Mixing for Upload to soundcloud

[D-ROD]

Hey, So I currently have a song that I just finished and I am quite happy with the mix in Ableton live. I export it to wav and it still sounds good. I convert that to mp3 at 320 KBPS and it loses a tiny bit of quality compared to the wav but still acceptable. When I upload either the wav or the mp3 format to soundcloud it loses a TON of quality. Things get muddied up and lose clarity causing the mix to sound muddy and ugly where as before it sounded nice and clean. The difference is ridiculous to my ears, almost like a different mix. The cymbals I noticed especially sound distorted like a completely different sample.

So, has anyone else encountered this? Is there a way to retain the high quality i had in ableton??
The track is mixed with 3 db headroom and is not currently mastered.
Will sending it out to get mastered possibly help the problem?

Any help is much appreciated,
Thanks!!!

[wub]

Soundcloud answer this question on their site;

http://help.soundcloud.com/customer/por ... -distorted

This topic has been discussed on here several times, for further reading please see the following threads;

Soundcloud data compression problem - http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.p ... &p=2929461
Soundcloud compression problem - http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=233447
Does Soundcloud just suck ass? - http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=245524
Why has soundcloud just killed my beat ? - http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=245489

[chaotix]

haha eric, nice to see you up on the boards!

[D-ROD]

lol, hey man. Yeah, definitely a lucrative source of information here, learned a lot from these boards!