Audio Export Issue

[alvinrowann]

Hey everyone — I’m having a weird issue with a demo I’m working on: everything sounds fine in the DAW, but as soon as I export to WAV/MP3, faint background noise appears throughout the track. I’ve tried recalibrating the volume levels and disabling plugins one by one, but the problem persists. Has anyone had this problem before or knows what might be causing it?

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[Alan Cox]

Here are the likely culprits:

Dither settings: If the project is at a higher bit depth (e.g. 32-bit float or 24-bit) but they’re exporting to 16-bit without controlling dithering, the DAW may be auto-applying dithering. This often introduces faint noise, which is intentional but can sound strange if not expected.

Export settings mismatch: If the DAW is working internally at 48kHz/32-bit float but the render is set to 44.1kHz/16-bit, the conversion process can add artifacts or noise if not handled with proper settings.

Plugins on the master bus: Some plugins (especially limiters, tape/vinyl emulators, or noise-generating effects) only print their “subtle noise floor” on render, not during real-time playback, depending on how oversampling or quality modes are set.

Normalizing or auto-gain: If export has “normalize” or auto-gain enabled, it could bring up the noise floor and make it audible.

👉 To check if it’s a sample rate/bit depth mismatch specifically:

Export at the same sample rate/bit depth as the project (e.g., 48kHz 24-bit).

Export with dithering off, then with dithering on, and compare.

Render to WAV first at full quality, then encode to MP3 separately using a dedicated encoder to see if it’s the MP3 conversion adding noise.

• This post was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by Alan Cox.
  Reason: Formatting issue

[Shootie]

Are you talking about noise only in EZdrummer tracks? Is so what Library/Preset are you using?

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