ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Feel The Rush]

So. Damn. Good.

[HYPERta1L (NGUAC 2025)]

It's because @G2961 is a banger machine. High output, and high quality. It being associated with him is gonna naturally add a lot of traction!

But production is also nice and high quality. You've done a great job with that stuttering trap groove. Makes me want to do it myself. What gate did you use?

Ps, great sound for such a short stack of tracks. Goes to show minimal is not always a bad thing :)

PSS, grats on the frontpage ;)

ZedzyMusic responds:

@G2961 IS a banger machine. he is just SO AMAZING, that's why this is getting so popular. also, my method of making the gate effect wasn't just a 16th note gate effect, it has a certain rhythm when you hear close enough. i actually just set the attack and release to 0, and placed in all the notes myself, which creates annoying phase clicks, but I EQed out the low end, because it's a synth chord, not a bass, and that seemed to help.

also, you DARE DOUBT MINIMALISM??? >:((
im joking lol, thanks for the review (and the front-page) :D

[Zeddius - The Card]

Not typically my style of music, but you've made musescore sing. I'm not sure what magic you used to get these soundfonts in there, but killer sound.

There is a bit of clipping and crackling however that could be removed in a program like RX9.

Besides that, great work!

Zeddius responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

The sounds I used aren't anything particularly special, they're just from MuseScore's official free plugins in the Muse Sounds range, designed exsoressly for MuseScore Studio (except for the piano, which was IK Multimedia's Pianoverse). MuseScore Studio supports third-party VSTs surprisingly well; stuff like Serum just shows up as an option from the mixer menus.
With plugins more focused around mixing and post-processing, I haven't been able to find a whole lot of options to master the sounds, although I will sometimes bounce it into FL Studio to do so, usually if it's a part of a larger project within that.

Thanks again, appreciate the support!

[Zerky - Wishing For You.]

Very clean, with gorgeous basses and transitions. I may be biased. I just love womps and this genre in general.

The only thing I can find to critique is the upper range could use just a bit more air, and the mids opened up a tad on the EQ. This of course would be pretty difficult to accomplish given the fine balance of the master as is. You've done a great job of taming what most bass house producers don't -- the hi-hats and transitions, and that's awesome. So I would just apply very small bumps or shelves.

Slamming track though. Just pure noice.

[Meteor]

Absolutely killing the retro vibes! Only way it could get better is to clean up the low mids (mostly reverb wet signal) and compress the master a bit. We have a lot of peaks that I can see, meaning it can be pushed harder.

Also, what laptop. 17 years and still kicking? That's beautiful to see.

Voytek-Music responds:

Thanks for your review! When I was making this one, I was sick and I made it in 3 hours, so the mix may be a bit bad.

Idk what laptop model, but Ik it's a Dell (it originally used windows 7 (when it was NEW)).

[Swirly Skies]

You know, it's hard to make a piano piece that I really, sincerely want to listen to, but you've done it. I'm very impressed with the modulations, flawless playing, and quality of recording. It doesn't get much better than this. Or if it does, I'm not sure how to quantify it.

One thing. I would have liked that final chord to ring out to completion, and if the audio were normalized.

[Absolution]

That first bass is just beautiful. Though I feel it's a bit flat in the stereo field. Maybe something like WideFire would open it up and brighten it a bit. That's what I feel it lacks, bright low mids.

Besides that, nice groovy track, perfect for zoning out, sitting at the bar at the club, or just watching the fancy lasers. :P

Ultimatepalmtree3 responds:

Thanks for the feedback, I’ll look into that! :D

[UNCOMPERSICK]

Bro, the amount of different sound sources, glitches, and layering had me do the fast blink, shortly after a solid "wtf"

Structurally and in sense of sampling and sound design, this is mind blowing. Clean it up a bit, back off the sausage fattener just a bit, and this would be straight up perfect. At present, the lack of dynamic contrast is a little tiring for the ears, especially on sections where you have a lot going on in the low mids, not a lot of side-chain, and so on.

Still the level of crazy in this piece is totally appropriate considering your username lol.

I like your snare roll prior to 2:53. Could do without the powerdrill azz lead at 3:09 -- back it off at least a little for that gabbery kick to breathe! You make up for it well after the drop though.

Absolutely crazy beat, dude. Great work. Please excuse my word vomit as it's hard to think with so much coming at my ears lol.

[Treachery]

I would recommend playing your track against references to address some issues of mix balance here -- after applying mastering compression and bringing this up to a suitable volume.

The themes here are VERY NICELY written, and sound design is not bad! The issue here is primarily in leveling. The rhythm guitars and wubs are far down in the mix, the master is quiet (not even approaching 0 dB), and the drums -- if we were to fix the master volume -- would then be far too loud, excepting the kick. It can afford to be pretty loud.

It's just that you're butting up against both the problems of mixing for metal AND mixing for dubstep and other EDM genres. It's very hard to pull off both, speaking as someone who has tried and many times failed, despite being competent-ish at both.

Your drum grooves sound lovely though.

Another thing that consistently bugged me is most everything feels centered. Partly owing to lack of double or maybe even quadtrack as would be needed for this piece and the thinness of those high-tuned guitars. Actually, if you were going to keep these guitars, I would recommend quad tracking even just the root note of your chords one octave down. I just can't pick out a double-track if there is in fact one due to how quiet the whole mix is.

But by all means, try studying up on YouTube about mixing and mastering electronic metal, synth metal, symphonic metal, and so on, and then get into mastering metal. Apply the principles you learn to what you've already released but still have projects for. Grab a reference track to compare against and work to get as close to that mix balance and power as possible. Then compare the end result to the piece you released. I promise, you will learn so much. You'll blow this track out of the water.

Would love to see you continue in this vein, and soon. I very much like where this is going!

TotallyDementedOff responds:

Mixing is still something I have mostly no clue about, yeah, that's a thing that needs A LOT of work on. Especially for different genres since I don't really listen and know much about metal(or rock or whatever), this is me taking a genre I don't really care about and making it into something for my taste, if that makes sense.
As weird as it sounds, my music is just making something that sounds good to me, without much knownledge about music theory, instruments, mixing etc etc.
Also big thanks for the feedback.

[SM64 Bowser's Road/Alternate Route Remix [EToH XL Remix]]

I've moved this to VGM because that better fits this awesome piece. DnB is more for pieces that are overarchingly DnB, and putting it there could affect your ratings negatively.

Besides a bit of muddy reverb, this piece sounds great. The master however is very quiet. Compressing it to make up for this may expose balance issues, but without that compression I can't really comment on those, beyond that the bass is relatively quiet.

Besides, nice work. I really enjoyed the sound of this piece overall.

ThePhoenix25 responds:

Thanks for the feedback! Yea I do have trouble uploading with normal volume, hopefully in University I learn better lol cause on a different computer to what I usually use is awkward. Thx :)