ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Just break it.]

This reminds me of 90s breakbeats, videogame music. If that's where you were going, I'd check out the Archive's 90s sample CDs. You'll have a lot of fun with them if you have the patience to sort through the samples.

Nice, simple little theme. Looks unmastered from the peaks, but not bad at all

OPFX responds:

Whoa, Nice find!

[Haunted Triplets (Wip)]

The swinging beats omg <3

Tapestoppa responds:

Thank you! We had the option to either do 6/8 or triplets, I figured triplets would be more bouncy and catchy so we went with it :)

[Anj_Pain Bodies (Gminor)]

Sounds great. Only thing it could use is a competitive (loud) master. I love your vocal delivery.

Anjovi responds:

My thanks!

[Toast]

This is odd, in a good way. It's hitting on several familiar points in my library of references, from corporate, to girly j-pop, to video-game EDM, and beyond. I don't quite know what to make of it, perhaps because it's so unfamiliar, but I do think it's well composed.

I also think that the level of snare and cymbal to lead, pad and so on, as well as master could be approached again some time in the future, while studying references in these similar genres (where you can find similar instrumentation in particular and have an idea of where to place them)

The jump in volume at 2:52 was unexpected, but again, I think you've written a satisfying progression, and the piece concludes in a pretty satisfactory way.

My favorite part overall was the guitar. I think it was wonderfully mixed and the picking style quite interesting to listen to. Great work and certainly an unexpected piece for me to stumble upon this round!

icantpronouncethis responds:

Thank you for the thorough review.

I was worried about the guitar. I haven't gotten the chance to mix real instruments so this was a challenge in many ways.

A lot of my influence do come from the genre you listed. (Snail's House, in the blue shirt, San Holo, etc). So it's really cool you were able to point those out.

One of the thing I should do more often is to use reference track when I am mixing. Honestly never really done that before. I was wondering if you can give me some tips or general information about doing that.

Thank you so much once again.

[Last in Line]

The chords on the vocal must have been quite hard to sing -- you rarely hear them in comtemporary alt rock, punk, ska, and indie.

I would appreciate a bit less distance from the mic, recording at a lower volume to eliminate room noise. I think I hear some but I can't be quite sure due to vocal treatment. There are a few good vocal plugins I recommend also, for dialing in a quick rock tone, Howard Benson vocals being number one for rock, and Xvox for smooth lead vocals. Some very cool things that can be done with both.

Your adlibs were mixed perfectly imo. I wish the leads were given just a bit more of an up-front, aggressive treatment (the singing will speak for itself, given the right edge to cut through!)

I also like your writing in general. That little G#3-A-G# is one of my favorite riffs, and the felt suspension of G# makes for nice moody dissonance. Overall, the feeling of being flippant and slightly unhinged brings me a nostalgia like you wouldn't believe. Well deserved frontpage.

Areas for improvement -- clarity especially in the lower registers and guitars and vocal balance. EQ in some places, again particularly guitars. Having a reference or 3 handy in this genre and comparing the overall sound profiles, both auditorily and with a spectrogram, will help in this area.

Otherwise, this is nearing on industry standard level mix and master. Keep doing what you're doing! I love it :)

Ajtastic responds:

Thanks so much for the awesome feedback and recommendations! I really appreciate it :)

[Oh Brother [NGADM Round 2]]

I feel about this track essentially a mix between @creeperforce24's review and your own response to it. This has some truly exceptional moments which satisfy my ADHD brain. A revisit to instrument balance, clarity, and eq on some instruments and this would get close to a full ten from me though. I love the arrangement and colors chosen.

trixelbit responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed those high moments! I'll definitely be revisiting this to give her the proper TLC she needs to truly shine. Aside from mixing, there's ideas I want to further explore and refine here too.

I would also love to use this for a game, just need to find a good context for it.
A battle theme? Character theme? I'll need to ponder more 🤔

[Could've been something Neat...]

This is a great progression, and I love the synths -- Kawai K1v is actually one of my favorites.

Despite the short length I still think this is a worthwhile listen. I will be stoked to see if you ever turn it into a full track, so please ping me if and when! Great soundscape at the very end!

EppuJoloZ responds:

Thank you! The least I could do was to give it a clean mix so atleast this little dissapointing piece sounds great. We shall see where this thing'll head – will keep you informed!

[Zenology (NGADM - Round 2)]

I think the loudness is pretty much fine -- yes, it's brick-walled, but the majority of this genre is becoming that way. I think the fact that you established such clarity and balanced mix at this degree of loudness is pretty astounding.

At 1:26 however it is apparent there is just a bit too much compression; the sub is losing a bit of energy to the hard compression. I think just a slight amount less would help with the balance.

The various sections and changes in instrumentation throughout this track keep it interesting to listen to. Great work!

G2961 responds:

Thank you for your feedback! Yes, I totally agree that the mix is not the best, since my headphones broke, I had to use my terrible spare headphones. And sometimes I have such a problem that I hear that I did something wrong, but I can't fix it normally, because either my old laptop lagged so much (now I've built a computer with a Xeon E3 1240), or just bad headphones. It's not in vain that I've been looking for good headphones all this week.
Yes, to be honest, those headphones for $ 5-6 still do not suit me, since they have some kind of flat sound, or simply not enough high frequencies and bass. However, I had a very reduced budget.

[A Silent Mist]

Compositionally, this is a masterwork. Ranks among some of the best solo piano and vocal pieces I've ever heard.

However I have some similar comments about the vocals to @creeperforce24. They're mixed a bit like modern pop vocals at first, as opposed to, I guess this would be 80s piano ballad.

By that I mean, they could use manual de essing and some gentle treatment to roll off the highs.

It gets better as you go on, perhaps recorded in a different take with different position. Microphones are finnicky creatures.

But in general, the performance was wonderful overall, varied, emotional without sounding insincere. I think that's saying something!

Great song, great modulations, and great poetry. It doesn't get much better than this!

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Wow, what amazing praise, thank you very much!

I agree (almost) completely with your points about the vocals. I have to get better at handling the mic for sure, but I suppose that'll come with experience, and following good advice ;)
Actually, I've got a slight lisp, so I'm pretty happy with the result, considering. I know it can be heard a bit in the end result, but I managed to get reasonably decent takes, overall. I did universally de ess a bit, but I probably should've paid more attention to individual lines, as you say!

I suppose the only comment I would have, is that I personally am not too much of a style purist (I know you're not either), so I think it can be okay to have a piece in a style of a certain era, with aspects from another, including in the mix. That said, I think in this case I wasn't able to achieve that smoothly enough! I need to get better at making the vocals sound intentional, both in the recording and mixing phase :)
I'll try some of your tips next time!

Btw, this has nothing to do with this composition, but I happened to notice you said "So I was advised it's best practice to normalize your audio to 0 dB headroom, just to make full use of the sonic space. If you've heard different, let me know." on CloakedSoup's submission. I am not secretly the alt account of CloakedSoup (fun as that conspiracy would be :O), but I thought I'd reply to that here anyway, as I've looked into it quite extensively.

I also agree that the standards that were recommended for different platforms didn't seem to stick so well, and the loudness war does seem to be over, with loud being the victor. All that said, in my understanding, mastering (/normalising) all the way to 0.0dB headroom can and does lead to issues in digital to analogue conversion (DAC), which is to say, especially older systems will produce artefacts and clipping if there is not a bit of headroom in the final version. -0.1dB will already reduce the risk a lot. If the mix is good though, the perceived loudness should already be pretty good even at -1.0dB though, which should be safe in almost any format. For that reason (amongst some other even more technical ones), although a 0.0dB master will indeed be the slightest bit louder, and work on many devices, I think it mightn't be good to expect that from all tracks, as they're at that point essentially guaranteed to sound bad on many systems. If the mix is good, it should work well regardless of that last decibel. Also, if one is listening to professionally produced tracks from many genres in the same sitting, I think the volume knob tends to see some action anyway ;)

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on this, as I secretly quite like to get into the technical aspects of music and sound quite a bit too <3

Thanks again for your uplifting review, it made me happy to read!

[FRACTURED]

Besides being a bit overbalanced IMO toward the ultra high treble frequencies, in part due to clipping and in part due to very fizzy synths and glass samples, I find this piece to be compelling. Particularly the drum solo in the middle. Very nice choice of chords, solid theme, and direction.

The sidechained synths in the final drop are just a tad loud, and I would like more bass/sub/snare presence, but overall, great work!

octaneuro responds:

Thanks for the criticism!
I'm pretty sure the reason for the mixing mistakes is because of my relatively-cheap headphones. I've been meaning to buy proper headphones for a while but I haven't due to being broke AF.