Bad Quality Sound -ACID Product Family - MAGIX Community Forums Archive

Subject:Bad Quality Sound Posted by: craigwfla Date:7/27/2003 5:09:54 PM First of all, I'm new to ACID. OK, I've made a trance/breakbeat mix with acid. The tracks seem to loose quality & become distorted when loading them in acid. I am mixing with 44,100 Hz, 16 bit, Stereo, Wav files. I've tried normalizing in Sound Forge after completing the mix & it only helps somewhat. Alot of the distortion comes on the tracks with alot of bass. The distortion is not terrible, but I would like the quality of the mix to be more crisp. Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Subject:RE: Bad Quality Sound Reply by: evilrage Date:7/27/2003 9:52:19 PM I'm also hearing distortion while mixing trance with Acid. As far as i can tell, i lose a lot of quality in the vocals, but also get a lot of distortion in the mid- to high-range sound, especially in extremely high pitched sound or sound that transitions for mid to high. I also have minor bass distortion, and as far as i know it isn't my speaker system (which is worth well over $3000) Help? Is there a patch, upgrade, fix of any kind? And i note that the distortion is NOT the media files themselves. when i play a normal file, then a file i ran through acid, the acid-ized file has much more distortion, reguardless of the quality of the source file.
Subject:RE: Bad Quality Sound Reply by: Iacobus Date:7/28/2003 12:55:36 PM ACIDizing involves adding a chunk of data to a file so that it usually stretches properly to a new tempo and/or key. What sounds like what's happening is that you're experiencing artifacts as a result of extreme real time tempo changes. This could happen if the project's overall tempo is drastically different from that of the ACIDized sample being used. For example, if a sample is ACIDized at 140 BPM, and you bring it into a project that's 100 BPM, chances are it might not sound all that good depending on the source material. There are ways to minimize the artifacts, such as going into the stretch properties and adding your own stretch markers denoting strong accents on subdivisions of a beat. (Note this is only possible in ACID Pro; other versions of ACID do not have this feature.) Another is to record at the exact same tempo you intend to use in ACID, or record in ACID itself. ACID will apply the current key and tempo of a project as it ACIDizes a recorded sample. HTH, Iacobus
Subject:RE: Bad Quality Sound Reply by: evilrage Date:7/28/2003 3:12:20 PM In my case, i'm stretching samples all in the 135-145 range to the bpm of 140. i'll try loading a song into acid, not changing the beat or pitch at all, and then outputting it to wav, and see if i still have the problem. at least then i'll know if it's due to tempo stretches or the actual outputting to wav that causes the distortion
Subject:RE: Bad Quality Sound Reply by: Iacobus Date:7/29/2003 12:57:54 PM As a general rule, anything that has an originally slower tempo will sound better when it's played back at a faster tempo. You can quickly match the overall project's tempo with the Loop's tempo by right-clicking a specific track in the track list and selecting, "Use Original Tempo (xxx.xxx BPM)". If, indeed, the tempo changes are causing the artifacts, note my previous post. You might be able to rectify the problem by adding custom stretch markers. They can make a custom loop sound that much better. HTH, Iacobus

Subject:Bad Quality Sound

Posted by: craigwfla

Date:7/27/2003 5:09:54 PM

First of all, I'm new to ACID. OK, I've made a trance/breakbeat mix with acid. The tracks seem to loose quality & become distorted when loading them in acid. I am mixing with 44,100 Hz, 16 bit, Stereo, Wav files. I've tried normalizing in Sound Forge after completing the mix & it only helps somewhat. Alot of the distortion comes on the tracks with alot of bass. The distortion is not terrible, but I would like the quality of the mix to be more crisp. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Subject:RE: Bad Quality Sound

Reply by: evilrage

Date:7/27/2003 9:52:19 PM

I'm also hearing distortion while mixing trance with Acid. As far as i can tell, i lose a lot of quality in the vocals, but also get a lot of distortion in the mid- to high-range sound, especially in extremely high pitched sound or sound that transitions for mid to high. I also have minor bass distortion, and as far as i know it isn't my speaker system (which is worth well over $3000) Help? Is there a patch, upgrade, fix of any kind? And i note that the distortion is NOT the media files themselves. when i play a normal file, then a file i ran through acid, the acid-ized file has much more distortion, reguardless of the quality of the source file.

Subject:RE: Bad Quality Sound

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:7/28/2003 12:55:36 PM

ACIDizing involves adding a chunk of data to a file so that it usually stretches properly to a new tempo and/or key.

What sounds like what's happening is that you're experiencing artifacts as a result of extreme real time tempo changes. This could happen if the project's overall tempo is drastically different from that of the ACIDized sample being used.

For example, if a sample is ACIDized at 140 BPM, and you bring it into a project that's 100 BPM, chances are it might not sound all that good depending on the source material.

There are ways to minimize the artifacts, such as going into the stretch properties and adding your own stretch markers denoting strong accents on subdivisions of a beat. (Note this is only possible in ACID Pro; other versions of ACID do not have this feature.)

Another is to record at the exact same tempo you intend to use in ACID, or record in ACID itself. ACID will apply the current key and tempo of a project as it ACIDizes a recorded sample.

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: Bad Quality Sound

Reply by: evilrage

Date:7/28/2003 3:12:20 PM

In my case, i'm stretching samples all in the 135-145 range to the bpm of 140. i'll try loading a song into acid, not changing the beat or pitch at all, and then outputting it to wav, and see if i still have the problem. at least then i'll know if it's due to tempo stretches or the actual outputting to wav that causes the distortion

Subject:RE: Bad Quality Sound

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:7/29/2003 12:57:54 PM

As a general rule, anything that has an originally slower tempo will sound better when it's played back at a faster tempo.

You can quickly match the overall project's tempo with the Loop's tempo by right-clicking a specific track in the track list and selecting, "Use Original Tempo (xxx.xxx BPM)".

If, indeed, the tempo changes are causing the artifacts, note my previous post. You might be able to rectify the problem by adding custom stretch markers. They can make a custom loop sound that much better.

HTH,
Iacobus