ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Big Bugs Middle Of The Night]

Did not like the bit crush on the intro BUT:

Great melody and overall theme, conforms to genre.

Panning and levelling is where the piece falls short. Cymbals are quiet and very centered, almost dry, bass and kick are slightly too loud, and compression may be a bit on the high side. In general on the speedcore sections, I felt that the mix was very centered and flat in terms of EQ balancing.

However, the transitions and switchups are very clean and cause the piece to flow well. Wish it were longer!

[Novenarious]

NGADM shortnotes:
Piece has a great melody and good arrangement for the genre, in 9/4 which is an interesting innovation.

Mix and master are where it could stand to improve. Master could use more compression.

Bass and synths should be sidechained to kick and snare a bit harder, enabling turning the kick down. The kick is creating a pumping feeling under the master compressor, telling me it is potentially a few dB too high. There is also a bit much reverb, and the lead is spread slightly too thin.

Besides that, great groove!

82/100

MrSpud8 responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

[Feel free to freestyle.]

A fantastic laid back beat to freestyle on. Only thing it lacks is a hard master. Meaning it's a little quiet. And the 808 could come up in volume a bit

The 808 sounds like it might be out of tune by one semitone on the tonic note of the beat, but I kind of like it actually. You could open the midi back up and play around with leaving it where it is at the start of the bar and lower it by one later in the bar -- hard to explain over text but transpose it up 12 semitones and you'll hear what I mean -- it doesn't match the bottom note of the piano chord.

Either way, more like this please

TonyaBROWN-LIFFORD responds:

Thanks, I've been trying to produce better, and I love hearing people's honest response about this.

[Like a Funk Machine]

Nice to see another mixcraft 10 user out in the wild. I don't have the time to leave a uber detailed review, but I wanted to say this is really catchy. What stops me from leaving a full 5 is the track appears unmastered, for one, and the levels of different instruments are a bit off, including some of the panning.

The kick and snare, as well as the bass for at least some of the track should be centered. Otherwise, things are going to feel quite unbalanced. Hihats and other instruments like being spread out, but on most speakers moving the bass around creates phase issues, or just doesn't sound as pleasant.

Your breaks also should be nice and loud, followed by your bass.

Then there are issues where the high freqs are a bit over pronounced. I know you said you're a deaf musician in your tags so I get it if you have severe tinnitus (I do too)

Maybe send your tracks to a friend for their thoughts on balance and EQ, or find a reference and try to match it by eye and ear? There has to be a way. I know Andrew Huang adjusted his monitor headphones with an EQ to compensate for his complex hearing loss.

Anyway, nice little groove. Keep doing what you do!

FeistyFennekin responds:

Thank you so much for commenting on this song, I really appriciated it and I also love the comment and what needed improving.

Yes, I am deaf, but wears hearing aids which is a slight problem with it. But I have just got a new plugin that can read the eq and also improve the sounds a little more better.

I can't wait to release a new project which is it upcoming soon! (no matter what, if i got through or not) I will already love to release new music and get good ideas on what should I do next.

The next project I am working on which I don't want to give a spoiler but can give you a genre. Cyberpunk style.

See you next time!

Feisty Fennekin

[Why Do They Build The Walls Like That?]

The master could be louder, and the vocal could stand to be more present overall, along with the rhythm guitar, but the playing, delivery, and treatment on the production is great. A little Youtube university on cleaning up mix mud and mixing in-your-face will solve 110% of that.

Overall I felt the mix/master was a bit muffled and held back but certainly an improvement from your previous works. Fantastic to hear you grow and change as an artist <3

92/100

Mischa-head responds:

Thank you!

[Remember To Stretch]

The quality of instruments selected combined with mixing decisions and quiet master prevents me from being able to give this a great score. It's a good piece melodically and in terms of structure. With a good mix, the instrument quality wouldn't even be an issue, since there are plenty of videogame songs that use such instrumentation.

I will say if you're going to have lots of repeat notes, you can stand to use velocity modulation to differentiate them.

I won't go too far into the details of what can be done to mix this better. That can be done via Youtubing -- lots of free education out there to get you on your way. What I will say is that the hihats and cymbals should be somewhat offset from the kick and snare, the kick and snare should be centered, and perhaps add a bit of reverb to the kit overall to help it mesh with the rest of the instrumentation. The bass should also be centered and at or near mono, and quite a bit louder.

The illusion of space can be achieved by taking your rhythm synths and pads, finding patches that sound similar, and panning them slightly separate from one another in opposite chanels.

Besides that, not bad!

66/100

ZuwerWS responds:

Thanks for the review, I'm kind of shocked you still gave it a higher score than I would, I know the mixing is really bad here, since there's basically none present, just some basic audio leveling, disabling or lowering some specific frequencies, and that's about it. I'm glad you liked the melody though, I still think it's my best composition that I did for jamuary.

[Supernova [5/6]]

That bass is deceptively simple but applied extremely well. Everything is on point about this. Mix, master, panning, variety and transitions, chorus fx, intro, outro, bridge, application of genre tropes.

Minor bits of critique would be to more finely control amount and low frequency of reverb, watching for low and mid-mid frequencies overlapping in your quieter sections, and to ensure that your aux percussion does not get completely lost on your drop pre 2:20. I would have loved to her some of those metallic noises shimmer a bit more, and I think you could do that by either cutting freqs elsewhere, panning a bit harder, or just slightly turning them up under that hard compression.

Also the kick at 3:31 sounds a bit overcompressed to the point of clipping and could use some more crisp, and 3:46 it is slightly too loud. I might just change out the kick in that instance, as it doesn't sound like it's in the key or a related harmonic of the song. It could use to be turned down somewhat or wetted... something subtle.

But I only noticed this on passthrough 2 so it's not that big of an issue obviously ;)

94/100

[『The Final Destiny』]

The guitar and bass articulations in your intro are somewhat unnatural and overtly synthy, and I would recommend reducing pick noise if possible to compress and bring up your intro melody. The mix overall has a lot of low frequency noise from reverb wet signals leading into your build, and I think the vinyl noise could be tamed.

When we reach the drop, neither the sub bass, nor the side-chained color/pads are clear, and the bass is both quite busy and panned side to side every other note. Because we retain a lot of the same elements from the intro, it lacks a sense of progression/awe, despite none of the elements being very bad at all.

Your approach to panning the hihats and drums on the verse leaves the center feeling pretty empty, though it is unique.

The following build is where things get interesting, but again the reverb must be tamed, and I recommend subtle sidechain here.

The 2nd drop also suffers from the same issues as the first, but add to that that the drums are too far stereo spread, especially the snare, which is panned to the left. Only the braahms or saws maintain presence in the center, when I think it should be the other way around. I feel as if despite wearing headphones, I'm sitting across the room from a sound system because of this.

The track would have much more power if you were to put the kick and snare in the center, sidechain and otherwise cut down those reverbs, and bring the bass into mono below 200 hz.

Sound design wise nothing is bad at all. Your arrangement, drop cadence, structure, and melodies are all good! What harms this piece is being overly stereowidened. I can hear the characteristic phase all over the master. So despite being loud in terms of waveform, it sounds quiet and far away.

Drop 3 and 4 also suffer the same way as earlier.

Something else that is uniformly happening on all of your drops is, the color noise and rhythm synths are much louder than they should be, and verb is all over the place.

In order of loudness, you should have kick, bass, snare, rhythm synths, lead, cymbals, pads, and hihats. The difference between the kick, bass, and snare relative to the rest is going to shock you, as they should be the absolute loudest, and the rest differ slightly less in volume as you go down the list. I wish I could explain this better, but I would have to give you a reference. I'm sure there is something in my own work that I could think of off the top of my head, but you would be probably better off selecting your own genre reference, something you really enjoy.

Overall, this is a fantastically written and nicely varied piece which despite the mountains of critique and gripes with mix I had I certainly enjoyed listening to, especially that kick frenzy at the end which reminded me a bit of terrorcore lol. No matter what, keep making music, and don't let anyone's comments get to you. You're a star <3

71/100

paranoidkid2580 responds:

I forgot to reply this lol

but tyty

[Less is More (Cambio)]

The overall sound profile of this is pretty mid and low mid heavy, with lots of reverb noise that can be cut (low frequencies can distract from the finer details of your mix where you actually want the listeners' attention). I recommend some study of mixing and production through YT university if you catch my drift for your favorite genres.

The spacing of your percussion is also not what I'm used to hearing from cinematic tracks. It's certainly very wide and spacious, but I would generally not recommend spacing out toms what sounds to be 70-80% like it's the 50's-70's. This is a technique I only generally see in N64 soundtracks (occasionally) in modern years and can be a bit jarring.

Your track also ends somewhat abruptly.

The melodic elements however are well enough developed. I would suggest some study of song structures from your genre of choice for spacing, as I did not feel a strong sense of progression to a climax, or an ebb and flow of energy so to speak.

However I do laud you for the unique approach to every aspect of the song. This shows attention to detail and emotional attachment to what you're doing -- pride and a sense of care for your work!

Overall, 66/100

Good work!

DaxCamdaxian responds:

You seem to be a person who knows a lot about technique and music production, I have noticed that many musicians and people that know about how to mix and stuff tend to be very blunt with their comments towards songs that are mixed with experimentation and innovation in mind, your criticism is completely valid and I really appreciate that you have taken the time to analyze my song... but I think you criticize it from a very technical angle, very square, and I don't like that, i think we are missing a point here

[Wanna Be With You Dear]

Shreddage is one of my favorite E guitar synths.

Some things I would recommend, spreading out your guitars more -- double-tracking the rhythm with the A and B options in Shreddage, and panning them 100% L and R respectively with slightly different amps or cabs. This will help create an illusion of space.

The mix and arrangement somewhat harms the feeling of space, despite nothing being terribly wrong with your E guitars. Having used Shreddage for 10 years I can identify the single notes in the high octaves chugging along at slightly different velocities. I think more FX was needed there, more modulation. I can easily identify repeat notes, and it sounds a bit naked and clean. Sounds balanced slightly more to the left channel.

That said the arrangement is great, it just sounds like a few of the guitars are out of balance, either hiding in the mix, not doubled, or just slightly too loud without having been panned strongly enough. Other than that I have no complaints.

Also, the master is very quiet for such an energetic and happy track!

Otherwise, great work!

78/100

SnugglyBun responds:

I only been doing rock and related music relatively recently so there's still stuff I have to learn about it. Thanks for the kinds words and feedback.