial guitar information, or a build up of high frequencies in the song? I've tried placing a linear phase low pass filter rolling off everything past 14 kHz, and still the distortion remains. And no, the song isn't going over 0 dbfs, it's peak limited at -.1. Any ideas why the sound quality is getting jacked?

Here's a link to the track in question: http://soundcloud.com/tom-s-6/commercial-whole-grain/s-MJKey

Not the most sterling mix to begin with, but it sounds far, far better before Soundcloud gets its dirty paws all over it.

Thanks!