Why Soothe2 high resolution and 4x oversampling can ruin your export

Several months ago I switched my entire workflow to Reaper, and I realized that my exports didn’t sound the same as the mixes and masters I was hearing in my DAW.

It absolutely didn’t make any sense to me, so I started to dig deeper.

After several exports of my mixes and listening for subtle differences, I finally pinpointed the issue: Soothe’s high resolution mode and oversampling seemed to do more harm than good.

The mistake

I remembered that after installing Soothe2 on my new computer, I had adjusted the offline settings to High Resolution and 4x oversampling. What a mistake.

I tried those settings in real-time mode on a master I was working on, and suddenly the track became extremely dark (due to the oversampling). And it completely lost all its soul because of the high resolution.

The settings I use now

From now on, I recommend using Soothe at 1x with normal resolution in both real-time and offline mode. I found that to be the most natural-sounding setting to my ear.

If you need to oversample or increase the resolution, that’s completely fine, but don’t do it blindly. Test those settings in real time first, and then decide if they work for the offline render.

Larger numbers and higher resolutions do not necessarily mean it will sound better.