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 Forum index » Instruments and Equipment » Cubase
recordings are being cut off
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laura woodswalker



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:08 am    Post subject: recordings are being cut off Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I have recorded a few audio tracks in Cubase LE and exported them as "audio mixdown" wav. files.

Well then i have converted them to mp3 with one of those freeby wav conversion utilities.

When I open them in winamp or windows media, most of the song is cut off!

I downloaded a new mp3 conversion utility but that didn't help.

Could the problem be something with Cubase?

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softfin



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Make sure that the mixdown wav is ok. If it is, the problem is probably in the mp3 encoder you use. If the wav is also being cut off too early, make sure you have chosen the whole song from the "time strip" above the tracks.

I use Cubase sx myself and usually mixdown directly to mp3/ogg vorbis. I don't know for sure about the LE version, but the SX does have a good (fraunhofer) mp3 encoder which I assume to be a bit better than most freeware encoders. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Hope this helps.
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Kassen
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I think LAME is supposed to be very good, not sure if any other free encoders exist.
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williamsharkey



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Many programs have different export modes like:

-Export Everything

-Export Selection

Perhaps you only exported a selection of the song, which may be highlighted, or have loop markers surrounding it.
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laura woodswalker



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

softfin wrote:
Make sure that the mixdown wav is ok. If it is, the problem is probably in the mp3 encoder you use. If the wav is also being cut off too early, make sure you have chosen the whole song from the "time strip" above the tracks.

Hope this helps.
>I think LAME is supposed to be very good, not sure if any other free encoders exist.


Thanks for your help. I checked the time strip, re-exported, tried several times. LAME is the original encoder I used. Then I downloaded something called Koyote soft.

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blue hell
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:
I think LAME is supposed to be very good, not sure if any other free encoders exist.


All free mp3 tools I saw are graphical wrappers around the (non graphical) LAME encoder (sometimes with a buy option for the Fraunhofer encoder). FWIW, I never had problems with LAME cutting stuff off.

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laura woodswalker



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Blue Hell wrote:
Kassen wrote:
I think LAME is supposed to be very good, not sure if any other free encoders exist.


All free mp3 tools I saw are graphical wrappers around the (non graphical) LAME encoder (sometimes with a buy option for the Fraunhofer encoder). FWIW, I never had problems with LAME cutting stuff off.


Yeah, it worked great a few months ago when I uploaded my first crappy songs. Well now you guys are spared the torture of having to hear any more Confused

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blue hell
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

laura woodswalker wrote:
Well now you guys are spared the torture of having to hear any more Confused


Crying or Very sad torture me, please Shocked

You didn't directly say so I think .. the wav mixdown is OK?

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also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
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Kassen
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Blue Hell wrote:

All free mp3 tools I saw are graphical wrappers around the (non graphical) LAME encoder (sometimes with a buy option for the Fraunhofer encoder). FWIW, I never had problems with LAME cutting stuff off.


No, it shouldn't. If anything MP3 encoding will add time. Because of the block-processing inherent in that kind of re-synthesis-based encoding the end of the file will likely be padded with zeros. This can lead to gaps in playlists (no big deal most of the time). I agree with the point above that the issue is likely one of exporting a selection.

I'm not sure about the current situation but some time ago LAME overtook Fraunhofer in listening tests so if we take that, the politics and our wallet into account I'd go with LAME unless something very persuasive pops up (such as being lazy and going with SoundForge's default whatever it is....).

I always inspect the final wav itself in my wave editor, encode, re-open the encoded file and inspect that again. I could imagine some theoretical advantages in soundquality in "rendering directly to MP3" because maybe if the implementation is clever you'll get one less set of rounding errors but if we consider the nature of MP3 I think that's rather academic and I'd rather do it manually, perhaps with a few tries to optimise the encoding settings.

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softfin



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I remember reading a comparison of the currently popular mp3 encoders, or should I say codecs...Anyway, I found the link to that comparison: http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/1q00/mp3/mp3-1.html

Although there seems to be differences in quality between the different encoders at lower bitrates, they all produce fine quality at higher bitrates.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Interesting. Thanks.
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laura woodswalker



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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:14 am    Post subject: Re: recordings are being cut off Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

laura woodswalker wrote:
I have recorded a few audio tracks in Cubase LE and exported them as "audio mixdown" wav. files.

Well then i have converted them to mp3 with one of those freeby wav conversion utilities.

When I open them in winamp or windows media, most of the song is cut off!

I downloaded a new mp3 conversion utility but that didn't help.

Could the problem be something with Cubase?


I think I figured it out!
The export menu was set to "bit Depth: 8 whateveritis.". My Cubase for Idiots book says to set it for 16.

So maybe the export was cutting off HALF the recording! Laughing

Does that make sense?

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blue hell
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Right, yes that could make sense.

You may have saved the wav in raw format ... which means that the info about how the wav is constructed (like mono or stereo, 8 or 16 bits, 22kHz or 96, or 44.1 or whatever) is not contained in the wav itself meaning the mp3 coder just has to guess about it.

The standard guess would probably be 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo, and if the wav was not that it could give all kinds of funny results, like what you had, or terrible distortion, or wrong speed and pitch and what not.

Did you see the "raw" word somewhere? Try to avoid it !

Go for at least 16 bits

Go for 44.1 kHz, or 88.2

Use stereo

Unless you have good reasons to do it different of course Very Happy

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laura woodswalker



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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Blue Hell wrote:
Right, yes that could make sense.

You may have saved the wav in raw format ... which means that the info about how the wav is constructed (like mono or stereo, 8 or 16 bits, 22kHz or 96, or 44.1 or whatever) is not contained in the wav itself meaning the mp3 coder just has to guess about it.

The standard guess would probably be 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo, and if the wav was not that it could give all kinds of funny results, like what you had, or terrible distortion, or wrong speed and pitch and what not.

Did you see the "raw" word somewhere? Try to avoid it !

Go for at least 16 bits

Go for 44.1 kHz, or 88.2

Use stereo

Unless you have good reasons to do it different of course Very Happy


The export dialog box doesn't give me many options. I think it is .wav and a bunch of other things like AiFF and things I never heard of. It has a few choices for bit depth and for some reason it defaulted to 8. beats hell outta me!

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Low Note



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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

are you exporting with your locators set to the beginning and end of the track?

Hit ctrl+A and Then L (i think that's the shortcut you want. It might be P. My cubase machine is in a different county at the moment).

Make sure that cubase knows how much you want to export.
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laura woodswalker



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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 10:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Low Note wrote:
are you exporting with your locators set to the beginning and end of the track?

Hit ctrl+A and Then L (i think that's the shortcut you want. It might be P. My cubase machine is in a different county at the moment).

Make sure that cubase knows how much you want to export.


Since I put the bit depth at 16, the problem seems to be resolved. I guess since there was half as many bits, cubase only exported HALf of it!

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