Hot master awfulness

[KnifeVariable]

I'm struggling with a master of a song of mine, it has this persistant crackle/clipping underneath and it's pretty audible during the intro fade-in (right before everything kicks in) and the subsequent synth breakdowns (ie 0:36-0:38). Odd thing is the mix is not peaking at any time, none of the individual channels are, nor is anything in the master chain. I tried muting all the individual components in the chain but am not able to locate the source of this noise. What else could I possibly look into to amend this? The mix itself doesn't sport this awful feature.
Any suggestions/ideas or should I just de-hot it?

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandid=715545

 

[VH100R]

maybe its your speakers or headphones man...

I can hear it too but I am on crappy headphones right now.

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

This song is hella tight!

 

[RyanUsesThis]

I'm having a hard time hearing anything.. I've played it over several times.. I'm using relatively decent sony headphones. If it's there, it's barely audible..

 

[KeithRT99]

i hear crackling more noticably on the left ch.

 

[KnifeVariable]

@RyanUsesThis & VH100R: I'm hearing it on the 5th pair of headphones I've tried since my original post, maybe I'm nitpicking but I'm finding it really REALLY annoying haha...

@KeithRT99: I didn't notice that, will take it in consideration when I get to it after work.
@GGI: Cool cats, glad you like it!

Tthanks for checking it out.

 

[fistula]

you're mastering it through hardware or plugins?

try to turn off one by one plugins/hardwares to find whats clipping...

 

[Fionn McC]

dude I can't hear anything, but the mix is well hot, i've had to turn my speakers right down, maybe your overloading the output stage of whatever your monitoring on?!?! maybe try pushing the limiter less, as the mix is well hot. wicked tune too.

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

i hear it allright, does sound like something is clipping. maybe you can post your mastering chain? i've had simular things happening when running Req too hot, it doesn't say clip on the output but it can surely be clipping!

edit: awesome bassound by the way!

 

[Deus.exe]

No artifacts here either. I don't hear anything except an awesome tune.

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

reminds me: i had the same thing before once. I thought i was clipping something and started taking everything down, without any result. After soloing my channels i found out it was the left keyboard channel, probably a broken cable so i ended up mixing the keys in mono for that part of the song. Hope it's not something like that!

and to everyone who doensn't hear it: go check your ears or your equipment

 

[Fionn McC]

dude! no need for the aggression, I'm a trained sound engineer, i work in a semi-pro studio, i know my ears and my speakers. There is no noise, have you even tried listening to it on anything other than your home system?

 

[-Gavin-]

I hear the noise if we're talking about the same noise, it sounds kinda cool.


If we're not then i don't hear it.

 

[Skaldir]

Some really loud masterings are clipping on standard soundcards becasuse of the d/a converters.
I don't hear clipping aswell with my system, but it may clip on my laptop soundcard.
Mostly this appears on pad-like sounds, and not on impulse rich stuff.
Sollution, don't make it so loud

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

dude! no need for the aggression, I'm a trained sound engineer, i work in a semi-pro studio, i know my ears and my speakers. There is no noise, have you even tried listening to it on anything other than your home system?

i didn't want to offend anyone, that's why i posted the smiley. but here i can here it very clearly. i to work as a professional and have decent equipment (STAudio soundcard for playback,Dynaudio monitors) perhaps it's just in the mp3 encoding / decoding?

 

[KnifeVariable]

Hello party people!

First off, thanks for the thumbs up, it's cool to hear that many enjoy the tune!

Thanks for the ideas! Some of the posts were really insightful, so I narrowed down the problem to the synth tracks, which pains me incredibly since recording that CS-80 was one haunting experience! Anyway, it seems like the synths were recorded with some sort of noise underneath after all, no idea what it is, maybe it's the A/D converters as someone mentioned, I don't know... That, combined with too much mastering hotness and mp3 compression got the crackles standing out really loud and bite at my nerves.
Turning the limiter down improved the situation greatly, although it's still audible, I don't find it as painful anymore... So thanks everybody!

Oh the bass sound was unexpectingly easy to get: Ibanez SR350 (or something) bass -> Behringer DI (not the bulky one, but the absolute crap one) -> Firepod, duplicated channel, one with a lowpass at 150Hz, limited really hard, the other running GuitarRig2 with one of the first 5 "Metal & HiGain" patches, hipass at 1k Hz, bussed together, eqed to match the kick and limited to disbelief.

 

[Fionn McC]

i didn't want to offend anyone, that's why i posted the smiley. but here i can here it very clearly. i to work as a professional and have decent equipment (STAudio soundcard for playback,Dynaudio monitors) perhaps it's just in the mp3 encoding / decoding?

thats cool, i didn't see the smiley!!! how are the dynaudio i've not had a chance to use any yet, mix regular on genelecs and quested, always wondered about dynaudio?