Questions & Answers

Mixes sound great in Studio One, but terrible after exporting

+1 vote
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asked Nov 28, 2020 in Studio One 5 by lancebrown-ochs (640 points)
I recently upgraded to Sphere and installed Studio One 5.  I then bought a new PC and installed Studio One, as well as my Waves and Isotope plugins.

When mixing and mastering within Studio One, everything sounds great and just as it should.  However, when I export (from the song or from the project page), the resulting MP3 and WAV files sound like garbage.  Almost like a muddy reverb thing going on.

I've literally tried dozens of export settings (bitrate, etc.), but no luck.  I've used Studio One for years, and have never had an issue like this.  

Any ideas???

1 Answer

+1 vote
answered Nov 30, 2020 by jamesneathery (160 points)
Hi Lance,

I may be off the mark with my thought but when you mention the exported files sounding as if a muddy reverb has been applied, do you think it could be the factory setting that many PC makers have as a part of the onboard audio device? Meaning, I normally run audio from SO5 through my board to a monitor controller and also have the PC through a mixer channel so I can flip between what I want to listen to at any given time.

I noticed when pushing audio from the PC to the monitors, I was getting a little reverb as well. It wasn't horribly muddy but definitely noticeable. I had to go into the Windows "Control Panel" and select "Sound" to make sure Windows wasn't adding colorization to the motherboard installed sound module (SoundBlaster) as sound passed through the mixer, which it wasn't. Also, as a process of elimination, I went into the SoundBlaster application where I would normally get updates and ensure there wasn't anything in the program that was adding reverb. As it turned out, that's exactly where it was coming from and was marked as a default setting. I disabled any colorization/effects and restarted the computer and the problem was solved.

I don't know if this will cure your problem but if you haven't looked into it, I would suggest checking it out.

Regards,

James
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