Hi all, I've been a Reason user for a while, but I'm just now getting a grasp on mastering. I'm using Reason 4.0, and I have my track mastered. I have the mastering suite in, and all sounds good and vibrant inside reason. When I export it to wave (at 44,100 Hz, and 16 bit) it comes out sounding a flat and noticeably more quiet. Any ideas? Thanks.

i had a simliar problem when i mastered a bunch of tracks with reason 3.0 -- working with 4.0 and i haven't mastered and exported to wav yet, but i'm a little disappointed that was your experience because i worry about mine -- now, for me, when i did it, i mastered (sad to admit) and monitored on earphones -- now i have speakers and i can already tell how flat things can sound even when they sound better on earphones, so i wonder if that is part of it -- also i was wondering about a couple of other things: is wav perhaps not the best for exporting? is a higher bit rate needed? is reason just crappy at exporting? do i need another daw (ableton or something)? is it better to get it professionally mastered after?

i'm sure you have probably asked some of the same questions -- just wondering if you (or anyone else) has any insight?!

matt

I do most of my production with headphones then do my final mastering on speakers. I've watched lots of tutorials on mastering in reason, and read a lot. But they don't say much if anything about exporting once mastering is complete. I know what I want my tracks to sound like, and that's what irritates me. I get them there, then when I export them, the "life" is gone. I'm wondering the same as you, if reason just doesn't suck at exporting? But I don't think that's the case, I feel like it's my error due to the fact that it's got all the bells and whistles now and is supposed to be a great competitor among other production software titles.

I've heard that reason exports your track at a lower volume then you originally had it, but I dont know if that's true. Anyway if you really feel that reason exports your tracks "flat" then you could always rewire and mix/export your track in the DAW of your choice.

If you dont use any DAWs right now, there's some free or cheap ones you could look into.

For a real lightweight yet powerful one, I like Reaper:
http://www.reaper.fm

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Someone had suggested to check the wav file with another program. So, when I loaded it in Wavlab it sounds just like it did in Reason. I guess it was a media player issue. I figured some of you might want to know that bit of info.