teh Forum

Hi, this is my first post here. Ender suggested I post this here as some people might be interested.

I have someone making a video for me to put on my CD. We're nearly finished, and he's just uploaded what we had hoped to be the final version for me to check and I'm finding that - on my Mac, which is hooked up to my studio monitors, the music track is distorting, which it shouldn't be. This happened in earlier test files he uploaded, and another musician friend on a Mac also said it sounded distorted. But the guy doing the video is on a PC. I haven't heard back from him about the audio on this version, but on previous versions that sounded distorted on at least 2 Macs he didn't hear any distortion. Ender has checked it - on a PC I assume - (though maybe he checked an earlier version, which had been distorting) and he didn't hear any distortion. It's a regular MPEG video file so supposedly it shouldn't be so different on Mac or PC.

If anyone with a decent sound setup on their computer, is willing to download and test the audio on the video for me in the next day or two, and provide feedback, I'd really appreciate it. Or even without the sound setup. Please also let me know if you're using a PC or Mac. Thanks!

The link is:
http://knownmusic.ddo.jp/ysnlake/julianne.htm

You'll see two files. They're the same, except in size/resolution. The smaller version is 31 MB (larger is nearly 45 MB). You'll probably want to download rather than stream, I'd say.

Thanks!

Hi Sunrise, good to see you found the place. Maybe J3RK could give it a quick listen. He probably has the most discerning ears of the bunch.

I will take a listen as soon as I get home today. I'll be quite busy during the day today. I'll give it the ol' Mackie-Test. If I remember, I'll bring my headphones home too, to do a multi-compare type of thing.

Hey, thanks a lot By the way I'm listening on Mackie 624s myself.

Enderzero - you look different from the last time I saw you. Nice to see ya up here.

sunrise: I don't have discerning ears, but I checked it on my PC and did not find any distortion. Even with the volume on 11. Everything came through very nice and clear, especially the vocals.

(btw, it download real nice 'n' smooth too)

Hi Goemon,
Thanks for checking and thanks for the info. Looks like it might be coming out fine on PCs. I'm still waiting to hear back from some other Mac people too. One Mac person said there was only a tiny bit of noise. Hmmm. I should take another listen and adjust volume settings (but these are the same I always use so should be fine).

Hope you enjoyed the clip while you were at it.

Oh yeh, I also meant to say that if anyone else wanted to watch the clip just for pure entertainment sake, go right ahead.

Ok, I just listened. It actually sounds really good on the HR-824s. I can tell why people are getting distorted results though on computer type speakers. It seems to be mastered extremely hot. So very little volume will blast it. When my volume was almost all the way down, it was playing at a comfortable level, crystal clear. This tells me that it's just loud. So, what I'd do, is play some other audio, (like from a cd or something that you know is at a fairly standard level.) Adjust your volume to match it, and write it out that way. You don't have any quality issues though. (Just level.)

HI J3RK,

Sorry for the late reply, I've been out of town for a few days, and doing anything more than checking email wasn't easy. Thanks a lot for the feedback. It's very helpful to hear what you have to say about it. By the way, what computer are you on? Mac or PC?

The original master itself is fine. It's not too hot. No distortion on it at all. This has only happened once encoded to the video.

From your feedback plus some things I'm hearing from others, it sounds like maybe what I need to do is rebounce a new track at a lower level and send it back to the guy doing the video. Unfortunately we're not in the same city so I can't just pop around to his place with my laptop and do some tests there.

I'll be very interested to hear if you think the level is hot against some CDs you have. Actually, I should do that very same test, including against the unencoded track and also the original master music track.

I'll let you know what I find out, hopefully I'll have time to do that before the weekend (this week is crazy!).

Thanks again for lending your time and ears.

No problem. That was from a PC with an Augigy 2. Not the best audio card in the world, but sufficient for a level check. Is it possible that the video guy normalized it or something like that? Or perhaps even his software might have done it? If the RMS level was normalized to a fairly high volume, that could make it very loud. In order to get a CD to that volume on my system, I'd have to turn the main volume up about 5-6 times what I had it at for the video. I'm sure it is something simple. If your track is at a normal volume level, then it probably happened on the video end.

It sounded really good, until the vocals came in. Then lots of distortion. I was using a PC, at work, with quicktime 6.5

Hi. It's beatiful. I could listen to it just fine. I'm using Mac G4 OS 9 with Quick Time 5.0.2 at work.

Hey, Big Shit (great handle),

Thanks, glad you like it and can hear it okay.

Hey Mc Nevin,

Thanks for your feedback too. Interesting that different people are getting different results on the audio.

I've been flatchat busy since I last wrote, hence my late reply. I'm going to try and test the levels between vid and original today or tomorrow. I just have to figure out how to listen to them in the same app.....

http://knownmusic.ddo.jp/ysnlake/julianne.htm

I haven't heard it yet, it only just got posted. He's put the volume down, but wrote that one friend of his said he heard a tiny bit of distortion (still), even though he couldn't hear it himself, so we may need to take it down just a tad more. I might take the master down a tad.

You're welcome to check it out and give feedback, or else just wait for the next version.

thanks!
cheers
Julianne

Hi there everyone,

Well, many months later the updated audio master has finally been put on the video that you checked for me ages and ages ago that was distorted. I was wondering if any of you audiophiles have any time if you'd again be willing to check it for me. I just got the link now so it's too late at nite for me to play loudly, I'll test it during the day Sat.

Here it is:
http://knownmusic.ddo.jp/ysnlake/julianne.htm

One is at same volume as the audio master, the other is a quieter in case of distortion problems like last time. They guy who did it says he thinks both sound fine on his PC....

The original master was cranked up a little hot as you had pointed out. We have re-tweaked the master to sort out a couple of things in it, including making the levels a bit lower. Cover art took ages, but finally I think all systems are go to finally press the baby (in the next few weeks). Yay!

Anyway, any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hiya Ender - how's it going? Did you get any riding in this season?

Julianne

Hey Sunrise! Glad to see you stopped by. The clip looks and sounds great - but the pros like Dustin and Matt could better comment on the levels than I could.

Haven't been able to board too much this year. I'm about 5.5 hours from the best spot and I have been damn busy with school. But Spring Break is upon us and I am heading off this morning for 5 or so days of riding in Tahoe, w00t!

I hope you are doing well and best of luck with the video.

hiya Ender. I guess you're out riding now. Have a great one!! Thanks for the feedback.

Just to let everyone know, we've sorted out the video - the 0dB file levels are way too high on Macs in Quicktime. So we'll go with the lower volume level - it seems to be fine. I'm sure if it's okay on a mac it'll be fine on a PC.

Yes, Ender, I'm fine but very very busy trying to finish all this off. Must get some sleep now. In another day or two I'll be able to relax. Wow, it took so long to make the cover art (extravaganza of 20 page full color booklet & 6 panel digipak.....) If I were a pro designer it would probably not have taken a fraction of that time, LOL!

I only got out twice this season on the slopes - but it was still nice. Once hooking up with the SJ crew at Hakuba just after Xmas, and in Jan I won an SJ trip to Club Med in Hokkaido, so I had a fun time there, too.

Well, good luck with it all, enjoy the snow and catch you again!

Julianne