Loss of quality after uploading to soundcloud

I don't know why there is a problem with the bass sound in this track .
It's not clear, as it is on my laptop After uploading there is additional sound (whistling). You can notice this at the beginnig of the track.

Does anybody suffer from a similar problem?

if you upload something to soundcloud it gets encoded to 128 kbps mp3 (for streaming; downloads are in the same format as the one you´ve uploaded).

so two things to keep in mind:

1. leave enough headroom! i recommend 0,6 - 0,8 dbfs. if your signal is too hot you will egt artifacts when encoding to mp3.

2. upload high quality audio files only. wav or aiff.

Actually this one is wav file. I tried with mp3 and this problem occurs with each file :/

I'm not sure how to leave this headroom. I'm not advaced in mastering, because we're talking about this? Could I do this for example in Audacity?

watch the record meter. It's the green bar at the top of the screen.. it goes red when you clip, cross the 0 db limit.
Make shure the green bar doesn't go over -0,6dB is what **** said

dudi wrote:Actually this one is wav file. I tried with mp3 and this problem occurs with each file :/

I'm not sure how to leave this headroom. I'm not advaced in mastering, because we're talking about this? Could I do this for example in Audacity?

just insert a limiter plug-in in your DAW´s master channel (in the last slot) and set the ceiling to -0,6.

try buzzmaxi3. it´s a nice freeware limiter.

http://www.x-buz.com/BuzMaxi3.html

Thanks a lot, definitely will try it.

^ Agree. Make sure your file is well under hitting "0 db." I've noticed that sometimes SC will boost the level a bit. Watch out for that. I upload 192 mp3s, and they sound pretty damn good on SC. Also makes a faster DL for people (if u give out DL's). I've experimented with WAV and found it to make very little difference.

best is to use 'flac' audio format .... .saves you uploading time versus wavs aiffs .

there are 2 different things at play. obviously a wav file or aif is the way to go if someone is planning on downloading it for reference or overdubs or something. but soundcloud compresses (data compression not dynamics) the embedded playback quite a bit so that is what you are hearing mostly, I think.

The point of using a lossless audio format when uploading is to avoid two stages of lossy audio compression.... e.g. if you upload it in mp3 format... soundcloud encodes it as mp3 again..
....Which sounds even more s*it than the original mp3.

Data compression also usually sounds worse on unnatural/ITB mixes too.
The mp3 encoder was tweaked for 'Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner' .. used as it's reference point...
which should tell you something.

szr wrote:best is to use 'flac' audio format .... .saves you uploading time versus wavs aiffs .

+1
FLAC = lossless compression (datacompression not to be confused with audio signal compression)

peace

Unfortunately - after some basic mix / mastering and uploading a FLAC file there is still problem with the bass sound

here you have mixdown version

i didn't even press play, but by simply looking at the waveform of the track it's apparent that it must be clipping because your levels are too high... this was already mentioned... you need to use a limiter to prevent your levels from going that high.

I've used limiter this time :/ It is far below 0dB.
There is no such problem while playing in music player, but it occurs even in Audacity (in Audacity's waverofm it also shows far below 0dB, it's not even closing to -4dB). After uploading to soundcloud it automatically shows such waveform.

I've used Adobe Audition and there Hard Limiter (in Master obviously), and as for presets it's Light. Am I still doing it wrong?

I wouldnt use the waveform on soundcloud as an indicator of anything. From what I've seen, the waveform graphic seems to get normalized by soundcloud, so ignore what it looks like.
Where is the bass from, have you used alot of digital processing... cos as I said these the mp3 codec was tuned for more natural sounding music that was recorded/mastered in the analog realm etc..

I would upload the track to sc without all the nasty sounding digi eq/compressors etc. (if you've used any)...See how that goes.