ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Evolution of Everything [G2961 Remix]]

ОФИГЕТЬ -- басс такой жирный, прямо в лицо ударит. Думаю что около минутки 1 надо исправить некоторые уровни громкости -- например ревербераций. Они должны падать вниз или немножко сокращать продолжительность, чтобы компрессор правильно звучал. Сжатие довольно жесткое, и думаю что также можешь его уменьшить лишь чуть чуть -- чтобы вторая часть трека сохранила свой динамический контраст.

Но в общем, мне очень понравился трек.

G2961 responds:

Хорошо! Спасибо за расширенный отзыв!
Да я в принципе знал про то, сжатие прямо жёсткое, просто я как-то делал ремикс нехотя и у меня не было идей на продолжение.

[zDk - Codex of Honor {UPD}]

Going to write this review in english -- there are some concepts I would have trouble explaining in Russian.

In general, this is nice, blazing fast DnB. A few things I would adjust -- take wet reverb down somewhat, apply slightly less compression so the track does not appear to be a sausage. In general this will allow for more clarity and the bass to cut through.

Needs a bit more sub/bass, and attention to detail of the phase of the bass -- see that when the kick and snare come in, if there is no sidechain applied, that it does not cause the kick OR the bass to decrease in volume. Deselecting random phase generation/position on oscillator can assist this. Then manually slide the start of the waveform until the problem is no longer present. I'm not sure if that's happening here since the waveform is so fat, but it could be, as I notice just a bit of thinness in the bass.

I actually would like a deeper, lower kick, and a higher pitched, more classic snare. Be careful also that your hihats and other percussion are a bit cleaner. The amount of verb on the track and instruments sharing this frequency range are clouding things up a bit. Great job not having them super sibilant. No ear pain achieved))))

Overall I love the energy of this track. Two thumbs up from me

G2961 responds:

WOW! Thanks for advanced review!

[ZDK - [Vengeance BEAST]]

Хардстайл мне очень нравится. Однако думаю что надо обратить внимание на фазу басса прежде чем ставить компрессор и тщательно исправить уровни инструментов, чтобы громкость басса и бочки не уменьшилась когда новые мелодии играют. Остальное мне просто класс и ностальгия!

X-500 responds:

Спасибо за честную рецензию! Я обрачу на это внимание)

[Sunshine Lima Bean (Best Before Dec 15 2023)]

Absolutely sucks when you have a contest entry to do and your team backs out for whatever reason, and especially when it escalates to arguing.

As someone who is actually quite amazed you did this in BeepBox, I will keep my comments related to that and applaud you for even submitting. Even more so for being brave enough to speak up when you were jipped like that. If a grouping isn't working, the others imo should have publicly bowed out and allowed you to seek other collaborators.

Compositionally, my only real problems with this are that it has a lot of elements dancing on top of one another, and by that I mean it is quite busy with instruments that are in the same register, thick chords on single instruments in the low-mid range, and so on.

Perhaps this would not be as obvious if there were a synth bass an octave lower, kick and snare louder in the mix, etc The guitar that seems to be functioning as the bass is chugging throughout the outro and is jumping around a lot and doesn't function as a solid enough foundation for the choirs when they come in to not sound as if they are taking up all the space suddenly. However, that portamento glide up sounded pretty cool.

I would reduce volume on the shakers and tambourine to help them sit comfortably on the edge of audibility. I feel they stick out more than your leads.

If you want that accordion or harmonica line to stand out, you can have 2 instances of a similar instrument panned somewhat left and right and this can help. Same with your choir. You can reduce volume on that, and apply panning. It helps. Or you can pan whatever other rhythm lines you have going on opposite (I sense there are hidden instruments in here I can't pick out that could come out to play)

I also like the second half of your song better than the first.

But since this is beepbox and I have limited knowledge of this program I'll shut my mouth here and hope I gave you at least one good thing to chew on. If you have questions, just ask.

And if you ever need mixing and mastering, you can hit me up here or on discord. I enjoy that sort of thing

[At The Seams ("Deathslab!" 's BOTB ENTRY)]

Liking the motion on that synth in the beginning. Feels like brauer motion -- could be generic rhode oscillating. I would like if that were to stop at some point, though it's interesting. The accompanying nnnnnnyeeeeaow texture could oppose it in terms of panning for depth.

On the drums in that opening hook I'd like to hear a bit more dirt on the snare, some crunch, and perhaps a bit more bite on the kick transient.

Vocals on 1:24 are not bad. Don't apologize. Could just a bit of de-ess on tweety s's. That's about it. I would also potentially apply harder compression, perhaps distortion even, to it. The choral portion hard panned reminds me of Queen. Lots of layers here and interesting choices in writing -- atmospheric. Potentially bring the lead vocal up by 2 dB.

2:44 is intended to be a massive section -- I can hear it. I would reduce cymbal and kick volume slightly, reduce reverb wet, and bring up the keys. Double track another patch for what is written in piano, and pan that left. More subtle oscillation on the rhodes for this section.

Compositionally speaking however, this is great. Lots of interesting progression and tasteful use of dissonance. I wish the snare popped more throughout, and the whole arrangement was more in your face. Really, I think there is room for low-tuned, high gain rhythm guitar.

Other than that, I quite enjoyed it. The section at 4:56 is gold -- again I would take up the lead vocal and perhaps drop wet signal on it some.

Guitar solos are a high point in this piece also.

Outro sounds great!

carboluka responds:

Wish we had that idea for 2:44, that would've sounded so nice... Thank you for the feedback!

[Freefall]

The itty bitty pop in your intro might be able to be cleared with iZotope RX7's de-plosive -- to address @ChronoNomad's comment

Regarding writing, my comments would concur almost exactly with what he has written, so I will focus primarily on mix. You've done a great job on everything in my opinion except the few things I have to complain about!

Mix wise, this comes out sounding pretty flat, midrange heavy, and sibilant throughout. I think it's important to learn by example, so I recommend finding pieces in this genre, and looking at them under a spectrum. That will fix one side of the equation, knowing the overall levels you want to see when you have a finished product.

**********Some things I recommend, in no particular order***********
-take those cymbals down a notch and vary the velocities some more
-avoid extremely hard compression that makes the entire track as loud as your choruses/hooks
-before you compress your track, make sure it is not already peaking
-if a track is meant to be rhythm backing, think about having 2 separate instances of similar instruments panned left and right respectively
-rhythm guitar in most situations should be double tracked and panned hard left and right rather than chorused, as well as louder than you think it should be
-kick and snare should be the loudest in the mix, or at least cut through (on snare you got this but the room tone on the snare is quite heavy)
-avoid "cheesy" obviously computer drums, if the genre does not ordinarily call for them

If you're looking for good drums, there are plenty of free libraries. For rock, I actually have released Saudade Drums Remastered, a totally free pack that was orphaned and cleaned by me, released as a SFZ instrument so it is lightweight. Drum samples and cymbals can make or break a song's replayability, so make sure they are quality. The ones you have I personally would not have chosen. Cymbalistic may be a good free option. I think I hear also that you have X-Crash in the mix. Am I right?

Somewhere there is also a library of free cinematic percussion by ... Spitfire labs -- it will come in handy if you don't already have it. You shouldn't be afraid to use one shots either, but be mindful not to use them in a way that you can hear you've got multiple hits of the same cymbals -- combining two of them at different velocity and with varied panning can help give the illusion of multisampled cymbals. Occasionally I will even employ ping-pong delay on a cymbal track.

When mixing drums and cymbals, volume levels are as important as EQ and compression, maybe even more. Those cymbals are quite in your face throughout and I would take them down by as little as 1, as much as 2 to 3 dB. It's hard to tell due to hard compression what effect that would have on the mix, but if you find you can't do this, do take and EQ and try to de-harsh them above 15khz a little. TISSSSSSSS is not exactly what we want out of a cymbal.

I'm not immune to any of this stuff myself, also. It's hard to hear things like this in your own mixing. One thing you can try to refresh your ears is to come back in half an hour and listen to it again, or to swap the left and right earphones if you're mixing on those.

Also, some of this stuff will in fact blow your mind if you swap to a different speaker system. My mixes did not sound much different before I started listening to them on my headphones, my phone, and the car. I later found the culprit to be my audio driver was compressing the outputs by default, so I couldn't tell the difference whether a song was properly mixed or not. Check if your audio driver is the default HD Audio Driver, if you're on Windows, and if not, try it out. Make sure nothing is coloring the sound on your mixing PC, basically.

Anyway, in short, I would double track rhythm, take down reverb wet signals slightly, bring up rhythm guitar and bass somewhat, and bump mid range on bass slightly, drop cymbal volume, bring up kick, and potentially drop synths by .4 dB. You could also widen the stereo field of the lead guitar just a tad.

And as I say this, I realize I've written you both a book. If you'd like me to take a look at the premaster and see if I can approximate what I'm talking about, I'll be happy to!

[Dreams As Deep As Oblivion]

Definitely feeling the black metal aspect, and it's blending well with the rest of the instrumentation. My only complaints would be as with all black metal, it's quite difficult to understand lyrics. At points I am able to pick out phrases and surmise it is perhaps because of the relative lack of sibilants after FX, as well as many instruments sitting in the range of the vocal.

The spoken word portion is much easier to understand but appropriately spacious, sordid, and dismally confused.

Writing wise, 10/10. One of my favorite subgenres combined with another favorite. Some great virtuosity in those solos as well.

Mix, I think the choir and keys are crowding out the guitars a bit. I may have even quad tracked the rhythm lines. I would like to hear much more of them and a bit of a compromise between 90s wet OST and modern dry. Perhaps utilizing side-chain to achieve clarity, or gating. The kick is audible at all times, which is necessity, but it blends somewhat in with the bass. BM kicks are usually quite high tuned so I'm fine with this. The snare sounds like a concert snare from a march though in this mix. I might replace it with a high tuned copper snare, something along the line of early Blink-182 Travis Barker's kit, or David Silveria's kit on Blind. Nasty and audible.

On sections where there are vocals, just a tad more care can be taken to help them shine, intelligible or no! Besides toning down a bit of the backing keys and other elements, I would simply ensure they are clearly audible over the backing, along with the rhythm guitar. I wouldn't change a thing in terms of delivery, or your sound palette. That is actually what I enjoy most!

Looking forward to hearing the two of you revisit this tune! It's lit.

LD-W responds:

Thanks for the review!

We're treating this track more like a demo to see what went well/didn't go well on a time limit & within all other specified rules, and how we'd approach things going forwards with anything under the same project name. While we won't be revisiting this particular track, we may be looking at doing a full album (at a casual pace) during 2024 when we've got spare time.

#1 thing is that I'll be swapping out the drums for future tracks under this project. While the Blackbird kit is decent for many other kinds of projects, it was abit too 'clean' for this kind of style really. Snare was a DW Edge and was a pain to try and not make it sound thin for this particular production-style overall. I'll be swapping over to a much dirtier-sounding kit and probably run with something like a Ludwig Black Beauty snare in the future etc.

[Zucchini]

From your plugin list I immediately knew we would be on the same wavelength. Sounding great. I would just do a little bit of hi pass on those guitars and perhaps push the FX wet down just a bit on them. I can't hear on my phone if we have true double tracking but this helps as well. Otherwise, sounding sick!

[Lesznowiak]

This is short but actually sounds pretty cool. I would prefer a different kick, with a bit more grit. The bass is what really makes this track though.

Do cut off the silence at the end! An additional fade out from 1:19 to 1:21 and a cut will do.

[Nobody Will Listen To You]

I actually love the drums you've made. In BeepBox no less. I think the pads could come up a bit, but the sheer variety of wild sounds I've NEVER heard anyone do with this tool amazes me.

Once again I'm left with sounds I want to sample -- those drums are YES

JimmyTheCaterpillar responds:

thank you adrean :)