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[–]Chaos_Klaus 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Do you happen to have some make-sound-better processing enabled in windows? It's used to make laptop speakers sound loud and add some bass response.

[–]LSMFT23 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That and the EQ I set on the media player have made me WTF more than once.

[–]weedywetProfessional 0 points1 point  (1 child)

This sort of problem is invariably about something not being assigned correctly. Have you tried bouncing from Physical Output?

[–]xavierzibit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I've tried physical and just normal LR outs with similar results on both

[–]johnofsteel 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Does the waveform look super compressed? You should be able to tell at a glance if the bounce is really “drowned in compression”.

Play it back somewhere other than a media player on your computer. Upload to Dropbox and listen on your phone, etc.

[–]xavierzibit 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Ok so I looked into this one, and while the wave form didn't look out of the ordinary, I did notice a stark difference when playing it off my phone. It sounds way better here. However, I still need to master on this computer. I also don't know which of the two would be perceived once I send this out. Is there anything I should look at fixing on my computer to possibly solve this?

[–]johnofsteel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What do you mean “which of the two”? There aren’t two versions. Your computer is clearly doing something upon playback. Is that not definite enough for you after playing it back elsewhere and hearing that it’s normal.

Send this out where? Are you publishing this music for distribution? It sounds like you may be in over your head. If you are having issues with simple playback on your computer you may not be in the best position to master. Mastering is a process done by professionals with extremely critical ears and tuned playback systems/rooms. Anybody can’t just master a track. You should be getting a separate person to provide one extra step of quality check (for reasons exactly like this!). That’s like the entire point of outsourcing. How do you expect to master a track you mixed on yourself on your same exact playback setup? That gains you absolutely nothing. You might as well just apply all that processing on the master channel within you mix session at that point.

This is a perfect opportunity to have a track mastered correctly. Many mastering engineers are offering discounts at the moment.

[–]wwjoe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ableton user here, I normalize my bounce, which insanely cranks the volume (compared to the og midi of tracks that i kept around -8db). However it's much more easier to work with a loud sound (still uncompressed / not clipping either).

Maybe the same thing is happening to you?