Bounce from Logic is Distorted

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theroachlife

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What's up guys, I'm a complete rookie with mixing and mastering and have a quick question about mixing in Logic. I just finished a sample based beat, using Logic for chopping the sample and creating the bass, and re wired Reason for my drums. The beat knocks and sounds really clean in my session, but when I bounce the track it is completely distorted. I used the Low End Theory to create the bass, and thought by lowering the volume would help, but the distortion only went away when the bass was so low you couldn't even hear it. I also layered a couple of kicks in reason, and lowered both as well and it did not help either. Any tips or help would be appreciated.
 
What settings are you using to export? Are you bouncing down to mp3 or wav? If wav, are you bouncing to 24 bit? also... are you able to dither in Logic?
 
thanks for the reply, I am bouncing to mp3, 24 bit res, 44100 sample rate, and normalize is off.
 
Are you sure your Master track isn't clipping? Play the session back. If the master fader goes about 0.00 then you're clipping. It doesn't always sound distorted while in the session, because DAWs use 32 bit float and idk the technicals but that can handle some above 0.00 without clipping (or something like that, it was explained to me once, but yeah...)

Anyways it definitely sounds like your master track is clipping, and that's why it's distorted on the bounce. Lower volume levels of the entire mix (not just bass and kick drum) and use a limiter on the master track if you have to. That should stop all the clipping. If you still get the distortion then it's something else that idk...

Good luck :cheers:
 
Forgot the mp3 (shame on you) format for export, and use aiff and normalization.
 
appreciate the tips guys, I got it all straightened out.. thank you.
 
I think his problem was that his master was clipping. I had this problem when I was a rookie too, the track sounded fine in my DAW but when I exported it, it was completely distorted haha! So I started lowering the volumes which made my music really low (like he said as well) and then guess what I discovered? Limiters… :rolleyes:
 
Bobcat said:
I think his problem was that his master was clipping. I had this problem when I was a rookie too, the track sounded fine in my DAW but when I exported it, it was completely distorted haha! So I started lowering the volumes which made my music really low (like he said as well) and then guess what I discovered? Limiters… :rolleyes:
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uhm when i exported in realtime it fixed the problems i had. i use a l2 ultramaximizer on the master anyways
 
From what I know, enabling the normalization is good to avoid any clipping.

---------- Post added at 07:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:33 PM ----------

IMHO L2 sucks
 
laurend said:
From what I know, enabling the normalization is good to avoid any clipping.

---------- Post added at 07:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:33 PM ----------

IMHO L2 sucks
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what do you use then?
 
I use my own limiting algorithm. I dislike all the Waves limiters. Fab filter, Flux, Sonnox are better. The normalization option makes any limiter useless. Just use a limiter if you're searching for high average level.
 
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laurend said:
I use my own limiting algorithm. I dislike all the Waves limiters. Fab filter, Flux, Sonnox are better. The normalization option makes any limiter useless. Just use a limiter if you searching for high average level.
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i was thinking of sonnox already.
 
laurend said:
From what I know, enabling the normalization is good to avoid any clipping.

---------- Post added at 07:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:33 PM ----------

IMHO L2 sucks
Click to expand...

I agree on both!

And yeah I was looking at the Fab Filter Pro-Q Equalizer not long ago and really liked it, I guess their other stuff must be good as well!
 
Why would you use a normalizer, when you could just mix it properly yourself??

Just mix your tracks at a volume that is much much below clip. THEN after your mix has become as perfect as you can make it. You can raise the average volume in the mastering stage.

Why would you do it any other way? I'm confused... never heard of someone actually using a normalizer on something they wanted to sound professional (or as close to professional as is possible.)
 
Umm, how would normalizing it help it if it's clipping? There should be no clipping in anyway on a master bounce, actually you should have some headroom so that way when you do Compress and Limit, there is enough room. also, your master can show no clipping when you are clipping in the compressor. At least that's been some issues ive came across and i never used normalize.
 
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Bryst said:
Why would you do it any other way? I'm confused... never heard of someone actually using a normalizer on something they wanted to sound professional (or as close to professional as is possible.)
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The manual gain adjustment is a good solution. The normalisation does this job automatically by adjusting the gain in order to keep the highest sample value at 0 dBFS. So no distortion arises. Both solutions are clean about audio quality. Logic provides this normalisation option because it doesn't allow the 32 bit float format which is a safe solution to avoid clipping for mix/bounce/export as well.
 
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Lol, the safest way to avoid clipping is look in your mixer and watch your levels???
 
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