I cannot get the great sound in Cakewalk out to exported files

[kfcherring]

Help!....    

I am a musician in a band and I am the audio engineer.  We record on my mixing device, I then 'record' all the separate tracks into Cakewalk and apply various effects etc.  I have watched many Youtube videos from Mike at Creative sauce and get some awesome results.  The song sounds amazing in Cakewalk.  When done, I then export to Wave, Flac or MP3 and there is sound loss.  Ugh!! I cannot get the sound I hear in Cakewalk out to recordings, that I share with my band mates.  Why can I not export out the same audio quality?

Does anyone else have this issue?

I have had multiple discussions even sending my Project and exports into your amazing support (shout out to Lois… super customer support) but we have not been able to solve this issue…….

[msmcleod]

When you say sound loss, what do you mean?

A loss of volume can be due to you routing directly to the hardware outputs (rather than via a Master Bus), and/or the hardware output volume not being at unity gain.

If you're outputting directly to the hardware, add a bus and call it Master, then route the tracks that went to the hardware output to that instead.

In either case, ensure your hardware output is set to unity gain, e.g:




You can change the level of the master fader, but don't change the hardware fader levels (the ones with the red fader knobs).

The other reason for a difference in sound is that you're using your onboard audio device that has some sound enhancement processing on it.   In other words, what is coming out of Cakewalk/Sonar is being further EQ'd / processed by Windows before it reaches your ears.

Cakewalk/Sonar has no knowledge or access to this extra processing.

If this is the issue, the only thing you can do here is disable all extra Windows sound processing, and re-tweak your mix accordingly.   As this was done on the final stereo output, you may get away with simply adding an EQ to your master bus and tweaking that to match what Windows was doing.
 

[Amberwolf]

Also, if it just sounds different played back on something else other than the monitors you use for mixing, or the room you're in when mixing, that might mean you need to treat the room, or it might be the other playback speakers or spaces are just really different from your monitors.

One way to minimize this is to have several sets of monitors including cheap speakers, headphones, a tv soundbar, etc., all connected to the output of your system thru a switch.  Then change from your main monitors to test your mix now and then, to each other listening devices. 

[Amberwolf]

3 hours ago, msmcleod said:

The other reason for a difference in sound is that you're using your onboard audio device that has some sound enhancement processing on it.   In other words, what is coming out of Cakewalk/Sonar is being further EQ'd / processed by Windows before it reaches your ears.

Cakewalk/Sonar has no knowledge or access to this extra processing.

If this is the issue, the only thing you can do here is disable all extra Windows sound processing, and re-tweak your mix accordingly.   As this was done on the final stereo output, you may get away with simply adding an EQ to your master bus and tweaking that to match what Windows was doing.

There are actually ways to include this in your final output if you really want to. 

 

 Your simplest way is to record this output realtime into your mixing device, then get that file back into the computer as a  wave file you can then encode into mp3 or whatever format.  (keep in mind that depending on the encoding choices it can change the sound of your file). 

 

A more complex way to setup is to use an audio loopback driver, if you can get one to "connect" to the *output* side of your hardware's sound driver, but that's something you'd have to figure out...the previous way is easier to do. 

[Amberwolf]

5 hours ago, kfcherring said:

I have had multiple discussions even sending my Project and exports into your amazing support (shout out to Lois… super customer support) but we have not been able to solve this issue…….

So that everyone isn't wasting a bunch of time getting you to try things already done, you need to list all the things already suggested and tried, point by point, and their specific results.  

Describing your complete setup, including how the project is routed / bussed internally, will also help us help you. 

[Bass Guitar]

Screenshots of console view! With project playing. And please use proper screenshots not your cell phone. 
 

[sjoens]

And a screenshot of your Export window settings.

To insure sound consistency, you can record the entire mix real time to a stereo track from the hardware output.  The resulting audio can be dragged to desktop (wait for the process bar in the Transport module to complete).

Edited 8 hours ago by sjoens

[mettelus]

Another thing based on the OP is it sounds like you are getting variations between your system and when you share the file, but not sure. If you are using Windows audio for mixing, having any FX enabled in the Windows Mixer (edit those in Sound Control options) will totally muck up what you thought you did. This is not a DAW-based issue, but sound manipulations that Windows can have enabled (and does by default). If you are using Windows audio in any way, it is good practice to have the Windows Mixer stripped down so it is not adding anything that is truly not there.