I recently followed the tutorial “How to make techno” (great tutorial!). After completing the tutorial I decided I would try and do something myself. The result is not outstanding but not complety bad either. I uploaded “my masterpiece” to Soundcloud after mastering it with Ozone 4, but Soundcloud compression must have done something to it, because it sounds really bad. It seems that Soundcloud really hates the hats used in the track and I can’t figure out why. I have inspected the sample used for the hats and I can’t find any problems with it. I have also tried mastering the track in different ways. The result is the same: After uploading the wave and listening to it in the Soundcloud player it sounds like ****. Can you tell me if there is something wrong with my approach or if you would recommend changing the hats or…?
I have soloed the hats and uploaded them to Soundcloud:
Soundcloud Hates My Hats by ottovideo
- If you download and listen it sounds fine, but not on Soundcloud
The track:
The New Ted Heaths by ottovideo
- I have added a filter to the hats in the beginning of the track to make he problem less obvious
I have now changed the hi-hats with some new ones, but they also sound waful on Soundcloud. Does anyone have an idea whats is wrong?
I had the same problem with sound cloud on a track I posted a while back. I tried uploading in many different ways and even contacted support and they said I had a possible problem that was not audible. Well to make a long story short, the track got signed and the guy that did mastering was very pleased with outcome of the track, and did not send back for any adjustments. This brings up an interesting question, I wonder how the mastered version is going to sound? Unfortunately, I am not allowed to upload the mastered version until the record label gives me the go ahead to check this.
Anyhow here are a some of my hypothesis on the matter.
- The sound cloud encoder sucks
- Maybe try filtering off a bit of the top end (maybe even the low end too) and see if that changes anything. (I did not any of these yet)
- See if taking the groove off the hats, or quantize them to exactly 16th’s works.
- Put hats in mono
- Try taking verb/delays off hats,
I know you wouldn’t want to do any of this on the final product but if you got the time and patience, I would be interested to see if any of that corrects the problem.
[quote]DjWillMcGlone (16/11/2010)[hr] (…) Anyhow here are a some of my hypothesis on the matter.
- The sound cloud encoder sucks
- Maybe try filtering off a bit of the top end (maybe even the low end too) and see if that changes anything. (I did not any of these yet)
- See if taking the groove off the hats, or quantize them to exactly 16th’s works.
- Put hats in mono
- Try taking verb/delays off hats,
I know you wouldn’t want to do any of this on the final product but if you got the time and patience, I would be interested to see if any of that corrects the problem.[/quote]
Congrats on the signing!
I will try out your suggestions when I get the time (this weekend hopefully). Suggestion 3) is interesting, but I think it is more likely that it has something to do with the effects and/or mastering. Maybe the exciter from Ozone (which I used for mastering the track) is creating some noise in the high end that confuses the Soundcloud encoder. I think I will start there and work my way backwards (your suggestion 5 would be the next step). I will keep you posted 
The only thing I used was abletons multiband compressor, eq, filters, and a regular compressor on master. I used sidechain compressor on some of my high hat elements, along with fliters, overdrive, and Eq. So, Perhaps overdrive could be the culpret too.
Ok, I have now tried everything I could think of. In my tune I use two layered hi-hat samples to produce the hi-hat sound, and I have have determined that the problem is the second hi-hat sample (the closed hi-hat, Sample 2). I have tried using a different hi-hat sample that sounded similar to test if it had something to do with the sample itself. However I ended up with the same result. My conclusion is that the Soundcloud encoder has a serious problem with this type of closed hi-hat. I have uploaded the different test-samples to Soundcloud if anyone is interested in checking it out:
Stream ottovideo | Listen to Soundcloud Encoding playlist online for free on SoundCloud
The set is organized so that the top one are the most clean (less or no effects, groove, EQ-ing, verbs, compression etc.). As you can hear the problem with “clicks” are present in all the tests I have done.