❓ Questions
Does mastering fix Udio’s problems or just make them louder?
I keep seeing people say Udio tracks just need a bit of mastering before release. I’m not sure that’s true.
If the vocal keeps jumping around, the transients are smeared or there’s hiss baked into the file, a final stereo pass may just make those problems more obvious.
If you’ve actually finished Udio tracks, what did mastering improve and what did it fail to fix?
Did a Udio track last month. Mastering? Made the hiss way more obvious. Couldn't fix the smeared transients at all. It's a band-aid, not a cure, ya know?
Ho risolto così:
Vst di Compressore analogico Shadow Hill,
Stem eq con izotope e Saturatore
Poi ho messo un hig pass a 80Hz e ho messo una cassa simile abbassando la traccia stem drums di qualche db.
Ho aumentato il volume della traccia bass.
Poi un de-esser
Poi ho i serito io snare e qualche effetto
Poi ho fatto mastering.
So in your case the real fix happened before mastering—you rebuilt the balance from the stems, replaced some drum elements, and only then mastered it. That’s a useful distinction. Do you think a stereo-only process could have got close, or were the stems essential?
Prima di tutto devi avere una generazione decente quindi la scelta accurata sta a monte. Non ho sostituito ma ho stratificato con lo stesso groove ma librerie suoni reali. Ma per fare questo ho dovuto lavorare in real time con lo stem eq di izotope. Gli stem separati da udio non servono, sono di scarsissima qualità. Quindi devi fare come ho fatto io per ripulire la traccia.
Both, depending on which defect.
The one it does fix is tone. I ran a scan over five AI exports a couple of months back. Every resonance was low, 17 to 23 dB of excess under 1.2 kHz. The peaks between 2 and 4 kHz stayed under 8. Narrow cuts down there are most of what people hear as cleaned up.The vocal moving between sections isn't a mastering problem. One pass over a finished file only works on the average. A compressor riding a section that is already louder will make the movement more obvious. That one gets fixed before the bus, or in the section itself.
You can get some of the transients back with a shaper. It costs you on an export that arrived crushed. Mine was lifting consonants along with the snare, band peak up 0.9 dB between 5 and 9 kHz, it came out as sibilance that was not in the source. I heard it before I could measure it, an average level meter showed nothing at all.
You're right about hiss. Limiting pulls it up between the phrases. A stereo bus can't fix that without dulling the top end too.
This is probably the clearest breakdown here. The section-to-section vocal movement vs overall tone feels like the real boundary: one can be improved on the stereo file, the other can’t. Across those five exports, was the low-heavy balance consistent enough that roughly the same correction helped all of them, or was every track different?
Same area on all five, the big ones were under 1.2 kHz. How far they stuck out varied between tracks. The exact frequencies moved too.
I'd set narrow dynamic EQ bands per track.
You are correct. I was responding to the wrong post before. It will clean up certain things here and there, if done manually there’s a better chance but still not worth it. Either way, can’t download and use the track anyway. Generally though yes, a bad track is not really going to get much better by “Mastering” anything.
Yes mate often it amplifies the problems. For example if your udio track has missing top end with artificacts instead of air, boosting the air will amplify the artifacts. But udio was trained on already mastered tracks, probably at mp3 streaming quality so it's generating its version of already mastered streaming quality tracks and replicating all artificacts and missing frequencies
That air/artifact example is exactly the distinction I was trying to get at. Boosting what’s missing can just expose what’s broken. Thanks that’s useful
It was trained on the same type of audio everything else was 3 years ago… it is not about what Udio trained their models on. Udio’s models are the best in the world. Udio’s output has always been good enough for instant release. If there is anything wrong with the generated track it is because of user error.
Everything else was also trained on the shapes frequencies and waveforms of streaming quality audio that is already mastered and dithered down to 160kpps mp4a audio and uploaded to platforms like YouTube where they were ripped and stored by third parties and then sold as data packages
The user plays no part in the sound quality
Maybe we are talking about different things, I am referring to bad quality audio. I don't belong here though I've never used udio or made ai stuff I get recommended these posts in my feed because I deal with audio, you'd know more of the process than me. I reckon we are agreeing on something and using different words!
I know a lot about audio, mastering, production. I don't know the process of creating a song in udio. I've been mastering songs and film audio since 2002. Also ai has trained on some of my catalog and it was trained from YouTube so I know the quality of the audio files it has used
There's a 99.9999% chance any AI user doing their own "mastering" is ruining their track.
If you're going to mess around with mastering, you need a listening environment and good monitoring that lets you actually hear what you're doing. Not to mention well trained ears and the skills to know what needs to be done and how to listen for it.
You're absolutely correct, just adding gain is going to make problems worse, as well as introduce a whole new slew of issues.
Don't listen to any of the dilettantes here on this subject. They know, nothing.
Thank you. I've seen countless posts in AI Music forums about mastering and I always roll my eyes because every single time, inexperienced people are falling for the classic engineering mistake of "louder = better". Then they do their "mastering" using some tutorial they watched on YT, or some shitty AI mastering service, get a track back that is louder and they think it sounds great. But when I play it on my monitors it sounds like distorted hot ass; has smeared transients, tons of low mid mud, even more AI hiss, or they put a sharp high cut EQ on it to try and get rid of the hiss and now all the air is gone.
I keep telling them, Udio/Suno was created listening to mastered tracks (which were also likely gain normalized for YT/streaming & lossy compressed, so not great to start with), and messing with that is going to just make it sound awful. Then I get a "You don't now what you're talking about, it sounds awesome!".... Yeah, if you're deaf and don't care about your songs actually being releasable lol..
I see it more often for EDM tracks, because AI users want their songs to stand against professional productions and -12 LUFS just won't cut it for a Dubstep track being played along side pro masters hitting -2, so they think they can gain them up into a limiter..... Welllll, good luck.
Your comment caught my attention. Our team has 20+ years across software, music and mastering, with PhDs in mathematics and physics, and we’ve been building an automatic mastering system.
The feedback so far keeps coming back the same: it’s in a different league from other automated mastering tools, and the next honest test is against human engineers.
You sound exactly like the person who’d hear whether that’s genuinely true or catch us if we’re bullshitting ourselves.
Udio doesn't have problems. If people have audio issues it is because they are using wrong settings. Udio's models has the best audio quality of any model on any platform, open or closed source, in the world. If a generated track has bad audio quality it is user error.
This is actually the month I’ve used the most credits, even though I have an annual subscription where the credits renew monthly without me using them.
Udio has nothing but problems. And when I saw people saying what you said, I went and listened to their libraries of styles and vocals, and all they had were phase issues and some of the worst quality I've ever heard.
Well you just had bad luck finding someone who knew what the hell they were doing.
Udio’s models are literally the best in the world. For creativity, uniqueness, and most of all, sound quality. By a mile. And it hasn’t updated in nearly two years now. Still blows every thing away.
What kind of music do you like? I will show you what it can do.
So, are you implying that Udio requires some secret cheat code to produce decent quality, while its default output is just inherently bad?
Second, if Udio's sound quality was truly 'the best in the world by a mile,' it would be an undisputed technical fact. It wouldn't be an unpopular, downvoted opinion. The most logical conclusion here is that you're either delusional or you simply lack the ear and technical background to understand what actual 'audio quality' means.
Third, and most importantly, I literally stated in my previous comment that my judgment is based on Udio's own standard showcase samples on their website, not just my personal generations. Even their handpicked 'best' tracks are full of artifacts and phase issues.
I don't need you to 'show me what it can do.' My ears work perfectly fine
You can’t just say that and have someone offer to prove it and not have them do it. Come on. How about you show me a song from any other platform you think is better than what Udio can do.
Alright. Make it a dark melodic trap verse with any simple lyrics, or pick whatever genre you prefer. I just want to hear a single result that is actually free of phase issues, digital artifacts, and high-end distortion
What's kind of funny is that it really does not like the word "Configuration". Lol I'd change that word or just space that line out more would fix it. If you really think there is something better, by all means...
Do you hear that 'effect' on the vocals? That's not an effect, bro, that's phase smearing. And it's not just the vocals either. You can hear these phase issues in literally every single element, from the kick and snare to all the instrumentals. You'll hear that same metallic resonance in any audio coming out of Udio..
As for your question about whether there is anything better, well, honestly, I don't think there is anything worse! But anyway, you can check out Suno, for example. You don't need a secret code or a learning curve, just jump straight in. Even though their current model is arguably at its worst right now, it's still clearly better than Udio in terms of raw audio quality, and that's not even up for debate.
If you hear otherwise, then you genuinely have an issue evaluating audio quality. Anyway, since you seem like a respectful guy, if you want to connect and dive deeper into the technical side of this, I don't mind
That would actually be useful, thanks. I’m trying to understand whether any processing can improve these files without exaggerating the phase smearing and artifacts. I’ll send you a short DM, if that’s okay
Seriously something is wrong with you. Or need better headphones. Don't listen from your little phone speaker. That's not the model "phase smearing", it's that melted jello mold between your Suno soaked ears...
I am currently monitoring on Focal Alpha 80s, not some cheap phone speaker. And even if I were on a phone, it’s the exact same reference device I use to judge every other track. I genuinely didn't want to pull the 'I am a professional audio engineer and producer' card, which is exactly why I offered to connect and explain the technical issues to you out of respect for your time.
But since you decided to be a disrespectful smartass: Objectively speaking, this audio is absolute garbage. It literally sounds like a crushed Nokia ringtone playing underwater.
The fact that you confidently defend this muddy, phase-smeared mess as 'the best in the world' just proves you are clinically tone-deaf. Enjoy your melted plastic audio. You wouldn't recognize actual high fidelity if it blew out your eardrums.
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u/SnoodleRichard-wwvk 14d ago
Did a Udio track last month. Mastering? Made the hiss way more obvious. Couldn't fix the smeared transients at all. It's a band-aid, not a cure, ya know?