Subject:bad distortion problem when saving projects as .wav/mp3

Posted by: Sinjin32

Date:3/18/2001 5:47:34 AM

Now this is peculiar. I've got a project with a few
digital audio tracks, and it sounds absolutely fine when I
play it back with Acid as an .acd file -- no clipping, no
distortion, the meter never spikes above 0.0 (and I have
both volume sliders set at 0). And yet, when I save the
file as an .mp3 or .wav, it's distorted like crazy. I've
lowered all the levels on the tracks, but nothing seems to
matter. How do I get Acid to save a project as a .wav
or .mp3 file that sounds identical to the orignal .acd file?

Subject:RE: bad distortion problem when saving projects as .wav/mp3

Reply by: Kickstand

Date:3/19/2001 3:32:08 PM

This might be a long shot, depending upon your setup, but a
good idea is to make sure before you encode your project as
an MP3 that you close any programs that are running...what
I do is CTRL-ALT-DELETE and "End Task" for everything
except Acid, Explorer and SysTray. After I have my MP3, I
then restart my PC to get back to where I was. Another
thing to do regularly is to defragment your hard drive so
you can keep all those scattered pieces of files together
for quicker access, although this probably wouldn't relate
directly to the MP3 encoding process. Maybe someone else
can offer more. Good luck.

Subject:RE: bad distortion problem when saving projects as .wav/mp3

Reply by: Sinjin32

Date:3/19/2001 7:38:56 PM

Thanks... I'll give it a shot and see what happens!

Subject:RE: bad distortion problem when saving projects as .wav/mp3

Reply by: nlamartina

Date:3/19/2001 10:04:37 PM

Also, check to see what the QUALITY SETTINGS are set at
when you save your file. Is it possible you're encoding
MP3's at bitrates below 128? Or saving WAV files with bit
depths of 8 or sample rates of 11025 Hz? Take a look...

Nick LaMartina

Subject:RE: bad distortion problem when saving projects as .wav/mp3

Reply by: Sinjin32

Date:3/21/2001 7:35:15 PM

Nope... I've tried pretty much all of the .mp3 and .wav
settings. But I think I've discovered the cause. It has
to do with my the digital audio tracks I recorded from
guitar. It can sound absolutely fine when I play the
project within Acid, but the levels get out of whack when I
save it as a .wav or .mp3. With a little tweaking of the
effects levels and volume, I can get it to sound okay, but
it still doesn't come out quite like I'd like it to.