Seth Fortin
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GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/02/21 06:38
Okay, I'm dying here.
I'm using GarageBand to record and mix everything, then outputting to aiff files to listen to them on iTunes, and mp3's or m4a's in order to put them on the web for other people to hear.
Mostly, this has worked out fine, but I've run into a serious problem -- namely, on one particular track I'm noticing that I don't get a significant audible level until the volume meters on both the vocal track and the master track are redlining. Which would be fine with me, except that then when I output in either aiff or m4a I get noticeable, very ugly distortion on the louder notes -- ie, wherever it was redlining in GB. But I swear this is not because it's too loud -- as I said, it plays at an appropriate level, just with awful clipping. (And this happens ONLY in the exported files -- there's no distortion at all in GB.)
If I take the track and master volumes down to where there's no clipping, the song is noticeably, ridiculously softer than all the other songs. I recorded them all at the same overall computer volume level, but for some reason generally this one track remains ridiculously soft. Anyone have any thoughts?
The only thing I can think of to do is to turn down the master volume on all the other tracks and make people turn their speakers way up, but that hardly seems like an ideal or user-friendly solution.
By the way, I have already tried a few things like exporting it to aiff, importing into Audacity, and cranking up the volume there. The same thing happens -- it gets distorted even when playing in Audacity. The only place it sounds normal is in GB.
Post edited by: Seth Fortin, at: 2008/02/21 06:42
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corksniffer
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Re:GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/02/21 06:46
This is one of the reasons I hate garageband, there seems to be this disasterous mastering explosion that happens without warning, every so often. Having you tried playing with the 'ducking' on the mastering track. I guess this is something mainly used for podcasts but I have utilized it up up vocals which IMO are always too muffled in GB mixes.
Also, have you tried screwing with it using some of the more adaptable AU plug-ins, perhaps a peak limiter would help. That multi-band compressor always makes everything weird so I try to leave it alone- does audacity have a stand alone compressor you could try fixing the particular track with?
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room34
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Re:GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/02/21 06:47
Without actually seeing how everything is set up in your GarageBand project, it's hard to predict exactly what's causing this, but I would encourage you to expand all of the details on the tracks (click the little "i" button for the track info, then expand the "Details" part, assuming you aren't already set up this way). Try using some of the effects to boost the signals on the tracks.
Worst case scenario -- if you have a separate waveform editing app, you could dig down into the GarageBand project file itself (which is actually a special kind of folder) to get at the raw AIFF files for each of the tracks in question, then take them into your editing app and boost the signals on them. Do this by Ctrl-clicking on the project file and choosing "Show package contents." Go into the "Media" folder and you'll find the AIFFs. As long as you don't change the lengths of these files, you can edit them to your heart's content and then, as long as you've quit GarageBand in the meantime, when you open the project up again in GB, the tracks will appear exactly as before, but your clean-up will have been applied. Bear in mind that if you're doing this to boost the signal, you'll probably have to turn these tracks down in GB after editing.
Maybe you could take a screenshot of your open GB project, with one of the offending tracks selected, so we can have a look at all of the settings.
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Kemmler
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Re:GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/02/21 07:50
something that could cause this, software-independent:
if you have super-low frequency content that is really loud but basically inaudible you would experience a softer-than normal track with crazy clipping.
This could be DC offset introduced by recording.
Try running the whole thing through a brick-wall style highpass set just below 20hz and see if that helps.
If this doesn't work send me the .aiff and I'll look at it.
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Seth Fortin
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Re:GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/02/21 09:39
Okay, these sound like some good ideas -- I'll try them out and let you guys know how it works. Already I feel more relaxed just knowing there are possible scientific explanations and I don't have to resort to demonology and exorcism.  Thanks!
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mambodog
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Re:GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/02/21 14:12
have you tried playing around with a compressor on the output?
if you weren't aware, garageband has a very dumbed down compressor which you can find in the track info panel... this might help to flatten your track down a bit so you can have a bit more volume without your loud notes hitting the roof.
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Kemmler
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Re:GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/02/21 21:44
mambodog wrote:
you can have a bit more volume without your loud notes hitting the roof.
This is another possibilitiy, you might have some notes that resonated more when you recorded. My 2nd piece of advice is take the part that is clipping, and run it through a spectrum analyzer and look for any obvious peaks. Then take the whole track and run it through a medium notch filter centered on that frequency (if you find one), then normalize or compress the track and the loudness should pick right up.
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room34
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Re:GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/02/26 19:39
I'd like to second the comment about low-frequency notes. GarageBand has some serious low end if you use certain instruments (especially the hip hop drum kit or some of the synth bass sounds). For better or worse, I do a lot of my recording just listening through earbuds, and I wasn't even aware of some of the extremely loud low frequency notes I was getting when I first started using GB. Until I played the tracks in the car, that is. Holy crap!
Now if I'm using one of those "fat bottom" sounds, I use the track EQ to drop about half of the low end, and almost all of the frequencies below 40 Hz. That makes a huge difference.
Another thing to just keep in mind: the human ear generally can hear sounds from about 20 Hz to somewhere between 16-20 kHz. Usually speakers are capable of output within the same range. But audio software can often handle frequencies outside the audible range. You may never hear those notes on the recording, but they're there, if the instruments you're using are capable of generating them. And therein lies the problem: frequencies on the same track (or even NOT on the same track, once you have a stereo mix) can interfere with each other. They're just sound waves, after all. So if you've got a really loud (i.e. high amplitude, even if it's "silent" as far as your ears are concerned) sound going on in the high or low frequencies, it can cause dissonant harmonics or distortion of notes that you CAN hear.
If you're finding that unwanted noise of this type is appearing in your stereo mixdowns, but not when you're working with the original multi-track, this is something to check into.
(OK, there's little acoustical science behind what I'm saying here; I'm just going with my observations, and my best rational interpretation of their possible sources. Anyone who knows more about this can feel free to lay the smackdown on me.)
One last thing -- it's important to remember that your hearing isn't perfect, and others may hear things you cannot. (Just ask your dog.) So it's a good practice to use high/low-pass filters to cut off any possible sounds that are outside of your own hearing range. Do some experiments with tone generators to see where your hearing drops off, and then use those frequencies as the limits on the filter. Sure you're limiting the frequency range of the recording, but remember that you're only removing the stuff that YOU can't hear anyway, so you're making the recording more like what you intended.
An analogous example: Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys) is deaf in one ear, so when he produced the Beach Boys' classics in the '60s, he recorded them all in mono. He couldn't hear what the stereo mix sounded like, so he didn't run the risk of creating something that was not what he intended. In the end, the music is as he heard it, which is the whole point. (Of course, I prefer the stereo mix of Pet Sounds, which he did in collaboration with a stereo-hearing partner, in the '80s, over the mono original.) Or you might think about how a colorblind photographer might only want to shoot in black-and-white. (I realize I'm stretching now, but I think my point is made.)
Post edited by: room34, at: 2008/02/26 19:45
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Seth Fortin
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Re:GarageBand Mastering disaster. Help! - 2008/03/01 18:41
Hey, I know this is late -- I've been offline for almost a week -- but I just wanted to thank everybody for their thoughtful suggestions.
It turned out that, as usual, the problem was operator error. I think it was a combination of things -- using the highpass filter, as you suggested, did help. But the main problem was that I was exporting and listening in iTunes, which has a little function called SoundCheck -- basically, if things are too loud, it tries to make them soft, and if they're too soft, it tries to make them loud. It apparently doesn't do this very well. Anyway, it was playing my songs at a really low volume when I imported them into the library, but when I burned the files to disc and played them from the disc, they were actually really loud! So I turned off SoundCheck, re-adjusted the levels, and everything was golden.
So, um.... I feel a little foolish. But it turned out okay, even though I was remastering down to the last day.
Thanks again to everyone for your help!
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