what Khz you been recording at? 44.1?.. 96?..

Even more important, what are you mangling them down to? 192 isn't TOO bad, 128 is...useable...anything below that will definitely suck lemons. Also, are you sure you are converting them as stereo?

Check the settings in whatever you are using to convert to be sure they do the least amount of certain damage.

Kapt.Krunch

hey guys thanks for the replys, when i convert them to an mp3 it is in stereo and 320 kbps, 48,000 Hz

i use sony sound forge 8

Here may be a clue from their site:

"Make sure that the songs you are uploading are in the proper Mp3 format, no greater than 92 kbps quality.
Music files should not exceed 10 MB in size."

Perhaps they are automatically downconverting or something? Check their instructions, and you may need to do some other things to make it sound acceptable at that low a rate.

Kapt.Krunch

92?! Are you sure? I've heard stuff on there that sounds WAY better than 92. 192 maybe? I guess they must be doing some processing if it downsamples to 92 or 96 or whatever. Wow, that's awful.

I've yet to hear anything below 128 that didn't suck.
With one exception: mono.

myspace audio quality is terrible. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about the bit-rate they choose to stream at, so the only option is to try to minimise the damage it causes.

The first thing I would suggest is to try converting your master to 44.1 KHz using a high quality converter such as Voxengo's R8Brain, and then encode a 44.1KHz mp3 file (I assume you encoded mp3s at 48KHz because thats the rate you recorded at..?).

You should continue to encode at the highest bit-rate possible, despite the advice on myspace's upload page: just make sure your file is under the size limit (10MB IIRC).

Another trick you could try: download [[url=http://[/URL]="http://platinumears…"]this impulse file[/]="http://platinumears…"]this impulse file[/] (which I created by uploading a test tone, re-downloading, and de-convolving with the original). Load it into a convolution reverb plug such as SIR, then use that to inform your EQ decisions while mastering... just remember to bypass it before rendering!

Kapt.Krunch wrote:
Perhaps they are automatically downconverting or something?

Yes, exactly. So: you need to upload the highest bit-rate that will fit within their size limits to give it the best possible chance of sounding ok-ish once its been re-encoded.

I'm guessing that they also SRC to 44.1 KHz which might explain why the OP's 48KHz mp3's end up sounding so rough.

Alright Awesome guys ill try all of that

thanks alot!

It's been a couple years since I played with it but in addition to them sucking the life out of the music by downconverting I thought they also put a LPF on the audio at around 11khz.

Recently I have heard some decent sounding tracks from there so maybe they are improving their sound quality.

Oh, one more suggestion: when encoding your mp3 try using LAME rather than the Soundforge encoder; it sounds better to my ears.

There are several front-ends available for LAME, such as: http://winlame.sourceforge.net/ or Download Now

And another suggstion: change the name of the thread to something like "encoding mp3s for myspace", as this is really nothing to do with Cubase...