Bouncing to CD hissing

[comp15]

I bounced a song to cd. The file plays just fine in the computer. However, when I played the CD in a car stereo, there is a hissing sound. I then tried the same cd in a dvd player, and I hear the hissing sound there, as well. I've not heard this sound before when I've burnt CDs using other software. Has anyone experienced this?

The bounce setting I used is Core Audio - Wave format. Nothing special. Is that the correct format to use when bouncing to disk?

[Shooshie]

You are most likely experiencing the difference in high-end response in your various playback machines. The car is typically a noisy place where you have to turn up the volume a lot in order to hear anything that competes with the car's motor, the tires, wind and road noise. I have often found myself wanting to remix CDs for the car with a lot of high-end cut out. Get it loud enough to hear, and you will find flutes and other high-end sounds to be ear piercing.

In your case the noise is hiss, which is high-frequency. Go back to your original tracks and see if you can find one particular track (or group) which hisses when you turn up the volume. You may need to apply some noise-reduction software to either those tracks or to the master track. Waves' Z-Noise is one option. Waves has several other NR plugins that may be cheaper, but they aren't as diverse. I have them all, but I only reach for Z-Noise. There is also Izotope RX, which in its full version is probably as good as any noise reduction software ever gets. But you will find that NR software tends to be pricy. VERY pricy. If you can isolate a particular frequency that is offending, then heck with the NR software. Just notch an EQ at that frequency range, but be careful that it's not hurting your sound.

In any case, listen carefully to what you're hearing on various playback devices. It takes a considerable amount of effort and learning to figure out how to mix for the "average" device. Factor in the settings that vary widely on every single system out there, and you quickly surmise that the "perfect CD" cannot be printed. Yet... all those commercial CDs out there sound good on everything you play them on. Why is that? One reason is because they compress the holy living crap out of them. Every frequency is about the same volume as every other frequency, and they all blend into a certain blob of sound which is recognizable as its genre: rock, acid rock, diva pop, folk, classical, samba, rap, etc. It is the talent of the mixing engineer to achieve that blob of sound, and it's up to the mastering engineer to attempt to make it work on every kind of device.

Choose the devices you think are most representative of what your music will be played on, and mix for those devices. Most people with studios have 2 or three sets of monitors. One is the All-Out system that is the dream sound you wish everyone could hear. Genetics, Equator Audio Research [EAR], Adam, and other fine speakers are usually sitting in those spots. Then there's the "flat" system, once occupied by Yamaha NS10s. I don't know what people use now. I still have the Yamahas for that, but I tend to use EAR D5 for the same purpose, which is to achieve an "everyman's mix." Then there are the boombox speakers. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that ought to be. When you're mixing, you switch back and forth between them and see if you can get the response as close as possible on all systems.

The first thing most recording artists and even engineers do when they get a listenable product is to take it to the car and hear it on those speakers. The result is nearly always disappointing. Back to the mixing board, filter out the offending frequencies, boost the missing ones, and try again. It's a process.

Since you don't hear the hiss on your computer speakers, you might take a look at them and consider upgrading them. Computer speakers are notoriously poor-quality, dropping off quickly on the high and low ends, giving you a loud smattering of mids and low-highs. You will never be able to mix well on such speakers, though an experienced engineer might pull it off, knowing what to expect and how to correct for it before even hearing it on an accurate system. Anyway, my personal recommendation for desktop near-field speakers are the Equator Audio Research [EAR] D5's, if you can get them. They are not always available from EAR. They are not computer speakers; that is, I don't think they plug into USB or anything like that. (you never know; they may have added that as a feature) But they have XLR and ¼" jacks, and are self-powered.

Best of luck.

Shooshie

[mikehalloran]

Supposed to be in by the end of the month

http://www.equatoraudio.com/ProductDeta ... uctCode=D5

I bought my D5s after realizing that I could understand lyrics being sung through my car speakers but not my monitors.

[stubbsonic]

At first I was wondering if there was something like a "pre-emphasis" thing happening. But that should not be part of the DP export thing. The fact that you are not hearing the hissing when playing back from your computer COULD be the result of some EQ things on your other playback systems, but I would think you would have heard something like this with other work.

I wonder if there is something with bouncing from 24-bit down to 16 without dithering, and some low-level signals causing some aliasing. Or perhaps some dithering noise being audible? You could try using the AIF format at 16 bit and see if you get a different result.

[Tritonemusic]

Check your sample rate settings. If the clock isn't properly configured, it can cause hissing.

[philbrown]

I bounced a song to cd. The file plays just fine in the computer. However, when I played the CD in a car stereo, there is a hissing sound. I then tried the same cd in a dvd player, and I hear the hissing sound there, as well. I've not heard this sound before when I've burnt CDs using other software. Has anyone experienced this?

The bounce setting I used is Core Audio - Wave format. Nothing special. Is that the correct format to use when bouncing to disk?

Are you literally bouncing to a physical CD or are you bouncing to disk (i.e. a file)? WAV format is not standard for a Red Book CD so we're missing some part of the process here it seems or maybe it's just terminology. If you would explain your exact steps in detail it might lead to an answer. For example, when you say "The file plays just fine in the computer." do you mean a file on your hard drive or the physical CD? Specifically how was the physical CD created?