ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[anxiety]

While I may not necessarily be in love with the intro to first bit of verse in terms of performance (I feel they could have been a bit more confident is all!) as soon as all comes together with the two of you singing proud, song is gold!

There are a few issues where on multiple takes I can hear dead mic noise. Noise reduction in RX7 or another softwhere which will allow you to learn deadnoise pattern and intelligently remove it from the signal will usually do the trick without damaging the takes as EQ or multiband might. I experimented with my own airconditioner ruined takes, and 2 passes did it, learning the silent portions between for each. The worry prone such as myself will do well to save a copy prior and save over the file with the noiseless version thereafter.

I actually think the balance toward Trois' choral portions could be a bit more open. At present she is hiding in the mix on the bigger vocal sections, when I would really love to hear that free, breathy quality there hiding in the mix. Potentially bring Chris and the guitars down just a tad to make room for her? Hmm..

Beyond that on larger sections the dead noise does come into play where there are multiple takes and cuts, but again you are working with TONS of them in the project so this is understandable. You're doing an older chorus method, overdubs and so on, so there is going to be lots of noise, and it's hard to be rid of all of it!

In terms of instrumentation, composition, and lyrics, and all elements brought to the fore save what I have already mentioned, you two have brought to the table something so, so special. Working absolute magic over there across the pond. Fantastic work, and as always, lovely to hear from you <3

[LIVE THIS WAY (internet addiction)]

Banging lyrics. I think the vocals could use a bit less crisp, could use a bit of pingpong delay. At times they are too loud, but not offensively so.

Mix wise, it is hard to make out finer points of the instrumental -- bass doesn't pop, potentially needs more drive/clip, and more hi mid

Due to volume of vocals, is hard to make out side synths. Recommend dynamic compression on them and abusing sidechain tbh

the kick sounds pretty high. No one is forcing you to use a typical hyperpop kick. You can dig in your sample box for a lower, grittier kick

Snare seems to lay flat in the mix, recommend a sneaky delay slapback for space or tasteful reverb.

Otherwise, great song, and really catchy!

Ackee39 responds:

Thank you so much for the incredibly detailed mixing advice!! I wanted to revisit this submission when i get back from vacation to polish it more in the mixing department, so this was really helpful :D

[Skyrail Ascension]

I don't think there is a whole lot wrong with this piece other than things that would be due to your hearing loss (which I'm terribly sorry to hear about! I have it as well but not severely enough that it's hard to compensate)

I can't pick out a bassline throughout, it is difficult to hear kick and snare, though hihat thankfully is not too loud to compensate. Overall, there is a lot of reverb that creates a shoegaze, making it difficult to hear guitar and other instruments throughout. That's really all. Beyond that, the ideas you present are coherent and not at all bad.

Next time, don't be shy, enter with your mastering engineer of choice, or specify you will have someone do that for you because of your hearing loss. I think that's a really unfair disadvantage for one to have :(((

[Ghostly Grooves]

At first I was not quite won over by the intro here, but your chords and lead lines are funky indeed. My bones of contention sit on mix almost entirely.

The hihats are a bit loud and could have some highs rolled off of them.

Bass is a bit hard to make out and could use some high mid character, perhaps some drive

The rhodes could use a bit more presence in the stereo space

Leads such as 2:07 are very treble heavy and sit high in the mix. Turning them down a bit or having some more control on the very high treble would be great. The lead at 2:32 is a perfect example of proportionate volume and a nice mellow complement to the rest of your instrumentation.

Kick would actually do much better if you were to pick, say, a fuzzy boombap sample. The clicky kick does not have a lot of presence and is more or less hiding in the mix. It otherwise could use more volume.

It feels as if the drums are lying flatly in the mix. Some attention to stereo width, slapback delay, reverb, dynamic compression, and panning is needed. I think it is just their mechanical, gridded nature as well, contrasting the flowing solos. I would appreciate a different ride cymbal or more articulations. Clap/snare could come down some as it is currently acting as lead clap over the solos and bass, contributing to other mix issues.

Master compression for this otherwise flawless masterpiece would help this piece along a lot.

Beyond that I have no critique. I really enjoy what you've written a lot and think you did a great job, particularly with phrasing, chords, and lead writing in particular. That bassline is subtle and moving at the same time, and the piece flows solidly from end to end, which slick transitions between sections.

[Eclipse [NGADM 2023]]

This is about as good as house sound design gets! Excellent. My complaints are reserved to mix and volume level for various sections, as transitions.

Loudness at 1st drop is GREAT, but I am struggling to hear finer points of mix, particularly your clap is becoming buried (and I know, who gives a fuck about the clap as far as listening to it intently, but it's there for balance!) Also that perc that sounds like a low tuned guiro is mid heavy and sounds like it's sitting directly above my head like a ceiling fan. I might chorus that and spread it left and right respectively to about 25% left/right pan.

Now what is causing this apparent burying is not that your clap is too quiet, it sounds, but that the basses and side synths are too loud by perhaps up to 2 dB. I might also take down hihat by .2 dB.

Mix at 1:19 is approaching perfect. The gated chords/synths could come down somewhat and be autopanned slightly for more illusion of space. At 1:55 I want to hear more of them, with some creative filtering.

1:34 sounds a bit too oud for the preceding section. I would pull a gradual crescendo through here or make the preceding section louder.

that hey prior the final drop I would have loved to hear much louder

2:42 nearly nails the mix problems I was talking about earlier. They're better here. Not quite perfect but much improved.

I would have liked a longer final drop to pull off that breakdown you inserted at 2:48.

And with those nitpicks out of the way, I'd like to say what a grand slam of a track this is otherwise. Fantastic and driving piece. Great work!

Benji-G responds:

Thank you so much ADR3-N!

[Terminal]

Lovely atmospheric piece, very spacy, reminds me of olskool gaming back in the day. Banjo Tooie actually

Minor gripes-
The drums are not popping, and seem to be missing a lot of low mid, could be a problem of compression and EQ

hihats through 3:16 are so loud! though I love the panning

3:36, as with other sections of drums, I believe panning could be applied to the drums to help give them some space. Alternatively, they can be processed through a plugin like Diablo for width, dynamic compression, and transient shaping. I used to use KSHMR Essentials Kick for a free fix

Overall the piece is fairly laid back and suffers from a few mix woes, mostly just the drums being out of balance. Drums should be the loudest portion of a mix, namely kick and snare, while hats and tambourines and such accent off to the side. I also can't recall any crashes throughout

On 2nd listen, be sure your bitcrushed drums at 2:08 are balanced. The snare there is quiet, which is not bad for such a section, but the hat, if that is a hat, is quite loud. I would actually double check that highs are represented well on whatever system you are mixing on so they are not over done.

I really enjoy your sensitive approach throughout to phrasing, arrangement, and especially your use of panning for leads. Your transitions are great, and you have an ear for atmosphere in the extreme. Takes me almost back to the club. Great work!

[Not Like This Again]

I am utterly aghast you criticize your voice at all. I think it's crisp, clean, and refreshingly natural.

Also amazed you mixed this on apple earphones. I also have tinnitus so I sympathize with mixing with one's eyes LOL. I constantly hear cicadas, crickets, whining computer parts, and TV static that isn't really there. It's a challenge to cut through that. Sometimes sounds like I'm listening to the world through a drink straw.

Only mix critique I have is that vocals be bumped up a dB or two, and hihats and cymbals conversely come down a wee bit. Beyond that, this is about as perfect for me as it gets. Perhaps the open close hi-hat could move a bit to the left channel, 5 percent or so, with room overhead emphasized in the right, if applicable. I also can't hear toms too well, perhaps .4 dB boost or less would do the trick there.

I feel your automations of FX serve your phrasing really well, and the choice of Battery with previously recorded samples was a genius idea.

Also, glad to have surprised you with my true nature LOL. I'm a goof with resting bitch face in the nth degree, and I like to make weird faces.

SpoonMix responds:

I agree 100%. Aware that the voice can be louder and could use some more automation. I just listened to this again yesterday and, yuup, my voice is low again. As for the drums, my performance wasn't good, and I'm not working on my drumming skills. It should work for demo purposes and I should hire a real drummer for anything serious!

Thank you for the time, Adrean! I've learned many things from you, including "resting bitch face"... :D

[NDXL - Last Time]

Really appreciating the blend of various EDM stylings here, though I think the piece as a whole could be bumped at points a few bpm faster.

Some things I notice off the bat --
track is compressed probably harder than it needs to be

Sidechain is very hard to make room for not quite being able to hear snare on drops, and synths on the side are very loud, like at 2:50, notice that lead is much louder than the snare

I do appreciate the hihats are not SCREAMING loud, though they could potentially use less reverb and instead be ping-ponged subtly left and right, or incorporate more articulations, open, close, roll, different samples etc. They are loud enough that they should be more interesting imo.

I feel mix is off balance, lead is audible which is good, but it's in the mid range, which the human ear naturally hears already as quite loud. On sections where it is present, it is hard to hear bass as well.

The drop around 1 min, that snare is buried in the mix and almost impossible to hear even with hard side chain. The bass also sounds a bit hollow (not the sub) perhaps due to overly chorusing and potentially not enough clipping/drive/saturation or over applying harmonics. I can't tell which at the moment.

I listened through twice to 3 times to see if there was anything else I could add, but I think the last I can think of is perhaps sidechain is too aggressive on the amount of dB ducked in places, and the combination of hard compression, high volume hihats, a subby mix, loud leads, and an almost absent snare on drops causes the song to fall a bit flat -- OH I know what it is now for the final drop -- the harmony synths and lead are blowing out the bass and other elements due to being turned up too loud, and sidechain is a bit overdone there, causing the song to sound flat.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed your approach to structure, transition, melodies, and virtually every other stylistic choice you made. Aside from mix, an absolutely banging dance track!

NDXLOfficial responds:

Thank you so much! I really appreciate the mixing feedback. Over the last few days listening back I was picking up on things I wanted to change about it, but since I only had 4 days I could work on but here wasn't much I could do about it at that point. If I make it into the next round you can expect a much better mix from me!

[Flight of the Drake]

Mix on the portion at 22 seconds is quite off balance, with the strings far off in the left being much louder than the rest of the ensemble. This is present more or less throughout, but for the intro particularly, I struggle to hear the woodwinds clearly at all, and they should be giving somewhat of a pulse, if I am picking up on what you were intending them to do.

The progression to me sounds familiar to me as a staple for the epic cinematic genres, which may have to do with my having watched tons and tons of historical, LoTR and etc., as well as anime, and less with it not being an actually epic piece or w/e.

My problems mostly sit with lots of reverb throughout and some muddy sections such as 1:12. I definitely feel like articulations of lower brass could have had more attention paid to them, the synth brasses chosen for low brass could certainly be thickened with multiple instances of either synths, or false round robins crafted out of neighboring notes. Even transposing up sections, rendering output, and then pitching down the results would help, panned out to separate space and so on. The descending 8ths at 1:25 stood out to me as very thin and synthy.

Also, flute flourishes are hiding in the mix as well.

I will say tuba at 1:59 sounds as great as I can expect a synth to sound!

Overall I would like more out of your low brass and low string sections, and more of a ratio of them to leads as the song progresses toward climax. I look at the waveform and the loudest portion is your 35 to 51 second section. That should to my mind be more for a mf, not a f. The next section goes on at mf until 1:29, which I think potentially should crescendo to f or perhaps ff at our tidy cliff hanger, 1:36. Contrast is king. Dip down post-haste, return to f or ff, or even fff, as we change keys for the outro.

Beyond that, the more I listen, the more I like this piece. Just some minor issues of this synth here, or that mixing nitpick there. I wanted to stop while I'm here and tell you how proud I am to have watched you progress throughout the years. You are an astonishingly gifted composer with a knack for finding the right tools for the job, with great instrumentations even better phrasing. This and many other things have only improved with time. You almost make it seem effortless. Great work!

CloakedSoup responds:

Thanks for the detailed review! I agree with a lot of the mixing critiques, as that was the most underdeveloped part that I worked on due to the limited amount of time I spent on the track as a whole (as the description notes). I'm definitely happy with how I have progressed over the years as well! :D

[Lets see that Exhaust! (NGADM)]

This is such a cute song! And well written. Only wish it were louder. Mastering compression would do it well! And perhaps to take down the hihats some, and add more layers to backing claps with stereo panning. What I do hear sounds good :)