How to Upload to Soundcloud Best Quality

While some streaming services like Amazon Music Hd and Tidal are at present offer lossless audio, many others like Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud still use lossy audio compression techniques to evangelize music. Of those, SoundCloud has always been unique in how easy it makes instant uploads for creators.

Possibly information technology's due to that very ease that questions similar, "Why does my music sound different on SoundCloud?" or "What can I exercise to make my music sound better on SoundCloud?" seem to come up up more oftentimes than they do for other streaming services.

Despite SoundCloud introducing a new "mastering" feature to optimize streaming playback, knowing what actually happens to your audio during streaming and mastering is cardinal to understanding how to produce a rail with the highest possible sound quality for streaming. Then let'due south take a wait at why those sonic changes occur, and what we can do to minimize them.

In this slice you'll learn:

• How to optimize your songs for streaming on SoundCloud and other compressed audio formats

• What y'all can and tin't control in the process

The bottom line

To get to the bottom of this, I prepared 40 masters of a single vocal—20 at 44.i kHz and xx at 48 kHz—and uploaded them all to SoundCloud. For each sample rate, I methodically varied the parameters of acme level, crest factor, frequency-specific width, and total width. I and so played them all back off SoundCloud, recording the output bitstream pre-conversion—once more at 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz—for assay and comparison against the originals. This yielded a whopping 80 versions of the song!

• 20 uploaded and recorded at 44.1 kHz

• 20 uploaded at 48 kHz and recorded at 44.one kHz

• 20 uploaded at 44.ane kHz and recorded at 48 kHz

• 20 uploaded and recorded at 48 kHz

Testing 40 versions of a song

After level matching them all for a fair comparison, I got to piece of work listening and measuring to determine which factors played the biggest role in preserving—or degrading—sound quality during format conversion and streaming playback. At the end of the 24-hour interval the parameter which fabricated the biggest touch on was: width! Not only that, but all the other variables had footling to no impact (caveats ahead).

To understand why this is, how you tin potentially accept reward of it, and why you might not desire to worry about it at all, read on!

Manipulating width for a "better" encode

I should authorize what I hateful by "better." Actually, what we're talking about is an encode which is perceptually closer to the source. Withal, the steps we're taking to become at that place involve making some sacrifices to the source. So while the encode and the source may audio more alike, the cumulative difference betwixt the encode, the source, and what you lot were originally trying to achieve may all the same be fairly noticeable.

That qualifier aside, here are a few things you lot can do to minimize the differences between the source and the encode:

Narrow the high-stop

Using a tool like the Imager in Ozone 9, try narrowing frequencies above about eight kHz. I can't give you a precise corporeality, as it will very much depend on the amount of width that you had in that range to begin with. Try soloing that band and reducing the width until it occupies virtually half of the stereo field between your speakers. This will assistance reduce some of the high-frequency washiness that is so common with low-bitrate lossy codecs.

Narrow mid and depression frequencies

If you desire, and your chief tin handle it, endeavor narrowing the mid and low bands likewise. Try setting the mid band to well-nigh 1–eight kHz, and the low ring below 1 kHz. You could even dissever this into two ranges: 400–1000 Hz and below 400 Hz. You'll likely desire to get out the mid—and depression-mid if yous're using it—bands adequately close to their original width, even so, you may exist able to go away with narrowing lower frequencies a flake more than. Any fiddling bit helps.

Use a mono principal

This is absolutely an extreme solution, but if you lot can justify information technology, a mono source will requite you the "best" encode—again, significant perceptually closest to the source, albeit now in mono. This is considering you're essentially asking the encoder to do half as much work by encoding a single channel. In plough, this means the encoder tin can allocate it's unabridged bandwidth to that one channel, rather than having to divide it between 2 channels.

The reasons width plays such a disquisitional role in encoder performance are hugely complex, but can be summarized as follows: most lossy encoders like AAC, MP3, and Opus utilize a technique known every bit joint stereo encoding. This means that rather than encoding both left and right channels independently, they employ multiple techniques such equally mid/side and intensity-stereo coding to optimize bandwidth resource allotment to where it will be near noticeable—often the center of the stereo image.

The end result is that ultra-broad stereo signals oft suffer from quality degradation more than noticeably than practice narrower ones. Additionally, high frequencies require more bandwidth to encode. Thus, past reducing the width of high frequencies, non only do y'all free upward some bandwidth for the encoder, assuasive information technology to allocate its $.25 more efficiently, merely you also prevent some of the more noticeable, warbly, washy distortion from showing up in the encode.

A swell way to experiment with the effects of these changes in real-time is by using the Codec Preview in Ozone 9 Advanced. Try using MP3 at 128 kbps or AAC at 256 kbps—two of the common codecs used by SoundCloud depending on the playback platform and subscription level—and tweaking Imager parameters. You can fifty-fifty use the "Solo Artifacts" function to hear how changes in width affect the underlying baloney added by the codec.

Codec Preview in Ozone 9

All the other bits

I would be remiss if I didn't address things like peak level, crest-factor, and file format for upload, then let'southward talk about those at least a little.

In all my recent tests, acme level did not have a noticeable touch on on encoder performance—at least not directly. By this, I mean that and so long as there wasn't whatsoever clipping, the encoder performance between versions with unlike amounts of meridian headroom was identical.

Withal, because lower bitrates—such as those often used past SoundCloud—tin cause peak level overshoot of a decibel or more, information technology'south good practice to set the ceiling of your limiter to -one or -1.5 dB and utilise a True Peak limiter such as the Ozone Maximizer. This helps prevent clipping on playback, particularly through cheaper consumer devices.

The story with crest factor is largely the aforementioned. While it doesn't have a straight, dramatic impact on encoder performance, a lower crest cistron will often result in college peak level overshoot—something which ultimately oft results in DAC clipping and distortion. This has the slightly ironic consequence of requiring boosted peak headroom—or a lower limiter ceiling—the higher yous push your boilerplate level, something which can chop-chop turn into a losing battle.

This is another area where Codec Preview in Ozone 9 Advanced can be enormously helpful. By turning on Observe "Truthful Peaks" in the I/O options and listening through the MP3 128 kbps codec, you can fine-melody the Maximizer threshold and ceiling to achieve an optimal level while avoiding postal service encode clipping.

Checking post-encode acme headroom in Ozone ix

Every bit for upload format, the official recommendation from SoundCloud is a sixteen-bit, 48 kHz WAV file. This reason for this is that of the several codecs used, the majority of them are ready to have in a 48 kHz file, and so this minimizes the amount of sample charge per unit conversion that will take place.

That said, sample charge per unit conversion has become extremely transparent, and in my tests neither the upload nor playback sample rates had an observable effect on encoder performance or playback quality.

The ane caveat hither is that if yous enable downloads on SoundCloud, the file y'all upload is the one your fans become when they download. Thus, if you want them to receive a 320kbps MP3, that's what yous'll need to upload. Notwithstanding, this results in transcoding from one lossy format to some other, which never sounds particularly expert.

In short, if you want the best streaming quality possible, upload a sixteen-bit WAV at 44.ane or 48 kHz. If, on the other manus, y'all want to enable downloads, upload the file you desire your fans to receive, but know that if it's a lossy file, streaming quality volition suffer. Since these days downloading a local re-create is probably non every bit common as it one time was, this may be a moot point.

Decision

To wrap up I want to consider a few reasons why peradventure you lot shouldn't worry besides much virtually all the factors nosotros've just discussed.

First and foremost, SoundCloud may well update the codecs they use in the future merely as they have in the past. When that happens they volition re-encode all uploaded music to take reward of the new codec(south). It'southward for this very reason that they themselves urge creators not to try to optimize files too much for a specific codec.

2nd, while you tin control the width, sample rate, etc. of the file you upload, you can't control how your fans will listen to it. Of course, this is truthful of the vast majority of playback mediums. It bears repeating here though because fifty-fifty on SoundCloud alone, the playback experience can vary depending on subscription level and playback device. Consider carefully whether information technology's worth sacrificing some of the width and spaciousness of your rail just for the everyman common denominator.

Hopefully, this has armed you not only with some of the tools to better encoder performance when uploading to SoundCloud but also the wisdom to know when, when non, and how strongly to wield them. Skillful luck, and happy mastering!

leemadicim2001.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/mastering-for-compressed-audio-formats.html

Share this post