ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Max Rena - Chemical plant Zone (Sonic the hedgehog Remix)]

This sounds really uniquely quirky and interesting. I love that you incorporated the sound effects rather seamlessly. The only thing I might change is cutting a bit of reverb, side chaining the wet signal from it, and cutting off the low end to 250 hz.

You might also cop a plugin like KSHMR Essentials for processing your kick and snare, get some harder transients on them. They seem low in the mix compared to your cymbals, which I might bring down some. There's basically nothing in that range frequency wise, so hihat and cymbal naturally stick out. Experiment with turning the volume down on your mix as a whole, and see if you can push them down a bit without losing them. Then bring the volume back up and hear how much fuller your mix sounds when you get to the final result.

Anyway, sounds great. Keep up the good work!

[Max Rena - Sonic The Hedgehog - Final Boss theme Remix (Doom Eternal version)]

The idea for this is freaking great. I only have a few small gripes. It sounds like everything was mixed a little too loud, and the mix itself is clipping a bit past 0 dB headroom, even in the beginning. It could be the clips of individual instruments as they render. It gives a bit of a fizzy whitewash that makes the rest of the track sound pretty centered.

For the guitars, it sounds like there may only be one centered low rhythm guitar. Standard practice for rhythm guitar is to mix two slightly varied iterations of your rhythm line panned 100% right and left respectively. You can humanize the left track's attacks and releases, as well as velocities, by a small percent, and change some of the amplifier settings to give a rich, open sound. It will also help your rhythm line cut through the mix without getting muddied up in the center. I can't hear if that's been done here due to some mixing decisions, like the heavy lead in the right and some other leveling which I will get to.

The track itself sounds like most everything is in the center and heavily compressed. Not that heavy compression is a bad thing. In this genre it's usually just fine. Part of what's adding to that centered sound is the snare is too far down in the mix, as is the rhythm guitar throughout.

I think the bass may be slightly too high in the mix, or should have a sidechain to the kick applied to it. The crashes are also a few fractions of a dB too high, along with fizzing transition noises.

Overall, it sounds really good. I think the low snare volume and just a little bit too much compression doing the job that a little bit more sensitive mixing could accomplish in bringing out the most striking elements of your track is most of the issue. I like to use audio signals from my percussion to auto duck the volume of any instruments that are consistently holding the same note or rhythmic lines, rather than forcing them all to the same volume with compression. You'll notice looking at your waveform, even on the more quiet portions of your track all are peaking at about the same or close to the same volume as your chorus, due to pretty heavy compression.

I would probably turn down your leads and other instruments, with the exception of the rhythm guitar -- that I'd turn up. It should give a sense of urgency to those builds, so you don't lose intensity, while slightly quieter auxiliary instruments will give some suspense.

Personally I recommend House of Kush's mixing tutorials on YT. He explains these concepts so much better than I do, in the mix more often than not. It's not metal, but the same logic applies.

Overall I really enjoyed the listen, and it's a nice take on the theme itself. Great work. You may have already implemented a lot of what I mentioned. If so, even easier fixes, just back off the compression a little and manually mix things before applying it, see what happens. Would love to see more like this :)

[Harden (instrumental)]

I really was not expecting such a fast beat on top of a hard sounding intro! I think this one you could take an approach of a fast hook like you had here, and a slow, typical hard style hip hop breakdown in between, using some different distorted samples. Could be a nice way to extend this beat.

At the end, the delay is a little bit unanticipated and makes it sound unfinished, but I definitely like the olskool sounding sub you got going on. Nice work!

[Return of the Mac]

This is more the confident diction I was talking about having consistently. For processing your vocals, you want to see if you can get some sort of pop filter so those breaths and b and p or f syllables don't blow into the mic, and you'll want to manually remove or fade your in and out breaths where you have silences in the recording, as well as between phrases. Basically anything that isn't you speaking. De-essing is another thing but if you don't have the money for fancy plugins or want to work really hard on tuning them, manually lower the volume on the s's so they don't blow out of proportion when you apply compression.

The beat is simple here but it works. I think you could apply some more modulation to the arpeggio to give it some breath, lower it slightly in the mix, and bring up your percussion, keeping in mind that hihats naturally stick out as the highest frequencies, and get a good sound. You can also try writing your melodic phrases first as 4 bars, and varying them on every 8 and 16th bar respectively.

It's hard to write out what I mean, but producer tutorials on YT are good for that. Myself, I write my fullest part of my hook first as 4 or 8 bars, copy and paste. Then I will edit the first half of that for bar 4 (or 8) so it transitions naturally and doesn't sound like just 4 or just 8 bars repeated. You will naturally write your first part of your production the strongest, so it makes sense to have that as the last half of your hook and edit the first half to lead into that, if it makes sense. If I double that section for a longer hook, I take the same principle and edit the new first section. If you look at Song for my mama on my audio, though that song suffers from the extreme hihat volume problem I always complain about (because I was still learning mix LOL) I applied that concept there, and also Listerine (there's an instrumental for that, so feel free to send me some spit and I'll go reopen the project file lol)

Now that I think about it I was supposed to do that for @CyberDevil but I got caught up in a bunch of crap at work and punked out on mixing because I was just having so many issues figuring out my software. Oop.

Think I used the same composition method for Boy Lookin Like a Barbie.... which also has lead hihats LOL

I say all that because this sounds like a short freestyle that could easily turn into a full song with a hook. I'd like to see you maybe compose a hook and perhaps get some more verses in. 1:30 is about the length I would expect from a short YT video or interlude on an album, but this has a full intro.

Keep it coming anyway. Hope some of this helps!

[Chill beat: Beach]

This is a really nice chord progression and a really laid back vibe. I think there's clipping on one of your samples, just a crackle. Don't know if that's intentional. But I'm really enjoying when your percussion comes in around 1:27

I would turn your hihats down possibly a full dB. They're overwhelming your snare just a little bit on my monitor headphones which tells me they might sound overrepresented in a car or on a stereo. The writing on those is perfect, just enough push and pull to drive the track. And about pulling them down just a little, I would only touch the closed hats, not the opens, rides, or crashes. Those are lying about where they should be.

As an instrumental, it works well for spitting on. I'm impressed you made this in Garage Band. I remember back when that was all the rage back in the day and I wanted a Mac so badly, haha. My how times have changed. I got a gaming PC for my inheritance instead and Mixcraft 9 Pro Studio. It's been a ride. Listening to your beats reminds me of that haha. I'm old.

As a full song this would sound just a little bit empty for me, or like a menu theme, but again that's because it's meant for composing on top of, which is good. The bass works and progresses the piece, doesn't take over all the space. I think you'll take some different things into consideration when you mix with it and will have to watch for that laid back kick and snare to push through. You could also experiment with a slight slap back delay and apply a gate to the wet signal of that to stop it ringing out. That might give a bit more space to the snare.

Great work!

[Alien Parade II]

The audio portal and music software have come a long way, but for a start, it aint bad

[Paradisum]

Spectacular composition. My only complaint is bass is conspicuously absent, to the point of almost inaudible -- let it shine! I can hear that it's well written, but it's WAY buried in the mix, as is to a lesser extent the rhythm and choirs.

And there seems to be a bit much reverb on those to supplement burying them somewhat. That muddies the presentation. Cut that reverb wet down by about a third to a half what it is, and hi-pass to 250 or so, then crank the choirs up .2 dB to .4 and see what happens.

The kick drum also is hiding in the mix, needing more high mid bite and a bit less sub, especially for when it rolls -- remember your velocity settings for when you get into blast beat territory for both it and the snare.

The dulcimer when it is not the lead is about half a dB too high.

Other than that, wonderful to listen. Great job!

DanJohansen responds:

I totally get where you're coming from! Most modern sounds go in all the directions you just mentioned. A lot of the things you want me to change are actually things I went out of my way to make happen, because to me.. that creates an alive cinematic landscape that fits my imagination perfectly. I am not all that interested in a perfectly clinical perfect sound, to me that is usually dry and uninspired. Glad you dug the tune though! Rock on!

[BossAsBeatle - Tooth Toss OST Conner Grail & James Renna]

Well written -- I would say you need some velocity controls on those strings. The machine gun attack really takes away from the otherwise great writing.

Also, they seem to be burying all the other instruments, especially percussion and bass. But a nice theme nonetheless!

Jumbs responds:

Hey thanks ADR3! If I remember right I made this on the last day of a 72 hour video game jam. of course there’s room for improvement, but when the clock is ticking and theres still one more tune to write you just gotta roll with it. Thanks for the review!

[Bring The Funk]

Great idea, well written, provocative and introspective chords. Moved to hiphop modern for the clear influence there.

There are instruments that sound like they're not just distorted but clipping, and a bit too far out in the mix. You could apply compression to them to eliminate some of that. Some others seem too loud in general, particularly distorted basses.

But overall a nice piece, a departure from the usual material I get to listen to on a daily basis. Nice work!

For mixing headphones, I highly recommend Audio Technica ATH-m40x. They're what I use daily. Take some getting used to, but you will be hearing an honest impression of everything. Good mixing sounds good on them. Bad mixing sounds, well, noticeable, shall we say haha

boza44 responds:

thank you so much for the feedback, ok i agree i definitely cranked this up way too loud, let me see what i can do. i'm mixing on crappy headphones

edit: just added the original non-cranked up version. it sounds much better, you're right. I usually never max it out like that but maybe i got too excited about the track

second edit: yeah I actually use these headphones because , well, i don't like to have my ears covered totally, these ones are pretty mellow even though they're like $15 headphones they just don't really in general have much capacity to blow my ears out. I'll definitely look into the audio-technica though, and i gotta order a few more of these cheap ones since i like them so much :P i'm using NADY audio qh-200 i like em

NOTE and at the same time, if they sound like (#$* on your headphones, then that's all bad and I've got to work on my mix for sure. I'll look into yours too :)

[rubberband pillow]

That's a strange dream indeed. I like how the song builds off of itself. Simple, but it works. I'd like some more interactivity between the layers and a bit tamer percussion -- the hihat sticks out a bit. The snare and kick seem buried by comparison in the other instruments