Cockos Incorporated Forums - View Single Post - Song sounds different after exporting from Reaper?

Snoopy20111 · 03-20-2017, 05:07 PM

This is an ancient thread, but I stumbled across it again while looking for answers to the same issue. When I encountered it previously, I simply bit the bullet and did some guess and check, ie tweaking some stuff and exporting to see if it sounded decent. However, a whole two years later, I figured it out.

There are a few factors (at least, in my experience) that could potentially screw with your exported file:

1) Your sample rates and depths. Try to make this the sample rate of most of your recorded files, else you invoke the resampling kraken. Minor, but can have an effect.

2) Any funky plugins. I didn't personally run into this, but it's worth checking and is easy enough to turn off everything, export, and do a null test.

3) Panning parents. I still don't understand the background information here, but somehow if you have any parent tracks and they're not set to "dual pan," they act kinda weird.

4) Weird playback settings/effects in your playback software (iTunes, Windows Media Player, VLC, Foobar, whatever). Some have more issues than others, but these can sometimes effect playback when the file itself is identical to the playback within Reaper.

and what fixed it for me this time around...

5) Your computer may have system-wide playback effects of some kind! I imagine this is more of a thing you'd encounter with laptops, but I discovered that my Dell came with a Dell Audio management thing, which by default turned on its MaxxAudio Pro plugins. It messed with the playback in any software I used, while also passing the null test in Reaper. The reason why Reaper plays it back differently is that it forcibly takes over your audio device and won't let anything else touch it; thus Dell Audio couldn't get its grubby paws on my playback.

I'm sorry for resurrecting this thread in case this bumps it, but I needed to get some closure and put a set of answers out there for anybody who might run into this and try to Google it. To those people: hope this helped! Good luck!

03-20-2017, 05:07 PM	#21
Snoopy20111 Human being with feelings Join Date: May 2015 Location: Savannah, GA Posts: 10	The fix This is an ancient thread, but I stumbled across it again while looking for answers to the same issue. When I encountered it previously, I simply bit the bullet and did some guess and check, ie tweaking some stuff and exporting to see if it sounded decent. However, a whole two years later, I figured it out. There are a few factors (at least, in my experience) that could potentially screw with your exported file: 1) Your sample rates and depths. Try to make this the sample rate of most of your recorded files, else you invoke the resampling kraken. Minor, but can have an effect. 2) Any funky plugins. I didn't personally run into this, but it's worth checking and is easy enough to turn off everything, export, and do a null test. 3) Panning parents. I still don't understand the background information here, but somehow if you have any parent tracks and they're not set to "dual pan," they act kinda weird. 4) Weird playback settings/effects in your playback software (iTunes, Windows Media Player, VLC, Foobar, whatever). Some have more issues than others, but these can sometimes effect playback when the file itself is identical to the playback within Reaper. and what fixed it for me this time around... 5) Your computer may have system-wide playback effects of some kind! I imagine this is more of a thing you'd encounter with laptops, but I discovered that my Dell came with a Dell Audio management thing, which by default turned on its MaxxAudio Pro plugins. It messed with the playback in any software I used, while also passing the null test in Reaper. The reason why Reaper plays it back differently is that it forcibly takes over your audio device and won't let anything else touch it; thus Dell Audio couldn't get its grubby paws on my playback. I'm sorry for resurrecting this thread in case this bumps it, but I needed to get some closure and put a set of answers out there for anybody who might run into this and try to Google it. To those people: hope this helped! Good luck!