After spending weeks writing, mixing and mastering a track in Cubase Elements 10, I mixed it down and imported the mixdown into a new session to check the track. Everything sounded good. Then I listened to it back through Windows Media Player and the track had very noticeable volume drops at certain places, usually where the music is at it’s loudest (particularly guitar and kit entries).
In the mix, I made sure that none of the individual instrument or audio tracks peaked or that the master peaked at all. I only added a few inserts to some of the tracks, (E.Q, a Limiter on one track) and I set up two FX tracks as reverb buses for a choral and a Kit track.
I’ve attached screenshots of my Project Setup and Mixdown options.
I’ve tried mixing down as .wav (16/24/32 bit) and as .MP3 but all suffer the same problem. The end result is the track sounds like it has a limiter working away and yanking the volume down at some of the louder points, even though I don’t have any processing on the Master fader.
I’ve also noticed that the volume sounds louder outside of Cubase than in. I’ve played the track through WMP and Audacity and still the same problem persists. I’m using Asio drivers in Cubase but WDM drivers outside. As you can probably imagine, it’s annoying having spent weeks on a project to get to the final hurdle and find all that work is being undone for some reason.
I’m relatively new to Cubase and don’t tend to mess around with settings etc. I’m working on Windows 10. If anyone has an answer, please help!
I’ve now listened to two versions of the track (.mp3 and 32 bit .wav) through an Mp3 player and portable speaker and playback is fine, no volume drops. I’ve also listened to those tracks through my PC but over a set of wired headphones and a set of Bluetooth headphones. Again, there was no drop in volume, so I assume there’s an issue with my speakers, even though playback in Cubase via Asio is fine, playback in windows media player/Audacity is not
SO, having recently upgraded my monitors to Yamaha HS5’s, I’ve noticed that this problem is still occurring. I’m not sure if it’s an ASIO/Realtek audio driver problem or what really.
As previously stated, the exported track seems to dip in volume when played outside of Cubase (e.g. windows media player/audacity), even though there are no peaks and I have spent a couple of weeks remixing and mastering to ensure everything is OK.
The problem is difficult to explain without being able to actually listen to it, but if you’ve ever gone to the cinema to watch an action movie etc, where there’s loud music and SFX happening all at once, sometimes there’ll be a point where the whole sound seems to dip in volume and become muffled. I always assumed that this was because a limiter was working hard to stop everything from clipping. However, I don’t have any limiters/compressors or any other processing on the master and only have one limiter working on a single instrument track.
If anyone has any ideas to solve this problem, please let me know as I’m at my wits end at the moment. Thanks!
Yep. Been here. The problem is that you are not using the Control Room output BY ITSELF. You are actually using the OUTPUT section COMBINED with the CONTROL ROOM, hence the louder (and actually distorted if you don’t reduce the overall volume) playback you hear from your monitors as you mix down.
What you are hearing in your finished mixdown is just the lower output volume of the Stereo Pair WITHOUT the PARALLEL Control Room output. Remove the Stereo Output connection in your Audio Connections tab, turn on the Control Room, and install your output audio connections there.
Haha, you might be shaking your head right now but this is how Cubase is designed to run. True, you can instead remove the audio connections to the CR and mix this way, but you are missing the features of the CR. My thought here to you is don’t fight the use of the CR. With a little effort you will master it’s use and create better mixes.
However, I’m using Cubase Elements 10, so don’t have access to the control room at all, as far as I’m aware its a PRO feature only, although I’ve only been using Cubase for a year so might be wrong.
Anyway, I haven’t been using the control room so I don’t think that would be the problem. Thanks for the reply though!
Hm. You may still have some type of added bus… Does Elements have a drop down Audio Connections page? I would look there. Sorry about the misunderstanding, but it does sound like you are paralleling the output of your project somehow which would create your problem.
It has an Audio Connections option under the Studio tab. I’ve added some screenshots so you can see if there’s anything unusual there but I don’t think there is.
I’ve tried setting up group channels for my Instruments and audio and then sent them to another group channel as a Master Bus, before sending it all to stereo out but still the problem persists.
Also, I have used several instances of Play which have more than one instrument allotted to them, e.g. 1 instance has Pizzicato strings (so Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello and Bass Pizz, each sent to a different midi track associated with that instance of Play). Originally, I had all the instruments in an instance of Play set to Main L/R. Then, I tried sending each instrument in an instance of Play to a different output (Main LR, 3,4 5,6 etc.) and activated those outputs. I repeated this process for each instance of Play that contained more than one instrument. After a lot of fiddling around, I finally exported as a 32bit 44.100khz Wav and same problem occurred. Sounds fine in Cubase mix but muffled and drops in volume when listening to it outside of Cubase.
OK, you are right, there are no dual output options in C Elements.
Hm. I’ve got nothing to add here. There has to be a reason for what you are experiencing but I don’t know what it might be. Good luck with your projects, I’m thinking you will sort this.
Hi Mr Roos…
I am having the same issue here. The mixdown is substantially quieter than the Cubase playback.
Please could you detail how to rectify this?
Many thanks!
Same issue. But this is global. Periodically, Cubase changes the volume of one or more of my audio tracks DURING playback. No volume automation exists for the track. I just witnessed it with the mixer open. Suddenly, with no interaction at all, my Bass channel fader dropped by around 10db or so. This now happens on EVERY project - typically multiple audio tracks per session. The current offender does utilize audio quantizing, but I’m not certain all offenders have. This is a serious issue for me, as Cubase is now actively interfering with mixing of every project.
Hi. I’m pulling what’s left of my hair out over an issue like this in Cubase 11 pro. Everything in the mix is fine, like what I’m hearing in Cubase but as soon as you export to wav or other file format and play on a different, external device, about a quarter of the volume is gone. This is definitely an internal Cubase issue as all other tracks from various artists all play within reasonable volume settings on the external device(s). At the moment everything I’ve written will be completely unplayable on any streaming or media platform. Surely there must be a solution to this? Does Cubase ‘dampen’ the volume when it exports, and if so, can we ‘undampen’ it so that what you hear in Cubase, is what you hear externally?
There’s no dampening involved.
However, Cubase uses a different audio engine than Windows. These two enigens can have very different volume and playback settings. It’s like playing back a song on your $2000 speakers and then on your phone and then wondering why it doesn’t sound the same.
I think that is a poor analogy. A wave file should sound exactly the same no matter if it’s played in Cubase, Audacity, VLC or any other player assuming you’re using the same D/A, amp and speakers.
Windows uses its own audio engine, the volume levels are set in the K-mixer (or is it called different already?). ASIO totally circumnavigates all of this. Already at this point the levels might differ vastly.
Furthermore one might playback sound through Windows on a different device than they use in Cubase. My setup e.g. is that Cubase uses an RME interface while Windows uses the onboard Realtek soundchip most of the times. Realtek comes with its own software suite that can change the sound significantly. So when I listen ot a song through Windows my sonic experience may significantly differ from listening through Cubase.
We could go through all the settings from @Julian_Hobbs 's system but, honestly, it is rather time consuming and it would be nice they could invest that time themselves.
TL,DR: One has to put the reference level song into Cubase.
Hi. Thanks for the comments, very useful. I’m now thinking it could be due to the rabbit hole that is mastering and something blocking some signal getting through. Back to bare bones I think. Thanks again everyone
