ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[My brother in a 2003 Ford Focus]

Nice heavy riffage here, but it's really hard to hear what's going on. I don't know if you're going for a lo-fi blackmetal aesthetic.

You've got a lot of frequencies sticking out on your guitars like sore thumbs, mostly just the distortion fuzz. I would recommend going through with something like ReaEQ and pinpointing them to bring down.

I can't hear if you have any reverb on anything, but if you do, bringing down the wet send and 250hz and below is a good move. I would actually cut your rhythm guitars off at 250 hz. The bass will take up this room nicely and it will sound better.

The drums here are struggling to cut through. Try turning everything else down until you can hear them clearly. That will help your aesthetic by miles, even excepting any guitar mixing issues.

But other than that, really enjoyed it. Super br00tal <3

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

jebuscrust9 responds:

I appreciate your feedback. I was absolutely going for a black/death metal type sound, so that may have influenced my decision making which in turn may have made things muddy.

I'll definitely try out some of the tips you gave, hopefully I'll have figured some of this stuff out by my next song. Glad you enjoyed it :)

[Psychedelic Dream - Lo-Fi Beat]

Love the reversed piano here. Think the sub could be a little less pronounced at 0:10 or so through 0:20.

I actually think the kick and snare may be about .2 to .5 dB too loud, and 808 about the same.

Otherwise, good structure, good use of samples. I think the sax is a little out of tune, and not in like, the pleasant way. But beyond that, song sounds great.

Yeah was totally unexpected also

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

IXentimenTI responds:

Hey. Thank you for you input.

Your criticisms of mixing are accurate, and reason for mentioned flaws is fact that this was actually mixed around vocals which were turned off. Recording quality of those vocals was not great so I had to compensate with beat itself when mixing.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean about saxophone being out of tune, but again, my pitch is far from great so I guess that covers that.

I'm glad you enjoyed the song though, and I'm also glad NGUAC is still going strong.

[Singularity]

Nice writing going on everywhere here. I have some issues with particularly moving points the bassist chose not to follow you here but that's neither here nor there. Mostly just fills.

Whatever that wah instrument is, it gets really muddy throughout. I'd say it probably needs some low cut, usually I cut up to 250 hz. I'd also take it down some.

I can barely hear the bass and drums throughout.

How are you tracking these guitars? It sounds like the lead is only in the right channel, so it's covering up what sounds like Right Rhythm, and making Left Rhythm sound out of balance.

It sounds like there is reverb everywhere, all over your lead, all over the rhythm, maybe on the master, a lot of boxy low mid sound coming off of it covering up your bass, drums, and washing over the rhythm. Cut that and see how it sounds to you. I actually would cut 250 hz off of every instrument that's not a drum or bass. We like to think power comes from rhythm low end. It actually comes from bass and rhythm locking up together. We don't need that stuff on lead.

Drums should be the loudest part of your track. I hear what sounds like distortion in some places, or I should say clipping. Try turning everything else down until you comfortably hear the drums cutting through.

Otherwise great listen. Really enjoyed it.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Introverse responds:

Hello. Thank you for great feedback !

I always find handling low fqs the hardest part of every mix. It's either too much or too little...I also tried experimenting with panning guitar mics on my amp simulation, could be that I overdid it...anyway, thanks for great feedback ! I wish I could get more of it theese days...Cheers!

[Didillead]

This is absolutely wilding. I'm not really understanding a whole lot of what is going on, as is probably the nature with DJing tools and anything less than a complete mastery of the tool. It sounds really cool, though.

Throughout, there are a lot of cool little motifs, but nothing super cohesive. The drums are much quieter than the synths and bass, which makes it hard to feel a real connection to the rhythms.

Outro probably could be better served as dropping the percussion and keeping the bass and ... I don't know necessarily what those keys are anymore by name. Curse my lack of genre-specific vocabulary, haha.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[A Breath of freedom]

Watch that velocity on your piano -- that bottom note sticks out as the same velocity.

Piece isn't badly written at all, but I would cut your reverb sends by about a quarter and low cut up to 250 hz on the individual sends. On your drops, it's particularly noticeable, and also covers up those flute parts that come in at 1:40.

I think those could have been better written and a bit less heavy handed with the REALLY strong attacks. No flute player plays with that intonation on every note. You can correct the volume difference between velocities with compression, as you please. But on their intro, it's perfect fifth intervals on up to the drop, then they completely drop off, as if understanding, hey, that's really intense sounding, let's chill. When you're ascending into the drop, I wouldn't make symmetrical movements. Have one of them hit a third or something. Actually, ascending thirds sounds much better than fifths. And really, if you don't have a fancy library, I tend to always think synths are a better alternative to iffy real instruments.

Also, there's a kontakt library called Egyptian Ney that makes a great flute replacer. If you want to hear it, I used it in one of my tracks, Oncoming Storm.

Piece as a whole is cohesive, doesn't have any real flops. Just those couple things that stick out to me.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[New Cyber]

Really surprised me by the drop around 28 seconds in contrast to that intro.

Some comments on mix. Your percussion is hiding a bit behind your synth line. I would take said line down .5 to 1 dB. It gradually seems to get louder at points.

The piece itself is super minimal, with one instrument seeming to take the responsibility of both lead and bass until the second drop. And I think that may even be an instance of the same instrument. The triplets are a nice touch.

There are plenty of stabs or orchestral samples, choirs that you could have laid over the second drop and following verses that would have really livened up this piece. As is I still enjoyed it, but their absence was definitely on my mind.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Dirt Dog (NGUAC Submission)]

Nice intro here. I definitely feel the biggest critique is going to be mixing. Intro is very reverb heavy -- I'd low cut that wet up to 250 hz, take down the send some.

Drop 1 is nicely done. 1:39 continues with interesting noises to enjoy. Like flying through a field of buzz saws and electric drills.

Yeah, really, mix is all I feel is necessary to comment on. Everything else is if not passable, then good. Your sub in sections like 2:53 I would bring up, maybe even compress those sections a bit more. The percussion is a bit too loud in those very naked sections, especially with a sidechain.

By 3:36 it sounds like the whole song is destructing at points. I have no way of seeing what you were envisioning writing it as it speeds up rapidly and is over quickly. Maybe append one last drop there.

By 4:06 I'm wanting to end with a nice minor i piano chunk chord.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

IAmDeadOnTheInside responds:

Bruh, thanks for actually providing opportunities like that! And I don't think I've ever gotten a review that thorough before on a track.

[The Smirking Prolapse (cool song listen!!)]

This description is probably the most interesting thing I've read in a while. This is.... Absolute death to my ears, not because the idea is bad, but because it probably could be lit with better mixing (drums with the exception of the kick need to come up), more understandable structuring and sounding a bit less thrown together, and probably better recording quality but I don't really care about that if you're going as avantgarde as this.

Also, is that a mixcraft kick? I feel like it's a mixcraft kick.

Followed because I like weird shit.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Rayne]

Not dubstep did someone say? I call bull. Just because the wobbles are reesy doesn't mean it ain't dubstep.

Now, I would say the structuring of this song could use some work, particularly where the perc comes in and we think we're going to get a drop, but we continue the verse.

You've done some really cool things with your basses. I could compress the different ones during the drop so they're about the same loudness as one another. The disparities there are a little distracting.

Also take care that your basses are not getting in the way of one another. On your later verses, I can hear the frequencies struggling to come to the fore.

Some things that are lacking here, solid transitions, as in the noises themselves, crashes. That's more or less stock to the genre. I would probably actually not use a reverbed sine bass just for how muddy they tend to sound.

But your melodic content and idea overall are great. Enjoyed the listen.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Giraf- Calm Rupture]

Interesting piece, percussion heavy. Sounds like a mix between trap and dubstep.

Mix here to me is super reverb heavy -- I'd cut those wet sends down and low cut to 250 or so hz, considering we have an 808 to make room for. You could probably sidechain the kick or any really plosive FX to the bass for good measure. Where the reverb really steals my attention from your composition is in those long-tails like at 2:11 and 2:25. It's really boxy sounding there.

I would say 808 and those growls could stand to come down a dB or two. The way it is now, it pushes the percussion out of balance. Perc should be the loudest part of your mix, especially with bass music. And I would bring out more of your 12khz to 18khz there. You may have speakers that are overly representing sibilant sounds in the mix and be mixing them down to compensate, thus crunching them off on other sound systems. I'm listening on monitoring headphones and it's giving a degraded audio quality type sound.

The outro section is out of the key of your bass. I would just port that down until I could play my bassline over it and it sounded good. Once done, drop the bassline out. Presto, non-clashing outro.

Throughout there seems to be not clipping but a lot of harmonic distortion from being compressed. Dunno if you mixed this with FX on the master, but if you did, I would avoid that. Especially with trap or dubstep instrumentation, these instruments are very sensitive to work with when mixing. I would cut off your master channel, turn the computer volume down to 20%, and then mix until it sounds good to you at even that volume. It's more of a challenge, given the natural way the brain perceives loudness to be goodness, and will force you to make good decisions.

Interested to see what you come up with next. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

girafj responds:

Hey ADR3-N! I really like long, detailed replies like these because its nice to know that someone took the time to help me get better at music as a whole. Your feedback was extremely helpful in understanding more about fixing the muddiness of my mix, and I appreciate the rating.

That being said, I understand what you're saying about the reverb heavy sounds. In the sections you mentioned, there is a loud downsweep of white noise that I added to fill the high end, but didn't EQ, so the tail just sat there filling up the section a little too much.

Regarding the 808/growls, both had sidechain, but the transient still came through for some reason I couldn't figure out before I started the final master. The dilemma I had with the percs being too quiet was because they were out of tune with the higher frequencies so I had to cut quite a bit of them.

One tip I do get quite often is to listen to my song on other monitors, headphones, etc. I'm working on getting new speakers and I will take this into account.

Lastly, this song wasn't mastered because I was getting it out too quickly, I believe you're getting the "harmonic distortion" feel because the a couple sounds in the same frequency are slightly crushed, with didn't turn out well in the final mix. Thanks so much for this feedback, I will be sure to take it all into consideration in my next track. NGUAC was awesome, and it was great to see all the other amazing, better tracks that others created. Thanks!