This wedding DJ was embarrassed with sound....thoughts?

[stlstudent]

I'm just your typical weekend wedding DJ (not my day job) and honestly love using MusicBee as my player. I know many will say I need to be using Serato or something similar but my market has no need for beatmaching, sound effects, etc...  So I'll stick with MusicBee for now

Have used it for a couple of years with no problems. But my last two weddings I've been frustrated that some songs seemed to be really screwed up. I do not know the exact word for it but once the volume gets turned up to even a low volume, the sound becomes very distorted. Almost like your trying to push through much through tiny computer speakers. A lot of raspy sound and white noise. I'm able to rule out the file because other times they play fine. It also is not my speakers because like I said, sometimes the songs play fine.

If I had to guess it is some type of setting maybe that I have wrong and its not reading/playing it correctly through MusicBee. But what is frustrating is that I believe I have kept the primary settings the same since I've been using it. I use WASAPI run through a USB out/in. I increase the buffer rate to 9.2 and usually resample to 48K (although I turned it off this time). Crossfade for 5 seconds, etc.... the other basic things a DJ may do.

I originally thought it was low quality (cheap) files that were doing it as I downloaded a piano instrumental CD for background music that did it. But then it did it on the Bride's walk in song (current country song) as well during a popular dance number that is newer.

Has me confused and is quite embarrassing as because I have to keep the volume at a minimum because the louder it goes the worse it gets. Its hard to pick up when I just play it through my laptop but when I put it through my system for a crowd its very noticeable.

Any thoughts or any other info you may need? Much appreciated!

[stlstudent]

While I was sitting here typing I had a thought. A year or so ago I began getting more comfortable behind the booth so would walk away to talk to people, get a drink etc... and I hated how different songs had different volumes so I begin using the 'Analyze Volume' feature to set them all at the same volume/gain through Music Bee. Love that feature!

But my OCD has me doing it everytime I have a gig and add new music. But just to be safe, I just rerun the program on all the songs on the playlist. Some some songs may have gone through this process many times. Do you think writing 'gain tags' over and over on a file would hurt it? Does it just write the 'gain tags' on the file in MusicBee or is it actually adding it to the 'hard file' on the computer? Maybe I've written and overwritten them too many times. Just a thought...

[frankz]

First, I know you said it wasn't the case this time, but resampling to 44.1 to 48k and then crossfading is a no-go, because crossfading resamples to 44.1.  Not sure why you're resampling to 48k anyway over WASAPI.  Just let the files play at their sample rate.  Unless you're ripping from DVD-Audio or downloading HiRes FLACs or something, your music is going to be native 44.1.  You're not going to make it sound better by resampling it, only worse.  It's not like you can add frequencies that aren't there in the source, it's not possible. Any processing done to an audio file is just going to make it sound worse.

Analyzing volume just writes a tag like any other tag into the file.  It doesn't affect the source audio in any way.  But it does rewrite the file to write the tag into, just like any other tagging you do, which could, in theory, corrupt the file I guess.  But it wouldn't screw up the actual audio, it would just probably make the file unplayable.  It's entirely unnecessary to rescan for volume once a file has been scanned.  It's not like the volume of the song is going to up and decide to change one day.  It is what it is.  You can show track gain in your panel if you're worried that a song will slip through unscanned.  The scanned ones have a value. The unscanned are blank.

My guess would be you've got some kind of DSP plugin, EQ or Preamp going on that's making the sound clip (go above 0db).  Turn all of that off (Edit->Edit Preferences->Player->Equalizer && DSP). 

[stlstudent]

First, I know you said it wasn't the case this time, but resampling to 44.1 to 48k and then crossfading is a no-go, because crossfading resamples to 44.1.  Not sure why you're resampling to 48k anyway over WASAPI.  Just let the files play at their sample rate.  Unless you're ripping from DVD-Audio or downloading HiRes FLACs or something, your music is going to be native 44.1.  You're not going to make it sound better by resampling it, only worse.  It's not like you can add frequencies that aren't there in the source, it's not possible. Any processing done to an audio file is just going to make it sound worse.

Analyzing volume just writes a tag like any other tag into the file.  It doesn't affect the source audio in any way.  But it does rewrite the file to write the tag into, just like any other tagging you do, which could, in theory, corrupt the file I guess.  But it wouldn't screw up the actual audio, it would just probably make the file unplayable.  It's entirely unnecessary to rescan for volume once a file has been scanned.  It's not like the volume of the song is going to up and decide to change one day.  It is what it is.  You can show track gain in your panel if you're worried that a song will slip through unscanned.  The scanned ones have a value. The unscanned are blank.

My guess would be you've got some kind of DSP plugin, EQ or Preamp going on that's making the sound clip (go above 0db).  Turn all of that off (Edit->Edit Preferences->Player->Equalizer && DSP). 

thank you for the response! Thanks for the clarification on the resampling, I'm still learning the 'audio engineering' side of it and just was dumb and figured resampling it up would help but your response makes sense. So that was off this time and will continue to stay off.

I checked and I did not have any DSP's running but I did have EQ and preamp turned on. Preamp was at 2 and EQ was in a normal/standard curve. Not sure if that is what was causing it or not because it never show's it clipping coming into my mixer or going out but I went ahead and turned it off. I'm assuming by not using the EQ/PreAmp feature that it just flatlines the EQ across the board?

Played around the tags a bit as its not something I dug much into it. Looks like many of my files were missing tags but they were mainly things like year/album/etc... Wasn't able to see which had replay gain tags on them but when I highlight all my files and click on 'Analyze Volume' some of the tracks are already checked and some are not. Am I assuming correctly that the ones already checked have gain tags and those that don't have check marks have no gain tag?

Is there anyway to remove ALL the volume/gain tags on ALL my files at the same time and start from new? I can either leave them off and just adjust volume/gain live from my mixer or I can just rescan them all through MusicBee adding those gain tags as a group but only do it once this time and just do it individually when I add new music. Thoughts? 

[Freddy Barker]

Is there anyway to remove ALL the volume/gain tags on ALL my files at the same time and start from new? I can either leave them off and just adjust volume/gain live from my mixer or I can just rescan them all through MusicBee adding those gain tags as a group but only do it once this time and just do it individually when I add new music. Thoughts?

To Analyse:
Highlight a selection of tracks, then Main menu / Tools / Analyse Volume (or Ctrl+Shift+V).
Will also overwrite previous value.
Works very well with MusicBee, much better than 'eye-toons' 'Sound-check'.
Don't do 10,000 tracks all at once as it could take all night!

To Restore:
Highlight a selection of tracks, then Main menu / Tools / Restore Original Volume.

P.S. Get MB remote on your mobile / cellphone and DJ from the bar  
Freddy

[frankz]

I checked and I did not have any DSP's running but I did have EQ and preamp turned on. Preamp was at 2 and EQ was in a normal/standard curve. Not sure if that is what was causing it or not because it never show's it clipping coming into my mixer or going out but I went ahead and turned it off. I'm assuming by not using the EQ/PreAmp feature that it just flatlines the EQ across the board?

Based on your description, it would be a miracle if you weren't clipping with a pre-amp of +2 set and what I'm guessing was a "standard curve" going only above 0, bringing the input you'd already raised overall by 2db up by several additional decibels per frequency range.  

If you're going to EQ (Top Tip: You shouldn't - mastering engineers mostly know what they're doing) the highest level should be 0 with the preamp to compensate or, at worst, compensate anything going above 0 with something of equal sonic intensity going the same level below 0.

It wouldn't show the clipping at your mixer because your sound output was set appropriately, but you were clipping the input - what you were sending to WASAPI.  You could output -3db all day long, but if what you're inputting is clipped it's going to be clipped.

Played around the tags a bit as its not something I dug much into it. Looks like many of my files were missing tags but they were mainly things like year/album/etc... Wasn't able to see which had replay gain tags on them but when I highlight all my files and click on 'Analyze Volume' some of the tracks are already checked and some are not. Am I assuming correctly that the ones already checked have gain tags and those that don't have check marks have no gain tag?

That's backwards.  The check mark is a selector.  The checked ones are selected to be scanned because they're missing either album gain, track gain or both.  Unchecked have both so they're not selected be scanned.

As I said in my original reply, the easiest way to see what's scanned and what's not is to display the "Track Gain" field in Tracks view on your Music tab on the main panel.  For individual files, you can right click->Edit and view the "Properties" tab.

http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Analyze_Volume

Is there anyway to remove ALL the volume/gain tags on ALL my files at the same time and start from new? I can either leave them off and just adjust volume/gain live from my mixer or I can just rescan them all through MusicBee adding those gain tags as a group but only do it once this time and just do it individually when I add new music. Thoughts?  

The quickest way is to select all of your files and then go to Tools->Restore Original Volume.  This will erase all ReplayGain tags.

http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Analyze_Volume

[stlstudent]

Thanks for all the quick information and help. I've made the changes as suggested and will do a trial run later this evening. I guess what surprised me the most is that I do not think I have changed any of the settings (resample, pre amp, EQ, etc..)  for my last six or so weddings but it only did it on a few songs during my last two weddings. Maybe I just changed something inadvertently

Thanks again, and fingers crossed.

[frankz]

You're welcome.

My guess as to why would be that those tracks were not volume analyzed so they were peaking right at 0.  Add in the 2db pre-amp and then add in the EQ to that, and static city.

That's a total guess, though. 

Good luck.  I'd be interested to hear how it all turns out.

[stlstudent]

Sorry it took a bit to check back in but all went smoothly for my last weeding. I just went ahead and removed all replay gain tags (Restore Volume). I also turned off the equalizer all together so there would be no pre-amp. Did not have any static or clipping on my music but did have to stay close to the DJ booth as the volumes did change a bit and I had to adjust on the fly. But my biggest headache (the static) was not there.

Next wedding this coming Saturday and I'm going to leave the same but add replay gain tags to my tracks to normalize the volumes and fingers crossed

Thanks again