Every time I bounce a recording, the finished result hisses when I play it back in iTunes or on any other device. Thus, the quality is highly diminished. Does anyone know the reason for this? I hope the problem doesn't stem from the beginning and I'll have to go back and rerecord everything. Thanks for your help.

Open your bounces in QuickTime and play them from there. Do they sound the same as they do playing out of Logic?

Yes it does. And I've bounced it as both AIFF and MP3. Still, there's a hissing in all files. Am i doing something wrong?

What are your bounce settings? e.g. offline or realtime. What plugins do you have in your projects. i.e. any 3rd party one's? Can you also list your version of Logic and OSX - and what audio interface you're using... Thanks!

Here's another test for you... Step 1: Create a new audio track in Logic, lay up your bounce on that track, and then bypass any plugins that you might have on your Stereo Output. Solo that track and play it back for a while. Step 2. Now mute that track, unbypass any plugins on your Stereo Output, and play the track back (these are going to be your original production tracks). How does the sound of the two compare?

I have Mac OS X 10.5.8 I have Logic 9.1.4 I've tried various bounce settings, but currently the default is: PCM AIFF 8 bit 44100 Interleaved No 3rd party plug-ins. Just my M-Audio MIDI keyboard and Apogee Duet. Also, as of yesterday, when I open Logic it says that Autotune has expired and is no longer recognized. Did I mistakenly delete a file or what? Seems more problems keep reoccurring. Thank you so much for your help. -Matt

Okay. So it seemed to work okay in MP4. And I also raised it to 24bit, which I swore I already tried. But currently that seems to be working with PCM and AIFF. What settings do you recommend to bounce at? What are the industry's standard? Also, I think the Autotune problem may have occurred due to me trying to clean up space on my computer. Could I have deleted some necessary files? Perhaps the "Receipts"? Sorry to hit you with another question. Appreciate the help. -Matt

8-bit? That's your problem right there. Curious to know why you were bouncing at 8-bit. As far as autotune goes, if you were running some kind of demo version then prolly your demo time is up, and now it's time to purchase the full-fledged plug. Other than that, you would know best if you deleted files that had anything to do with autotune. Standards for music files: AIFF or WAV are the standards. They're not even "professional" standards so much as plain "standard" file types. Sound differences? None. No difference between them. Why you'd want to bounce as one over the other has to do with various technical requirements that I won't get into right now. But save to say that if you want your bounces to sound [i]exactly[/i] like what you're hearing out of Logic, bounce to AIFF or WAV. Now, on to bit depth... Again, to bounce out exactly what you're hearing in Logic, set the bit depth to 24-bits. Now, if you're going to burn a CD, things change. CD's can only record 16-bit audio files, in which case you'll have to bounce to AIFF or WAV at 16-bits and enable dithering (POWr1 is a good choice). If you skip that step then you won't be able to burn those files to CD. Now, on to MP3's... MP3's are a standard file format for playback on iPods and stuff. They will only sound as good as the original Logic project if you bounce them at a high bit rate, like 256K or higher. Otherwise, they will inherently sound different (if not worse) than their 24-bit (or 16-bit dithered) AIFF or WAV brethren. And that's because MP3's are made by processing the audio through an algorithm which attempts to remove "unnecessary" parts of the overall sound. So what's necessary to you and me might not be "necessary" when the MP3 is getting made (especially at low bit rates), ergo such low bit-rate MP3's will not sound like your original production. As far as other file formats are concerned, I wouldn't bother with them. The only ones which, IMO, you need to worry about are AIFF, WAV, or MP3.