Uploaded music losing quality when played through Syrinscape?

Support
#1

Hi,
Just wanted to ask if custom samples get recompressed on upload to the editor, or if you know what might cause this. I’ve noticed playing the same .ogg file through my phone’s (Android) media player is much clearer than when it’s played through the Syrinscape app. My media player isn’t adding any equalizer modification, and I’m 99% sure I turned off 3D positioning for all my music samples – it sounds more like the sample lost quality; slightly muffled, less stereo separation.

I think I’ve noticed it on my pc as well, but I’d have to do additional testing.

Thanks for any help!

Loss in quality with uploaded music to online player
#2

Hi @dRock

This is a REALLY good one to ad to the Protips! Thanks for reminding me.

To get the full quality stereo spread out of a music track (ie you want the music track to sound like a movie music score and not an integrated part of the sound environment), you will need to:

  1. On the sample set the “Enable 3D positioning” checkbox to UNCHECKED.

Otherwise the sound will be positioned in the 3D environment according to the settings in the element.

Does that make sense?

#3

Howdy!

Absolutely! I just double-checked to make sure it’s disabled for my samples. I’m trying to understand why there’s a quality difference when playing the original .ogg sample file from my phone’s file system, and when hearing it through the Syrinscape Android app. After some testing, PC playback doesn’t seem to have the same issue. It’s not a huge deal, since I normally use a laptop for gaming sessions, but I was listening to one of my element playlists at work today on my phone, and it made me wonder why it didn’t sound quite as crisp.

#4

Cool.

Soooo… each time you re-transcode a lossy sample format like ogg you’ll get a compounded set of artifacts. And whatever you upload to the server will be transcoded into ogg, in a standard format that the server knows will definitely work (even if the original format was ogg already). So yes, you’ll get a double loss there… :frowning:

Can you find the audio files in wav?

#5

Ah! I thought I was saving the server some work, by converting to a compatible .ogg before uploading haha. Since the server rejects files if they aren’t in the proper format, I assumed they entered untouched once approved. Now that I know they’re transcoded again, I will try .wavs, thank you!

Aaaaand, obviously I was incorrect about this being an android app thing, sorry for the red herring

#6

I tried making a soundset with the same music track (originally mp3) converted to a .wav and an .ogg so I could A/B compare them easily. Before uploading I don’t notice any loss of detail from either conversion yet. I did notice a loss once the soundset was uploaded and played through Syrinscape. My guess is that the transcoding to .ogg on upload is aggressive enough that I’m noticing it regardless of the source format? or there’s something going on during playback. I might be pickier about this than most though :grin:

1 Like