Bad quality

Hi there,

Hmm, does the track sound bad on any device you're testing this with, or only on specific devices? (We're currently investigating an issue with the audio quality on mobile devices.

Other than that, iZotope actually has an interesting article on that exact topic. - maybe an interesting read?

There seem to be a lot of complaints recently about playback quality. In my case the general quality seems to be OK, but there are clicks at random intervals, especially in some quiet passages, which are definitely not there in the file I uploaded. I've tried uploading in four different formats (48 kHz AIF, 44.1 kHz AIF, high quality AAC and high quality MP3), and they all have the same problem, though the clicks are in different places (some are the same, but not all).

This is particularly disappointing because I was replacing a previous version after a very subtly different remix. I'd prefer to have left it as it was, but I guess it's too late now.

I know when you upload a song on anything it looses quality. That's expected. But something is wrong here.

I always upload my tracks privately and listen to it every way possible before the final post, but just recently (early February) I've noticed disgustingly low bitrate distorted quality garbage that sounds nothing like how it really sounds ONLY THROUGH MY PHONE SPEAKER IN THE SOUNDCLOUD APP. When I put on headphones or plug my phone in to any speaker or use my laptop it sounds great. When I use the alternative soundcloud player it sounds great through my phone speakers???? It has to be something to do with the main app connecting to the phone audio driver.

I can't upload anything because of how bad it sounds. It sounds great with headphones but I am a producer/engineer and I need it to sound good in every way possible.

I have a galaxy s7

PLEASE FIX IT SOUNDCLOUD ITS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE

Does anyone know whether you have to upgrade to "Pro" to get the higher bitrates?

No, every user has the same problem on their phones. One of the official answers was that it's a phase cancellation issue when playing on phones (the devs did not fix it though but just provided a link to a tutorial for making the changes to files via audacity, like it's the producers fault that their app is messing things up). The apk from 30th of May works reportedly fine.

It is funny that Soundcloud staff are marking every thread reporting the problem as solved.

This is ridiculous. First upload and the high frequencies are all muffled and sound extremely compressed. Soundcloud need to fix this.

I have the same problem The quality was good but since a few weeks it sucks on every song i uploaded. But why?

Its funny how none of the big names have issues tho.
I never use to have any problems at all and I've been on here for years.
Its just my most recent upload.
Still no resolution from me

I'm pretty shocked. I've just started using soundcloud and the sound is really poor. It's very audible in high frequencies (like with this track: https://soundcloud.com/lydthomas/a-time-lapse-tv-background-music). It's very clear that there's modulation going on in the harmonics and it's not nice. What do you compress your mp3's into? it must be lower than 128... And thanks for a nice platform aside from this - it's just that I'm afraid you'll lose your users if this is the (new?) standard?

Best, T

Kinda having the same issue. Just 2 specific songs which are sounding absolutely terrible on my phone, completely different than how it should be. And all my songs were masterized and sound good in other devices and headphones I've tried

I'm getting the same bad results, massive amount of artifacts in the higher frequencies. I uploaded the same file to Alonetone and the audio quality difference is night and day. I reloaded my song from a 24bit 48K file and had the same results so it must be in Soundcloud's streaming resolution vs. any conversion issues.

Same problem , im switching to Youtube. I've tried everything

You're most likey going to have to do a seperate master for soundcloud. For a soundcloud master, I would just upload a wav file, listen to how it sounds, make timestamp notes of where you hear any noticeable artifacts. Then upload the same wav file in pure mono, and listen to whether or not those artifacts are still there. If not, great... you now know what you need to do. Go back to your project file, find the bus or the mix insert and narrow the stereo imaging of the problem area. For any other issues that aren't solved from that, consider a few things: what synths are you using? I remember uploading a track that I made using nothing but 3x osc, and I felt super proud of it at the time, but as soon as I uploaded it to soundcloud, I realized that the synth itself is nothing but aliasing. It supposedly removes aliasing upon rendering, but it certainly wasn't my case. So check whether or not you are using quality synths or samplers for the problem areas that you hear in your track. Try to reconstruct the sounds in another synth. The last thing I'd suggest is whether or not the problem area lies in short tails, or the troughs of your song in the more dynamic parts of your mix. Sometimes when you have a loud kick, for instance, go off by itself, you'll hear artifacts near the attack and the tail of that kick. Try to experiment adding some sound design layers over that kick or even reducing the volume of the kick. You can also try rolling off some highend if you're getting really desperate.