Bounce/Mix/Freeze degrades audio quality

[lpmike75]

Greetings -

Long time Cakewalk/Sonar user here with a  problem I have not run in to and am hoping someone can offer some insight.

I have a noisy dialog track which was stretch to slow down the dialog.  The audio playback in real time sounds great however, when I bounce, freeze or export the track the audio quality is noticeably degraded.  I am using Elastique Pro for my online render quality, although I tried other combinations with no noticeable results.

I am also using the Cakewalk time/pitch plug-in in addition to the stretched audio.  This might add to the problem, but even when disabled, the stretched audio just does not sound clean when bounced, frozen or exported.

On a side note, checking the 64 bit engine makes the export silent, another issue I have never run in to. 

Sample rate 44.1
Bit depth 24

Bouncing the track and re-inserting in to the project confirms that the bounced/exported track is of less quality than the original.
The track is also noisy with hiss and background noise, so I am not sure if this ultimately has an affect on the render algorithm. 

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

-Mike

Edited January 27, 2022 by lpmike75

[GreenLight]

Hm, so it's the stretching that degrades the audio quality? Do you have access to any version of Melodyne, to see if stretching with that would give better results?

Also another random thought: if the realtime playback sounds good, maybe you could try recording that (in realtime) to another track (maybe using a Patch Point)? Kind of tricking the system...

And oh, welcome to the forum!

Edited January 27, 2022 by GreenLight

[John Vere]

Thinking about your challenge my approx would be to clean it up first using Sound Forge or any Wave editor that has the tools to do clean up. Then save that version. Then perform the next step and save that. Then perform the last step. You can use a wave editor for all your steps but whatever works best is what I do. That’s why I have 4 Wave editors!  Each one seems to do certain things better. 
Wave Lab- $100

Sound Forge free ( comes with Sony turntables or Movie software) 

Audacity - free 

Gold Wave- free to try full version or $60 lifetime license 

[Will.]

19 hours ago, lpmike75 said:

Greetings -

Long time Cakewalk/Sonar user here with a  problem I have not run in to and am hoping someone can offer some insight.

I have a noisy dialog track which was stretch to slow down the dialog.  The audio playback in real time sounds great however, when I bounce, freeze or export the track the audio quality is noticeably degraded.  I am using Elastique Pro for my online render quality, although I tried other combinations with no noticeable results.

I am also using the Cakewalk time/pitch plug-in in addition to the stretched audio.  This might add to the problem, but even when disabled, the stretched audio just does not sound clean when bounced, frozen or exported.

On a side note, checking the 64 bit engine makes the export silent, another issue I have never run in to. 

Sample rate 44.1
Bit depth 24

Bouncing the track and re-inserting in to the project confirms that the bounced/exported track is of less quality than the original.
The track is also noisy with hiss and background noise, so I am not sure if this ultimately has an affect on the render algorithm. 

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

-Mike

Quick test: Solo that track, bypass all teh effects and render it with the Stretch on. If it works without any problem, There's a plugin effect that is causing the issue and my guess  . . . It's probably set to Upsample on Render. 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Will_Kaydo

[lpmike75]

23 hours ago, Will_Kaydo said:

Quick test: Solo that track, bypass all teh effects and render it with the Stretch on. If it works without any problem, There's a plugin effect that is causing the issue and my guess  . . . It's probably set to Upsample on Render. 

Thanks for the suggestion Will_Kaydo, I only have the one plug in and disabling it has no effect on the final result.  The stretched audio seems to be the thing that the bounce/render/freeze does not like.

[lpmike75]

On 1/27/2022 at 5:07 AM, GreenLight said:

Hm, so it's the stretching that degrades the audio quality? Do you have access to any version of Melodyne, to see if stretching with that would give better results?

Also another random thought: if the realtime playback sounds good, maybe you could try recording that (in realtime) to another track (maybe using a Patch Point)? Kind of tricking the system...

And oh, welcome to the forum!

Hey Greenlight - thank you for the suggestion.  Melodyne did not give me the result I needed for this particular project.  
The real time playback routed to another recording setup might be my only option left.  Thanks for the ideas.

[Will.]

2 minutes ago, lpmike75 said:

Thanks for the suggestion Will_Kaydo, I only have the one plug in and disabling it has no effect on the final result.  The stretched audio seems to be the thing that the bounce/render/freeze does not like.

🤔 Strange.

I've literally done a stretch on a vocal 20 mins ago to send to the client and there was nothing wrong with it. 

[lpmike75]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:03 PM, John Vere said:

Thinking about your challenge my approx would be to clean it up first using Sound Forge or any Wave editor that has the tools to do clean up. Then save that version. Then perform the next step and save that. Then perform the last step. You can use a wave editor for all your steps but whatever works best is what I do. That’s why I have 4 Wave editors!  Each one seems to do certain things better. 
Wave Lab- $100

Sound Forge free ( comes with Sony turntables or Movie software) 

Audacity - free 

Gold Wave- free to try full version or $60 lifetime license 

Hey John - Thank you for the suggestion.  I hear you with the multiple wave editors, I have several myself.  Unfortunately this is as cleaned up as I can get it.  It is a unique job.

[Will.]

.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Will_Kaydo