What are people's motivation to leave an isolated HD track of their recording?

When searching the loops for a track to participate, I see some with HD tracks and some with only a mixed mp3 or HD file.
If the mixed track is poorly mixed, there is not much fun to join in because it will not sound good.
What are people's motivation to leave an isolated HD track of their recording or not?
Intentional or just not the technical knowledge to do it?
Or maybe you don't want people to use your isolated track?

For me, most of the time I leave one but in case when I join in on an already mixed project that is acceptably mixed I won't leave one most of the time.

It's just more fun to work with HD tracks, more options to mix and easier to add more instrument without losing quality later when more people join.

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Interesting thoughts. The usual question seems more like 'what's the the motivation for NOT leaving an HD track?'

I always appreciate it when folks upload HDs. Helps me during practice sessions as well as during recording. Plus, remixing tracks when you want to add additional stuff is so much easier when you have the HDs.

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Although I'm usually too lazy to post HD tracks myself, I think it's a great idea, for example to be able to better adapt your own mix to your own instrument.

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Most of the time I'll try to make the HQ-stem available. Of course if people want to go the easy way they always have your mixed version as a base for their addition. And negative audio or subtraction sometimes can give decent results if the total re-mix is unprocessed. But most of the time there is sound degradation or lots of artifacts. A new part could change the 'vision' on the song. To become less verby or heavy on a certain instrument or voice.

Also you need to process all stems through the same 'room'verb imho to make a good cohesive mix, let alone add some glueing compression on the total mix.

So if you ask me I would like to plee for always adding an HQ-stem, and also prefer to see that with a minimum of added processing. Because if you go easy on compression and verbs or heavy eq's in the HQ-version there's always a choice if all is re-applied following the same choice as in the originating remix.

I remember in the early days that I was excited if someone had improved the song not only with an add but also a better mix. And when added wth HQ there's always a remix-option if you think you can improve it even more, silently for your personal library or uploadworthy...

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I have a bit of a fantasy camp mentality where I get to play performer then mixer, sometimes producer as well. Working with MP3’s makes it a bit more challenging when wearing the mixing hat but that’s part of the fun.

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1) I have Logic 2) I can play the music 3) even making bounces I can do a lot but don’t know how really. I make a WAV and an MP3. I upload a WAV because that’s what I did. I’m an IT security expert but not a music producer. I know know how to educate IT folks. Tell me how we can educate these folks. I’m willing to help research and help. I understand a lot about the capture and the mastering. Not so much about what I really have when I’m done. Let’s make a Slack community (chat) and give some education back to this platform. I can set up a Slack site. Let me know.

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Question...I have some original songs done using Band-in-Box software which allows exporting WAV tracks (24-bit, 48K) individually. I understand uploading the original template, but when adding a 'remix,' how can I upload both the new 'mixed' version with added instrumentation and the isolated instrument track so other musician's have more options?

Thanks...Glen

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There is an option to upload the individual track when you upload the mixed version. If you missed the option simply pull up the track and select 'edit'.

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First reason: Laziness. I have to export my project twice (once fully remixed, once solo). No doubt, this is the worst reason of all, but it has happened, especially on tracks where I don't expect anyone else to continue building on it.

Second reason: Incompatibility. In some cases I've reshuffled the original track making it longer or shorter before adding something. Since I can only upload a single HD track, it's nearly impossible to use my HD track for a remix, since it's almost impossible to recreate the manipulations I did to the original track before I added mine.

Third reason: Insecurity. In some cases hearing my track in isolation makes it painfully obvious where I messed up :)

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I realized this weekend that my go to track type was MP3 because of the size. So the uploads I do now will include the MP3 as well as the WAV. If we go for the MP3 on download, we owe our friends both types.

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guilty of laziness here. also, sometimes an export may take my little machine 5minutes to export a track, and then to do it all over again for an HD ... fuhgettaboutit :)

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MP3 are pretty good these days, if it's file size putting anyone off uploading the single track, MP3 is 1000x better than not uploading anything at all.

Honestly, I can't really tell the difference between a wav and a high quality MP3.

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I usually export a high quality MP3, although I've often wondered, does WL use my exact MP3 or re-encode it anyways.

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Ah, well what it might re-encode for us to hear over the net is not what we download, I think we download the exact same files that were uploaded. I'm happy to be put right if that's not the case.

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Google says wav's are around 10 times larger than MP3's. Google wasn't all that clear as to how much AWS charges but if it's not crucial or you can live with sharing wav's via other methods when asked, using MP3's helps the site save money. How much, I don't know. Maybe some compression wizardry is in play that makes it a moot point but file size usually has an ongoing impact on storage costs.

I just don't like waiting for wav's to upload. And there's no long line of people itching to make album quality mixes of my audible meanderings so I get very few requests for wav files.

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If you haven't already done so, here's an answer for you.
The only important thing is the quality of the recording. Then wav or mp3 (minimum 320kbps) are less important.
WAV can be used with sampling depths of 8, 16 and 24 bits and sampling rates of 44.1, 48 to 96 kHz for two or four channels. The higher the depth and rate, the better.
This is important for the first jam track or an accompaniment track (drums, bass, keyboard). It is less necessary for an addition. Obviously, the better the quality of the tracks, the better the result. And the more separate tracks you have, the easier the mix will be.
Bradford's comment is interesting: the larger the file, the more expensive it will be for Wikiloops.

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For whatever it’s worth, memory tells me that Dick said that streamed content is 192k MP3.

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To keep running with this, 5 songs a week @ 3 or 30 meg would be 750meg vs. 7.5 gig a year, roughly. I read that infrequently recalled files cost very little, probably because it’s storage with little CPU and network. So, unpopular MP3’s are the most economical based on the plan I read about. Now I feel so frugal, lol.

The cost might not be all that different.

Never really thought about this much before. I played around with Azure recently which probably got me thinking.

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Interesting discussion here. Well, from a technical point of view, the quality of a “lossy” encoded audio track degrades a bit when you use it in a mix and then save it as an mp3. Every time you add something to the audio file and save it, you will definitely lose some details, especially in the higher frequency range. If you do this several times, you will probably be able to hear it. Mp3 is great for compression, but it's not the best choice if you want to use the compressed file as a source for a mix. There are other (lossless) audio formats such as FLAC and ALAC that can compress audio files but retain full quality. Audio files compressed with these formats are smaller than wav files (because wav is usually uncompressed), but larger than mp3 files. These formats offer the best compromise between file size and maximum quality.

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I agree Karuma. The Flac file is certainly the best compromise.;)

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