ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[JAMUARY2023 day 8]

Really enjoying the selection of strange sounds. Almost emulates wild animals and machinery at the same time. I think at 0:40 a bit less reverb on that sound and more clipping, as well as some stereo play or perhaps double tracking would help bring it to the front.

The mix is pretty clear, but your growls, if can be called that, are a bit out of place in that heavily reverbed empty space.

The glass taps in the left channel around 1:15 as percs should be down about 2 dB in the mix at least. Quite loud.

But overall I quite like the vibe of this piece. It manages to remind me of dark underground hiphop and industrial at the same time. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Contrasts. (AIM 2023)]

I must say I quite enjoy this piece and the inspiration thereof. I have zero complaints for melodic composition and transition, mostly for mix, for quite some time.

There is a boxy quality to the intro up through 2 minutes. I think I would do a bit of hi-passing instruments and reverb wet signals, or perhaps just cutting those ranges. When the bass comes in, it is not as impactful as it could be, due to the already heavy low mid range at play. I find with ambience, often times less is more, and less low end mud with clearer high end can achieve the illusion of wide open space.

2:45 I think I hear an obvious slow effect on those violins that to me that doesn't quite fit, and the transition to 3:05 is a bit jarring without any other sound. The breathing also I feel would sit better in the left channel at about 20 percent pan, perhaps gently rolling between. It sounds like a person sleeping. And suffering at that.

Great work. Thanks for taking me on a journey!

[Kentucky (Finale)]

Nice! I see a lot of names I recognize on that thank you list :) I love the community here.

I'm appreciating what you're doing with distortion in your intro, nice and cinematic. I think when the lead comes in at around 30 sec it could be panned around or pingpong delayed for effect. It and the distortion are quite bright tonally and stand out from your bass in a way that's not quite what I would expect.

The sidechain makes up for it some, but overall I think your side chain elements, lead, and bass, are too loud for your snare to cut through. Overall good chords through here and varied instrumentation.

At 2:07 that sax sounds a bit clumsy, the bari. It's very verbed out through here, we lose sight of the bass, and I can really hear how loud these are when we have them alone with the house bass/kick/hat. That bigroom kick should take up a lot more space!

I would take down reverb here by a LOT. But I praise the vision and the cross genre work, as well as your consistent theme.

This track shines in its variety and sticking to a theme. The reverb is really hurting it by a lot as the low end shoegaze wash is muddying any limiting, compression, covering up finer areas of mix.

Really though, I find your writing to be a treat. The kick at 4:39 could be tuned to follow the bass line so it doesn't clash with the bass. On the minor i chord it does fine but otherwise the sub clashes with the ... I forget what to call that chord oh well.

Otherwise, really enjoyed the track. Outro section was a pleasant departure there. Watch for clipping at 6:29.

My advice, mix at a quieter volume and keep things clean on your eq. Watch for frequencies below 250 hz on non bass instruments. They will get in the way of bass. Sidechain is your friend but will not fix all mix woes. Snare and kick should be loudest parts of mix, followed by lead and bass. The rest is to your personal taste as long as hi-hat and crash are not sticking out. Beyond that, reverb wash can be turned up on a long cut off or transition and back down for the rest of the track. It can even be sidechained on big sections, mind you. There is so much one can do for clarity.

Best of luck in all your future endeavors. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

50Steaks responds:

I went through, copied the file and implemented most of the stuff you mentioned here to hear how it sounds. I agree that the snare and kick do fall into the background at times but part of my goal with this track was to mix louder than I usually do for the purposes of filling the whole waveform at the guitar solo. Fine tuning the kick is actually a really good idea and helps make that part sound a little better. Given that I use the mobile version, I can’t really tell what hz is where on the little param eq they give you, but then I noticed that I actually boosted the bass frequencies on the sax which was just a bad idea.

Removing the reverb entirely from some instruments at the end makes that part sound cleaner, but at other points bringing the reverb back in for transitions and the guitar part doesn’t really feel right to me.

But your suggestion on sidechaining reverb gives me the best of both worlds. I get to have a cleaner kick while keeping the vibe and atmosphere of the song as it is. I just have to do it manually through an automation track on the mix. I will definitely be doing that in future tracks, that’s for sure.

I’m intrigued by your lack of feedback on the guitar solo, I guess that means I did a good job there.

Thanks for your detailed feedback. You gave me an extra half star as compared to my score from last year so that’s a plus at least. I still have yet to make it to the next round but I guess that’ll have to wait till 24.

[Track 1 - Dystopia in Utopia]

Sick chord progression, and I love the punchy olskool vibe. It takes a while to develop and I find myself wanting a bit more of an obvious lead line, but those synths through 1:24 are infectious. Nice work!

[NeonFD - Illuminated Void]

Levels are really unwieldy in this piece and it could use mastering, but I wanted to drop a 5 for your 5th vote because I so enjoyed your writing.

Stole my heart.

[D.E.A.F]

I'm going to 5 this for the sheer coolness of you being partially deaf. I would love to hear your story and how you produce music differently as a result of your hearing

music69012 responds:

Of course! I would love to answer your questions at any time. How shall we start.

[ColBreakz - 100.000]

Love you, ColBreakz, and glad to see you again this year! It's been a pleasure to watch you grow. I check in every now and then just to see how you're doing. My only critique for you here is the song is a bit over compressed and some of the depth of the growls spatially is lost in that, but sub is sounding okay. I might even take it down by .2 db at some points.

Watch for clipping in the left channel around 2:20, and shortly after in both.

Otherwise great work! Thanks for coming out to NGADM!

[Scourge of the Seven Seas]

Oh how far you have come. My critiques would sit on mix, particularly those stubborn trumpets and some verbs, but I think you know what to do with those. Great work!

CloakedSoup responds:

Thanks! I originally had done like 60% of the work on the mix before uploading this originally, but I never got around to finishing/cleaning it up before moving onto other projects (story of my life haha).

[Clashing Palletes]

I don't have a lot of time to write a good review for this, but I'm going to rate higher than my NGADM judge score because I don't want to hurt your score on NG in the hopes you get exposure. <3

Writing wise this is a good piece, with blazing solos. However mix is hurting pretty badly. There is a lot of reverb masking the clarity of your mix, I can't really hear your kick and snare on big sections (yes I know this is characteristic of chip most times), and the balance between elements is pretty off across the board. If you have time, look up mixing tutorials for chip style and try to implement those in your work, as that would be a massive improvement.

I can tell you put a lot of hard work in this piece. Please keep sharing with your friends, family, and of course here on NG. The only way to get better is hope they tell you what they like and don't like. No matter what, never let the fear of not being good enough stop you. It's through conquering that fear, you will become great!

Much love. Thanks for coming out to NGADM!

ButterBees responds:

Thank you so SO very much for this feedback! I must agree that mixing has been a bit of an issue when making songs on the platform I use, but whenever I find the time to find those tutorials you've mentioned, I'll be sure to add what I've learned to the mix.

I greatly appreciate the support and I hope to improve a lot more in the future! Thanks again!