BOUNCE!

[Phant82]

Sorry if this is a topic that comes up often...

I'm fairly new to Pro Tools. I'm using PT LE 6.9 with an MBox on OSX Tiger. I've mixed a song (using AKG 240s) and I'm very happy with the turnout. I then bounce the song to disk, and when I play back the song as a .wav from my hard drive, it sounds horrible. I understand the fact that the mix won't sound the same from one set of speakers to another, but when I listened to the .wav file I used the SAME headphones I used to mix the song. Also, I opened a new PT session, then imported the .wav file into PT. Everything sounded great again. So does anyone know what's going on? Any help would be much appreciated.

btw, my bounce settings are as follows:

Stereo Interleaved
16 bit
44.1 kHZ

[pk_hat]

1- Did you record at 24 or 16bit?
2- Did you use a Dither plugin on the Master Fader?

Bounces should sound exactly as they did during the session.

[Phant82]

Yes I used a dither. I can't quite remember what the recording bit was. If it were 24 bit, would the sound be affected because I bounced it at 16 bit?

[Starcrash]

What do you mean by "sounds horrible"? Could you be more specific? Distorted? Noise? Thin, tinny, muffled? Overly compressed? Also, you said that you playback the .wav is when it "sounds horrible", then when you import that same file into a PT session it sounds normal. How are you "playing back the .wav file"? Quicktime? iTunes? Like was said before, a bounced version sounds identical to what's playing through the stereo bus in your session. If you give us more detail, then maybe we can figure out what is the actual problem. Has this problem happened before. Have you tried bouncing again, other mixes maybe?

[Phant82]

"Sounds horrible" pretty much means that, when playing back the .wav file in, say, iTunes or a car CD player, the timbre of the individual instruments change, almost as if they muffle. Also, the levels are drastically off, not like when the file is played through PT. The funny thing is, all of the sound sources playing the .wav file (besides PT) sound similarly bad, therefore the bad mix is consistent from one source to another. Could that mean that something is setup improperly within PT?

I have tried remixing and bouncing again, even with different songs, and the outcome is the same. Let me know if I can provide any more details...

[Sevenlights]

I don't really know, a bounce should be the same the PT mix sounds when the session is up. When you select bounce, what outputs is the bounce assigned to? Maybe it's bouncing from a buss instead out analog 1 and 2?

[Munxcub]

Did you maybe bounce at 48KHz or higher and then it plays back at 44.1? that would change the timbre of the instruments and make it sound muffled as it's sort of playing in "slo-mo", Altho I would expect it to not play back at all, but maybe the software (iTunes, Quicktime...) can handle the 48KHz but your built in sound can't?

[vrsemurphy]

I'm having a similar problem. I bounce my tracks down into my Music Folder and through the 'get info' menu i can preview/listen to them and they sound just like they should- identical to the bounce. The problem seems to be after I drag them into my itunes library and then listen to 'em thorugh that. The sound changes, it seems to be amplified. The low end seems to be splattering and its just plain different then the bounced version. This has got to be an itunes issue but I haven't come across anything on the internet to confirm that. Any comments?

[tha k man]

I'm having a similar problem. I bounce my tracks down into my Music Folder and through the 'get info' menu i can preview/listen to them and they sound just like they should- identical to the bounce. The problem seems to be after I drag them into my itunes library and then listen to 'em thorugh that. The sound changes, it seems to be amplified. The low end seems to be splattering and its just plain different then the bounced version. This has got to be an itunes issue but I haven't come across anything on the internet to confirm that. Any comments?

itunes is importing them as MP3's. Thats why they sound....well you know....
Go into your itunes preferences, and click on the importing tab. Choose AIFF, or cd quality.

[vrsemurphy]

The Sound Designer II files remained SDII files after I dragged them into itunes, regardless what setting I had chosen- it doesn't seem to have an effect on them. I tried to "import" them in itunes but the SDII files were greyed out, it wouldn't let me import like that. I only could drag and drop into itunes.