Turtlerock Forum

Hi, have any of you myspacers worked out what is the best setting to render an mp3 at so you can upload it to myspace and have it sound the least sh!tty possible?
Thanks.

I mixdown in Logic so for mp3's choose a bitrate of 128 kbps. That lets me put longer songs on an i think it sounds ok enough to give listeners a fair idea of the recording quality.

Chinagraf wrote:Hi, have any of you myspacers worked out what is the best setting to render an mp3 at so you can upload it to myspace and have it sound the least sh!tty possible?
Thanks.

128, but you can embed better players on the site, some are much better than the standard myspace 1.

for starters, its good to render the best mp3 possible.

lately i've been rendering 128s out of Reaper V3, using the latest LAME encoder (3.98) i think.

probably the best mp3's i've ever heard.

then, do what heath said...find the best player possible...im still on the hunt for it....im supposed to check out an artist heath worked with thats supposed to have a really good mp3 player on his myspace...

Yeah had, seems they changed it for some reason. Can you still embed other players? Should be able to. Though I'm really not sure as I hav'nt done it in ages.

i havent cracked this walnut , let me know when somebody figures it out

another thing, if myspace allows u to upload ABR mp3s, (average bitrate) you might be able to squeeze more quality out of the complex sections....


i dunno about the above yet though

what shits me about myspace is when guys like angus stone , does nothing special to his mp3 , which they made of the the album i mastered ( which sounds awesome btw) , and you go to the myspace page the mp3 just sounds F@#$ing great
http://au.myspace.com/ladyofthesunshine

then i master another " acoustic band" which also has a fantastic sounding mastered CD and they "complain about the quality of the myspace mp3 playback provides"

i just cannot figure it - too many variables

Yeah, thing I'm trying to work out is if I should encode on my end at 128 or do 320 and let myspace downgrade it.
I'll have to try a few thing if I ever get a free minute.

One thing i always do is make sure i'm two dB below max when bouncing an mp3 for myspace. Apparently the myspace player handles the audio better if it has a few db under max.

like all gearslutz jibber jabber, not sure how good all of it is...

however, check out this thread, which has info on 3rd party players.

Apparently the problem is myspace takes the mp3s u give it (which apparently can be any size, as long as they are under 10mb) then downsamples to 22khz files , which have a brickwall LPF at 11khz.


There are some solutions on that GS thread, i have not tried them yet, but will proceed:

1. render the highest quality mp3 myspace will allow u to upload, with the 11khz already filtered out, and re eq to compensate for that high end loss.

2. What chris H said, try bouncing with 1-2 db before clipping.

3. use a 3rd party player, which doesnt do the crappy 22khz resampling...

4. use spaceodessey VST plugin which u can strap onto ur master buss which simulates the myspace player shittyness, and re-eq and limit to make it sound better...

there is more on the actual thread, which is linked below:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much- ... stion.html




best of luck....you posted this question at a good time, coz im trying to work this shit out too.... Ricks master of our album i'm very happy with, but it seems to be way too dynamic for mysapce, and sounds like ass....

I agree it is weird that similar music at similar levels with a similar freq content can sound totally different quality wise on myspace.Makes no sense to me.

Maybe send Tom a message and ask him. :) For special favours he may make certain artists tracks sound better. :wink: :wink:

jkhuri44 wrote:best of luck....you posted this question at a good time, coz im trying to work this shit out too.... Ricks master of our album i'm very happy with, but it seems to be way too dynamic for mysapce, and sounds like ass....

It's not that bad.

Best way is just to embed a different player, we did and it sounded 100x better. Just can't remember how or which one.

My mate Tim who did it is pretty good at html shite.

compared to other stuff i hear, yeah its bad !! dont make me start using 4 letter words now!!

jkhuri44 wrote:compared to other stuff i hear, yeah its bad !! dont make me start using 4 letter words now!!

Yeah well it makes me wonder why a hiphop track I mastered sounds brighter clearer and louder than Angus Stones and Jamils record. Simply because that was one track which truly had some really shitty gear used on it.

All the drum samples and other samples were played through a behinger 8 channel mixer into a crappy stereo and recorded back into a no brand mic. Even though I mixed this concoction of sounds through some nice gear the actual recording was rotten.

Anyway I can't work it out. I had all 3 tracks open in myspace simultaneously on different pages using the pause button and flicking between pages.

Not trying to make anything of it, it's just weird that the crappiest done stuff sounded better on myspace than stuff done with great gear and attention to detail. I'm stumped too.

heathen wrote:I agree it is weird that similar music at similar levels with a similar freq content can sound totally different quality wise on myspace.Makes no sense to me.

Maybe send Tom a message and ask him. :) For special favours he may make certain artists tracks sound better. :wink: :wink:

Tom's not home these days... best to talk to Rupert......or maybe have a chat to his mum about it at her next philanthropic gig:)

Another thing to add also is one artist who's track I mastered (he wanted it loud!) anyway I did a separate master for myspace with hp/lp filters and a good new fashioned smashing with I think timeworks mastering comp. Anyway it sounded good on myspace, so said artist uploads it to JJJ unearthed, Caz Tran decided to play it and it sounded like shit, too loud by about 2 db or more. Intro sounded splendid but as soon as that first meaty kick hit it was all over :( .

My point being that firstly would it even have been played on radio without standing out in loudness and impact terms.

2nd point, which is more important, sounding great on radio for maybe half a million listeners or sounding great on myspace for a few thousand. Doing several different masters is going to cost a fortune so I think you're best off sounding great on radio.

Anyway I'd be surprised Jamil if your record did'nt sound great on radio, same with Angus Stone. The masters I've done which sound best on radio are the ones with more conservative levels which are dynamically intact.

Myspace I feel is the opposite.