sounds like you either lifted or limited the levels to hard or hot during limiting/ bouncing or... the overall combination of the multiple tracks made the overall level too hot after the bounce.

If you record your tracks all at a lower level and bounce do they still distort?

...or you could just try removing the limiter all together and see if that aleviates the problem. Try mixing at a lower volume. You don't have to hit 0 on the main bus. If this is all old news, feel free to ignore this post.

Just for poops and chuckles, try bouncing down to a stereo bus within your session.

Why is the Mackie in the chain on burn to disk?

taxman wrote: Why is the Mackie in the chain on burn to disk?

That's my question as well. Are you using Bounce to Disk? After that what are you using to burn the CD?

I removed the limiter and it was distorting but not as bad.

im using bounce to disk, the mackie is just for monitoring.

Im using nero to burn to cd, but i also copied the bounces over the network to two laptops and they were distorting as well.

You never want to see red in the master bus. You don't need to see the master bus hit 0. -6 is fine. The meters aren't fast enough to catch all the transients, so although you're only seeing -6 it's likely you're hitting a lot hotter than that at points. It would really help if you posted a clip.

Yeah, what they all said...

You're either running your tracks too hot into the master bus,
or you might have an effect or dynamic plugin that's being
driven too hard from an aux bus.

Somewhere you have a gain structure issue.

ill try and post clips, they only thing is i havent changed a thing, ive been doing it for years so something must have changed, but im not sure what lol. ill try and get a clip up.

Minor Update,

I had a mix and took it around to 3 different cars, sounds great in the cards and in my studio. but when i put the cd in my desktop computer or laptop its all distorted.

Any ideas?

im losing my mind lol

Do you use disk compression?
Anything running that shouldn't be running...in memory? Isn't this a different issue then the original "It sounds fine in the session, but bounced its ruined."? What about jiggling a few cables to better the connection? Is the burner/nero creating this fault due to some improper settings?

No disk compression, nothing in memory than what I'm running.

I took the raw wav made it an mp3 and emailed it to myself at work and it sounded fine.

The cd sounded fine in the car but not played back on a computer. I will investigate more when i get home to see what else i can find.

Bounce Distortion - it's not pro-tools or logic or cubase

Hi All,

I have absolutely torn my hair out to figure out this one.

This could be your answer:

TURN OFF "SOUND ENHANCER" IN ITUNES!!!!!!!!!!

Your files are most probably perfect, test them in Quicktime!

'Sound "Enhancer"' caused my files to sound distorted and I spent many hours disabling plugins/trying not to over-run levels into the master bus etc. etc...

Hopefully this helps out someone!

Stephen Anning

-- Check out my album 'Impressionistic Piano' on iTunes or CD Baby for some relaxed ambient piano :)

Another thought (and this happened to me once) - could it be that your CD-write drivers are doing something weird? I've experienced "distortion" (sorta - it's more like a top-end hiss/crackle) when the CD burn is a little off. The spin speed or the track alignment goes 'off' and even the drive it was burned on doesn't do so well. Some disc players will play it fine, some won't.
IIRC the one time this happened to me, a driver reinstall fixed it (or maybe it was a complete wipe and OS reinstall....ack...)