Why do my mixes sound like crap on DropBox, SoundCloud, etc?

[LightninBoy]

The songs I mix sound like garbage when played back on SoundCloud and DropBox. I kind of understand why - the streaming sites apply lossy compression that is screwing with the sound - but this doesn't seem to affect pro mixed songs as much, at least as far as I can tell. So the pros must be doing something that is making their mixes lossy compress with less artifacts.

On my songs, SoundCloud mangles the cymbals and the snare. They sound very fake and crunchy while in the source wav mix they sound very good.

I've tried mastering at different levels and it didn't really help. My theory now is that I just have too much high frequency info and need to bring those down and maybe apply an aggressive low pass filter at 15K or so. Does this seem plausible? Any other tricks for making my mixes "translate" better to streaming sites?

 

[dfuller]

Soundcloud absolutely mangles audio because of how low their bitrate is. It's 64kbps Opus which is equal to or slightly worse than a 128k MP3 (which is very easily audible as lower fidelity). People often ask me to do mix crits from Soundcloud and I have to tell them no because it screws up the sound so much.

Dropbox is not quite so low quality, but it's still not good and audibly alters the sound (the low mids get messy, for some reason).

But, I'm happy to take a listen to your mix if you'd like.

 

[LightninBoy]

Soundcloud absolutely mangles audio because of how low their bitrate is. It's 64kbps Opus which is equal to or slightly worse than a 128k MP3 (which is very easily audible as lower fidelity). People often ask me to do mix crits from Soundcloud and I have to tell them no because it screws up the sound so much.

Dropbox is not quite so low quality, but it's still not good and audibly alters the sound (the low mids get messy, for some reason).

But, I'm happy to take a listen to your mix if you'd like.

That would be great! Here's the .wav file, if you download it from dropbox and play it locally that should playback as intended..

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lw6aux0vpmne836/FromMeToYou-001.wav?dl=0

And here's the SoundCloud version ...

https://soundcloud.com/user-829927821%2Ffrom-me-to-you
Much appreciate any thoughts you have!

 

[Marc v E]

I sampled both on my main system and the difference is stark. It's no so much bothering in the busy parts, but mainly the intro. I'm no recording engineer, but maybe I could suggest a few options:
1) compress your song yourself in order that you can sample the result and change accordingly.
2) Change the intro to a sound of electric piano/guitar. I'm guessing that has less reverb/complex tones and will thus easier translate to a better compressed sound.

 

[dfuller]

"Pro" mixes are often fairly compressed by default, so the lossy encoding costs less detail, because there was less detail to start.

That's not how that works.

Much appreciate any thoughts you have!

Well, your mix is pretty good - I don't think that's your issue. More that lossy encoding sounds like trash.

 

[FrantzM]

I didn't know dropbox applied its own compression on people's file ... I would think it is in their interest not to..

 

[LightninBoy]

I sampled both on my main system and the difference is stark. It's no so much bothering in the busy parts, but mainly the intro. I'm no recording engineer, but maybe I could suggest a few options:
1) compress your song yourself in order that you can sample the result and change accordingly.
2) Change the intro to a sound of electric piano/guitar. I'm guessing that has less reverb/complex tones and will thus easier translate to a better compressed sound.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Regarding #1, there's apparently software plugins that do that - simulate the compression applied on streaming sites. Wonder if anyone has had any experience with things like this ...

https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/adptr_streamliner.html

 

[Zensō]

I didn't know dropbox applied its own compression on people's file ... I would think it is in their interest not to..

It’s my understanding that Dropbox doesn’t touch the original files, but that they are compressed to 128kbps MP3 when previewed through a browser or app.

 

[LightninBoy]

Well, your mix is pretty good - I don't think that's your issue. More that lossy encoding sounds like trash.

Well that's a classic good news bad news situation. Good news - your mixes don't suck. Bad news - the places everyone goes to share their music does.

Thanks very much for taking a listen.

 

[Zensō]

The songs I mix sound like garbage when played back on SoundCloud and DropBox. I kind of understand why - the streaming sites apply lossy compression that is screwing with the sound - but this doesn't seem to affect pro mixed songs as much, at least as far as I can tell. So the pros must be doing something that is making their mixes lossy compress with less artifacts.

On my songs, SoundCloud mangles the cymbals and the snare. They sound very fake and crunchy while in the source wav mix they sound very good.

I've tried mastering at different levels and it didn't really help. My theory now is that I just have too much high frequency info and need to bring those down and maybe apply an aggressive low pass filter at 15K or so. Does this seem plausible? Any other tricks for making my mixes "translate" better to streaming sites?

SoundCloud Go+ subscribers are served 256 kbps AAC files, which are very good, otherwise I believe the free tier is still 64 kbps Opus, which is pretty bad. Unfortunately, most people are listening on the free tier.

 

[LightninBoy]

It’s my understanding that Dropbox doesn’t touch the original files, but that they are compressed to 128kbps MP3 when previewed through a browser or app.

Yes exactly. If interested, one can hear the difference using the DropBox link I shared above. Download the wav file and play it back locally versus previewing it from DropBox directly.

 

[LightninBoy]

SoundCloud Go+ subscribers are served 256 kbps AAC files, which are very good, otherwise I believe the free tier is still 64 kbps Opus, which is pretty bad. Unfortunately, most people are listening on the free tier.

Ahhhh - I did not know that about the Go+ subscription.

 

[Zensō]

Ahhhh - I did not know that about the Go+ subscription.

Unfortunately, the only way to share high quality files to a wider audience is to use a distributor like DistroKid to get your music on the streaming services. Even BandCamp streams at 128 MP3, though of course those who purchase the music have the option to download lossless files.

Sorry if you already knew all of this…

 

[LightninBoy]

Sorry if you already knew all of this…

No worries. I've got a lot to learn in this area.

 

[danadam]

For me, I get 256 kbps AAC on Dropbox and 128 kbps MP3 on soundcloud.

When you take a look at network tab in Firefox developer tools:

you can see that on Dropbox it first downloads "p.m3u8". This file contains links to 3 playlists: 128 kbps, 192 kbps and 256 kbps:

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=128000,NAME=128k
https://uc50f119ee3a3c1e36041ddd8b02.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/hls_playlist/ ... /p.m3u8?bps=128000&type=audio
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=192000,NAME=192k
https://ucd4e572d8bf3ac8d63d0a43c385.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/hls_playlist/ ... /p.m3u8?bps=192000&type=audio
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=256000,NAME=256k
https://uccbfddcba6ab7fc381a23116fff.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/hls_playlist/ ... /p.m3u8?bps=256000&type=audio

Then it chooses and downloads the 256 kbps version, which contains links to 10 second segments of *.ts files:

#EXTINF:10.24,
https://uc7a3f8ffcca0cb32fd6173996b9.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/hls_segment/ ... /p.ts?segment_num=0&segment_type=audio
#EXTINF:10.24,
https://uc58a60270fd93742af68c3746c8.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/hls_segment/ ... /p.ts?segment_num=1&segment_type=audio
#EXTINF:10.24,
https://ucbc288f2f461f81b2aa0e64c46a.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/hls_segment/ ... /p.ts?segment_num=2&segment_type=audio
...

When I download and concatenate them I get a somewhat weird file:

]$ ffprobe all.ts
Input #0, mpegts, from 'all.ts':
  Duration: 00:03:58.75, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 346 kb/s
  Program 1
    Metadata:
      service_name    : Dropbox
      service_provider: FFmpeg
    Stream #0:0[0x100]: Audio: aac (LC) ([15][0][0][0] / 0x000F), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 245 kb/s

The total file size would imply that this 346 kbps bitrate but the stream inside reports only 245 kbps.

On Soundcloud the process is similar but there is only one playlist version:

It also contains links to 10 second segments (well, the first three are shorter):

#EXTINF:1.985272,
https://cf-hls-media.sndcdn.com/media/0/31762/ ...
#EXTINF:2.977908,
https://cf-hls-media.sndcdn.com/media/31763/79410/ ...
#EXTINF:4.989302,
https://cf-hls-media.sndcdn.com/media/79411/159240/ ...
#EXTINF:9.978604,
https://cf-hls-media.sndcdn.com/media/159241/318900/ ...
#EXTINF:9.978604,
https://cf-hls-media.sndcdn.com/media/318901/478561/ ...
...

When I download and concatenate them, I get a normal mp3:

$ ffprobe all.mp3
Input #0, mp3, from 'all.mp3':
  Duration: 00:03:58.73, start: 0.025057, bitrate: 128 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : LAME3.100
    Side data:
      replaygain: track gain - -4.900000, track peak - unknown, album gain - unknown, album peak - unknown,

 

[Katji]

AFAIK (and according to what I last saw on Soundcloud information page/s) it uses MP3 128 Kbps. (LAME3.100 and LAME 3.99 .) And at some time - around 2 years ago - they were going to use Opus and then did not, or they reverted.

Yes, as per previous post/reply. If you capture/save the stream, MP3 128 Kbps is what you get.

When the uploader [person/entity] enables the Soundcloud download option, the file you get is what they uploaded. More often than not it is MP3 320 Kbps.
Sometimes because they just don't know, sometimes deliberately as a deterrent to people using it instead of purchasing from Bandcamp or the record label website where they supplied the original AIFF or WAV.

 

[staticV3]

Good news - your mixes don't suck. Bad news - the places everyone goes to share their music does.

I wonder how Bandcamp fares there.
It offers lossless Downloads, but what about the streamed audio in your browser or the App?

 

[abdo123]

It’s my understanding that Dropbox doesn’t touch the original files, but that they are compressed to 128kbps MP3 when previewed through a browser or app.

What a time to be a live when the processing power to do this in real time is cheaper than the bandwidth required to stream .wav

 

[Zensō]

I wonder how Bandcamp fares there.
It offers lossless Downloads, but what about the streamed audio in your browser or the App?

“What format/quality are the streams on Bandcamp?
They’re MP3-128s. However, if you’re in the app and on wifi, items you’ve purchased stream as MP3-V0s (~250kbit/s on average).”

https://get.bandcamp.help/hc/en-us/articles/360007802334-What-format-quality-are-the-streams-on-Bandcamp-

 

[Katji]

You beat me to it.

Bandcamp help center pages are good.

...It seems they've been busy with a lot of work. Facilities and features for artists.