Why is the gain being reduced in my exported or bounced audio files?

[bboeholt]

Hello - experimenting with flex time using raw audio tracks and have everything aligned timing wise where I want it. I’m looking to capture this adjusted audio by using the “export audio to a track” option under the FILE menu and also just focused on a single audio track at the moment to make sure it works before going global with the whole export thing. It’s not working as anticipated of course and to date - no matter what I do with regards to the checkbox options - the resulting audio file is visually reduced in gain in the track lane and in order to play it back I have to raise the gain on the track.

 

I am not normalizing or trying to prevent clipping or bypassing effects….all boxes are unchecked in the export dialog window.  Also tried bouncing the individual track and I get the same exact thing….a reduced gain duplicate audio file.

I assume I’m simply missing something, but am I CORRECT in that if you export or bounce an audio track and you bring it into a track lane/channel strip with identical settings as the original you should get the same waveform essentially and it should play back at the same “volume” as the original recording or is this reduced gain the way exporting and/or bouncing just works?

 

In full disclosure - in an effort to alleviate always having to adjust faders with my underlying volume automation - I took the advice of another user and changed all my individual tracks to having automated gain in lieu of automated volume so all I have to do is ensure all my faders are at zero and the perceived “volume” is consistent. This seems to work quite well for automating levels w/o the headache of always adjusting faders, but curious if it maybe this somehow played into the gain being reduced for my export files. I don’t think so and don’t see why that would matter, but can’t figure out or think of any other reason why my export tracks are reduced.
 

And while I’m on the subject of exporting audio - can somebody explain the difference between bounce and exporting audio? Seems to be two different ways of doing essentially the same thing. Is there a difference here and is there a time and place to export vs bounce? I don’t see the difference yet, but I’m also just figuring this out so apologize if it’s a stupid question.

Any assistance or tips would be greatly appreciated !!

Bryan

[David Nahmani]

On 5/25/2022 at 9:05 AM, bboeholt said:

can somebody explain the difference between bounce and exporting audio? Seems to be two different ways of doing essentially the same thing. Is there a difference here and is there a time and place to export vs bounce?

They are similar however if you mean the difference between File > Bounce > Track in Place and Export > 1 Track as Audio File then the former creates an audio region on a track in your project whereas the latter creates only an audio file on your hard drive, that is not necessarily part of that project. 

On 5/25/2022 at 9:05 AM, bboeholt said:

I assume I’m simply missing something, but am I CORRECT in that if you export or bounce an audio track and you bring it into a track lane/channel strip with identical settings as the original you should get the same waveform essentially and it should play back at the same “volume” as the original recording or is this reduced gain the way exporting and/or bouncing just works?

Assuming you're doing things correctly then yes, that is the result you should be getting. However there are so many different options that can potentially affect the gain that it's easy to forget something. If you give us one specific example, share your settings for exporting or bouncing, along with screenshots showing the results you're getting, we will be better equipped to try to see what is affecting the gain of your audio file. 

You mention not bypassing audio effects? That would mean that the audio effects are printed into the new audio file, and they can potentially affect the gain. Other potential culprit are the volume fader, the Gain parameter in the Region inspector, the normalize setting in the Bounce or Export dialog, volume automation, etc. 

[wonshu]

On 5/25/2022 at 9:05 AM, bboeholt said:

I assume I’m simply missing something, but am I CORRECT in that if you export or bounce an audio track and you bring it into a track lane/channel strip with identical settings as the original you should get the same waveform essentially and it should play back at the same “volume” as the original recording or is this reduced gain the way exporting and/or bouncing just works?

 

If you bring in the bounced audio onto a track that has the same processing as what you used to create the bounce, then your bounce is being processed again.

So once you bounced a track, you want to bring it onto a fresh channel, so that you don't get double processed audio.