ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Descent Of A Champion (2024 NGUAC Finals Rank 23)]

The section at 1:31 gave me chills. Or that was my fever. I don't rightly know which.

I appreciate the nostalgia of this soundfont, the creative arrangement, and the approach to panning, which reminded me of the N64 days, ironically.

Where I think you could improve -- volume of bass, and some tweaks to percussion EQ for better readability in the wider composition; this will lend to perceived fullness. The Emerald soundfont was never known for having very defined drums, due to limitations of its native sound system.

Interloping responds:

I think it may have been a combination of your fever and my subtle tones :P

In this piece there wasnt much of a bassline to be honest, more so just a tuba to fill in the low frequency while the french horns and trumpets dominated their roles, but I know what you mean. I often hesitate to bring up the volume of both the drums and the bass lines because Im worried that they will add too much gain, or simply overpower something else in the mix. Peer review has definitely taught me this is not the case, and maybe on my next piece I will take this into consideration.

I have tried using "Real" drumkits before but honestly, on FL Studio soundfonts, they tend to sound really fake, and noticeably so. Im still seeking out drums that can replace my current ones that maybe have their own cymbals instead of me having to make a separate track for the crashes all the time :P

Thank you for your input once again, I enjoy seeing familiar faces coming back to watch me grow as a composer <3

[Tortuga]

Great sound choices and driving arrangement. I think it's a bit short, this would make a great sample library demo or cutscene music. The latter half feels like a loading screen where I'm waiting to spawn into battle, or after action, when the battle has concluded post-cutscene.

I think the master could be much louder and more compression applied, given that this is a bombastic piece, but for what it is, great work!

[Crystallis Ultima]

These days we take classical music for granted. It's a bold move to compete with it in a competition that favors cinematic, dubstep, and other electronic genres.

Not only have you woven a completely believable orchestra with expertly crafted movements. You've made one that evokes feeling of its own, without anything to look at, without any external stimuli. I hope and pray you get hired by a big studio, because this would make about anyone weep.

5:08 was mixed so beautifully, I felt as if I were a binaural stage mic.

HollandAlbright responds:

That means so much, thank you! I didn't know what to expect from the competition, but I did it for fun and to have a bit of a challenge (and now I have two new songs, so that's a win).

I really want to work in animation and games, but it's hard to find the way in to those industries. Someday soon, I hope.

Thank you again!

(P.S. - "I felt as if I were a binaural stage mic" - I love this)

[Conductor - NGADM Round 2 & NGUAC Finals!]

This track had me sit down and say "what the fuck"

I am in awe. I'll leave it at that. I would prefer a bit more volume or perhaps distortion on the sub in the latter section, but beyond that, this track is just, chef's kiss.

GameBoyFireworks responds:

Thank you so much!! That means so much coming from you!

[Powerful Melodies (NGUAC - Final Round)]

You managed this good of a mix on $5.5 dollar headphones? What a beast! I would only recommend check out the EQ curve of said headphones, as the compression, overall master level, and other aspects of mix are fantastic, but it sounds as if the balance is tilted toward treble.

What I mean is, the sub is definitely present, and the dynamics are good, but the cymbals, EQ, snare fizz, transitions, color FX, and other high pitch elements of the track are proportionately much louder.

All other elements of the track are totally on point for the genre and even pushing the envelope of what can be done sonically. For instance, that extreme panning decision in the beginning and glitching was a huge detail. It set this track apart from others I've heard in the genre, and the detuning/slowing was great.

[(NGUAC '24 Final Round) So Close, Yet So Far...]

Some finer aspects of mix are not quite all there -- the song sounds very much as if mixed by a guitar player, if you catch my drift. By that I mean, all elements sit behind the guitar, particularly the upper mid range of the guitar.

HOWEVER, the balance between kick drum and the rest of the track is pretty good. It cuts through well, sounds good. I only have a bit of gripe with the particular crashes chosen not sounding too great a fit for the piece. A bit darker treatment to the EQ or alternatively backing off their volume a bit and giving just a bit of gentle verb may help. They're very bright, sticking out over the rest of the arrangement.

I like the snare drum but would recommend turning it up a bit and allowing for a bit of verb as well. .2 to .3 dB would be fine.

The section at 1:30 is absolutely beautiful btw -- reminds me of the nightwish I would jam out to in my youth. Overall, great playing, great writing.

I would raise the bass up to a dB, turn the rhythm guitars down a little when they are playing in the upper mids. They sound fine in the lower range. Some kind of resonance or EQ is causing that jump in loudness, must be.

The lead at 6:00 could use more 2k-4k imo until 6:25, where it sits very well.

Compositionally, so, so great. This is the kind of music I dream of. Great work!

[There's a Battle in the Owl Forest]

The instrumentation and arrangement is insanely interesting to listen to, as always.

I'm torn on the execution, particularly mix. At points, it can get pretty sibilant. I would have approached things differently. For instance, the shaker volume and percussion transients are as perceptible and sometimes more perceptible/up-front than the rhythm section -- the low brass, bass, and so on.

The violins at 1:41 and organs are louder than the vocal elements in the section at 2:17, as well as the build into our final big section. In terms of transition and the space you have left to work with on the master, I would have added even more dynamic contrast between these sections. I would grow that gap in max dB as the song progresses for a more bombastic conclusion -- allowing for the vocals at the end to REALLY stand apart from those throughout.

If sibilance or boxy breath noise is stopping you from getting those (wonderfully performed!) vocals to sit right in the mix or perhaps making you fear bringing them up front, try rolling off highs or lows to taste, notching lower frequencies down.

Even de-essing in post via RX or another program can help. Getting them into the same sonic range/vibe as the other instruments, respecting microphone/room frequency responses, and approximating the same ensemble feel is paramount to blending live recorded vocals with VSTs.

I have one big problem toward the end of your piece. It isn't the level of the master, as cinematic pieces are often forgiving in this area, and it isn't writing, playing, singing, arrangement, or even sound palette. It's a single source of ultra high treble, the pipe/reed instrument way up there.

I'll try to explain.

In general, the higher something is in pitch, or the more distance there is between it and other elements of a piece, the louder it's going to sound in relation. I don't know what synth is playing 4 octaves + higher than the vocal line if it's not in fact pipes/reeds, but as the only thing in that gap, it's naturally going to sound screaming loud. It has quite a unique sound, one I like, but I would roll off some of the higher frequencies from that synth, and see if it sits better in the mix.

Alternatively, you can turn everything else up in proportion. I assume you are mixing on monitors -- I am listening on monitor headphones. It may be worth checking the mix in multiple environments, if you can't quite hear what I'm talking about, because the spatial aspect of your mix is bang on, but something is happening there in that range.

In short, wonderful composition. I liked it enough that I even experimented with turning the volume up and down, outside of my normal monitoring and reference range to see what happened. The result was, the lower end of your composition came more into perceived balance as I turned volume up, but the high end of that particular synth became almost painfully loud. So I tried it the other way. I ended up turning the song down by half before the pipe synth was more tolerable.

By chance did you mix this song very quietly? I was shocked when, like magic, once I turned it down, everything felt more balanced. The phenomenon must have to do with psychoacoustics and Haas numbers, which I am not as well versed in as I'd like to be.

Please let me know, as I will be very intrigued!

[Ultimatum (NGUAC Finalists 2024)]

Loving all the modulations, synths chosen, FX and mixing decisions through this piece, with the exception of one. The bass should have some dedicated space! I can hear it, but it's pretty quiet throughout. My setup emphasizes these frequencies, so I know they will be near non-existent on other systems.

Are you using a pure sine for your sub? You may consider a slightly distorted waveform for it, or applying distortion.

The problem is less pronounced at 2:09, but I worry that stray reverb low frequencies or delays would stick out if you were to emphasize the low register much more. Something to think about in future mixes.

Overall great mix, good looking levels on the master, controlling for dynamic range, just a bit sibilant. I wonder if alternatively, you could roll off some highs OR take down your hi-hats and so on, adjust your master accordingly, and the perception of tinniness would go away.

I've been reading up on psychoacoustics, or the science of sound perception in layman's terms, and what I've discovered confirms my every day observation. The higher a sound is in pitch, to a certain extent, the louder it seems; the highest extremes of course suffer the opposite -- fading into silence like a YouTube hearing test for the partially deaf. Somewhere in the middle hi-hats and cymbals make their entrance, high-pitched and almost universally loud, such that they are easy to over-crisp and over-pump. A nice balanced EQ I've found for dealing with them is EZQ, a light touch in any direction will gently roll off the volcume of some of these offending frequencies for you, with minimal effort!

DefectiveSmile responds:

Thank you for the feedback! I appreciate the very direct and straightforward paths to make mixing just that much better. ♥️

[Eye of Evolution]

You really nailed that 80's vibe hard with the instrumentation, the artistic theme, the overall mix levels, and driving arrangement.

It does take a WHILE to develop, and I have gripes with some of the levelling and panning, but I'm really enjoying from 2:00 on. Feels like a song that never ends, in a good way.

I do think you can cut the silence off the end, take your hihats down a notch, bring your kick up slightly, your snare by about 1 dB, and potentially change out that crash cymbal.

Master sounds pretty good! Great work

[Way Back Home (NGUAC 2024 Version)]

Great writing -- I think your piano might be a bit too wet in your intro. It feels quite spaced out, and not in a dreamy way. Check your tail lengths, your low frequencies, and so on. The shoe-gaze feel is hard to nail down; I hear the same issue with your pads and keys throughout.

The vocal is a bit boomy and plosive. This may have to do with distance to the mic, too high of a volume going into the interface, or saturation and compression in post. Experiment with pulling back from the mic a bit -- or singing at lower volume, particularly for such a laid back piece, and putting a filter or two between the mic and your mouth. Recording at a 45 degree angle from the mic is also an option.

It may simply be that the EQ is tilted toward the low mids as well, leading to the PA-system feeling I'm getting.

I also recommend a little less aggressive autotune. The attack on some more variable notes was noticeable.

Your breaths are not too distracting, but your S and T's across the board are quite loud. I recommend opening your vocal in another editor and manually de-essing, OR hand-ducking the volume. Once that is done, you can safely use an EQ like EZQ to gently shape the tone of the vocal to be a little tinnier, brighter, warmer -- whatever it is you feel is balanced.

There are some issues before the master. I think I hear clipping at 1:34, on though, show, find my, home, sure, fire, find my, oh, promise, strong, find, and so on. Take a look at your lyrics and follow along, keeping an eye out for these downbeats.

If you are not mixing in 32-bit floating point and the highest sample rates your PC will stand, I recommend switching to it.

If this causes latency issues for you as it did for me, a solution is to print your track to mp3, load up in audacity, and punch in your recordings on a new audio track. Mute newly recorded tracks as you go. After you have normalized the resulting takes and edited as you please, you can then export all your takes separately using Audacity's native functions. Life hack right there.

The master itself is also somewhat quiet and could theoretically be pushed harder, but I think the track was too hot going into the compressor.

Moving onto the instrument balance, the vocals are a bit loud relative to the rest of the track. Perhaps consider taking down by .3 dB. The hi-hats could stand to come down similarly, and the snare up by the same amount. I would reduce the volume of all wet FX by around 25% and shorten reverb and delay tails, hi-passing the wet signals up to 170 hz; you have a perfectly pleasant soft bass in the bottom register, which is hard to hear under the wash!

That's really all I have to say technically for this piece, mix and master being the primary things I look for critically.

As far as songwriting, it's intimate, warm, and there is not one single element I dislike. Your chords are good, your structure is very strong. Your transitions are simple and even abrupt, but they suit the composition totally.

I know I wrote a LOT of critique, but overall, I really enjoyed it and think you did a great job!

AveragePhoe responds:

Hi, so, there's a lot here. Thank you so so much for taking the time to analyze the song so thoroughly and provide such priceless feedback! Mixing is always the hardest step for me in music production (you might notice that if you listen to some of my other songs), and this was only worsened by the tight deadline. While I had more time to work on it, I chose to stop the moment I felt it was good enough to be submitted. The alternative was endlessly obsessing over every detail, and probably going a few nights without sleep. This way, I can go back to it with a clear mind and calmly work on a Spotify release. Still, I'm proud of the song I submitted, and I'm really happy you enjoyed it! Constructive criticism is one of the greatest gifts a creative can receive, so again, thank you so much!