Master Mi

I prefer Youtube because of the better audio streaming quality (audio streaming bitrate of 128 kbit/s at Soundcloud vs 192 kbit/s at Youtube can make a noticeable difference in sound quality) and the possibility of underlining the audio material with some fitting video material (own gameplay scenes of video games for video game remixes, for example).

Haha, Americans can't get surprised that easily. They're already used to false flag attacks. ;D

C 'mon, guys - really nobody any kind of an idea? Maybe some further informations about my loudness metering unit and why I guess that method 2) is the right one. If I would start to messure the loudness right within a track for example it would show me a pretty higher max. loudness than if I messure the loudness of a track or another audio program right from the beginning to the end. And that's why I guess that I have to messure the loudness of a whole CD right from the beginning to the end, too. But I'm not quite sure if there might be another measuring technique for CD loudness mastering as well.

I've got a question concerning the right use of the loudness metering unit in my DAW (Samplitude Pro X3 Suite) for CD mastering. All soundtracks for my CD are already loaded into the music project file on track 1 one after another. The loudness ratio between all tracks is already set via object volume editing (couldn't build just on loudness metering there - had to do this by ear because of different music genres and different dynamic ranges of the soundtracks). And now I want to bring the loudest part of this CD mix at around - 23 dB. For this purpose do I have to: 1) ...check the loudness metering for each track anew from each track start to rise or lower the volume of all tracks together until the loudest part of the loudest track reaches -23 dB? or 2) ... let the loudness metering do its job by playing the whole CD (all soundtracks in a row) without pausing while checking the loudest part, memorize the highest loudness and rise or lower the volume of all tracks together until the loudest point of the whole CD loudness metering is set at -23 dB? It's really strange that it can make differences up to 2 dB of loudness in LUFS between these 2 methods. At method 2) the loudness differences according to the loudness metering unit seem to get smaller and nearly stable/unchanged after the first few tracks. If you meter each soundtrack track just from the beginning (method 1)) the loudness differences according to the loudness metering unit are much bigger and the loudness metering seems to react much more sensitive. Although I'm pretty sure method 2) is the right one for mastering the loudness of a CD I want to ask the OCRemix community about this phenomenon and the correct use of the loudness metering for this purpose.

Hm, thx for the hint. They must have changed it recently - some time before it was 320kbit/s and some time before this you could upload and stream wave data content... with a free account. But seems to be a general problem in the last years of western capitalism. Lots of those halfhearted businessmen and private investors obviously try to buy up good content platforms (like formerly free music platforms, mail providers etc.) and want to drag max. profits outta this and every poop that accidentally sniffs its first fresh air... from the "Fresh Air Company". So, I guess one of the best free audiovisual content platforms that doesn't change its essential rules for a very long time is still Youtube. There seems to be still a good audio bitrate of about 192 kbit/s, you can implement (for example) gameplay videos into your musical videogame remix content and its always nice to get some feedback there (compared to simpler, more unknown and now pretty expensive platforms like Clyp).

Besides, I've also found 2 other great remixes of this theme some time ago. The first one was made by Joyfuldreamer: The second one was made by Lame Genie:

Hey, thanks for the offer. And yeah - I've made a little classic remix of Dave 's Theme (one of my favourite theme) from Maniac Mansion some time ago that goes over into a driving rock remix. Guess you mean this one here >>> Therefore I combined a short self-written piano intro with an arrangement which is pretty close to the original. I guess I used the Ngmmdave.mid file from above as a base for creating the remix. Hope you enjoy this one as fans of the game. I'll probably keep working on this track in the future.

Yeah - the bass with reverb (plugins) topic makes a good point. In a less technological world of an ancient orchestra you would - if the sound is halling so much that you can't hear single sound events clearly anymore - probably change the surroundings until you have found an opera house or open air location where the hall/echo reflexions won't blend the frequencies of the individual instruments into sound mud anymore. What I wanted to say is that: 1) Natural beings have often sharper senses than beings that lost their connection to nature over generations. It's mostly a matter of species-appropriate nutrition, natural and healthy development (or degradation at the non-natural way) of the body and vital life force that makes the big difference. And the more people (or even animals) get restrained from vital nature the more they' ll lose their potencial, vitality, their fine senses (neurological development) and their health. And lots of humans of the modern age got very far away from nature with all the painful consequences. 2) Lots of essential knowledge of former times died literally out in the core of the society and has been replaced by mere (commercial) informations of big companies and profit-over-life structures that often dumb down the people's minds and bend truth into lies for their financial sake. You can say that - for example the pretty wise Greek doctor Hippokrates of Cos - had more essential knowledge about health than most pharma-schooled doctors - guided by pharma-sponsored universities - have nowadays. That's something like a wisdom-versus between "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." (in this case a pretty grounded old school teaching) and "Just take these pills to win the war against those dangerous enemies in your body" (in this case a pretty contrary, small-minded new school teaching). It's not always like this. But it's an example that new teachings don't have to be always better than old teachings - especially if mindless greed becomes more important than the devout quest for truth. 3) It can be really fatal if technological advancement & possibilities surpass the knowledge und sanity of the users. And not every trend or technological achievement is a good one. Just to come back to the music stuff... Let's face what dynamic compression in the age of loudness war has done to the sound quality of modern music. It might not blow your head off if you listen to the soundtracks with the mastering standards of today. I kinda like lots of modern tracks - but mostly because of the composition & interesting sound design, not because of the unnecessary dynamic compression and kinda deadly sound surgery (nah, no bad jokes about surgeons and the quest for the lost limbs, livers or lives at this point). If you compare the music standards of the 80s with the music industry standards of today you might hear a perceptible decrease at the hi-fi sound quality over the years. ...just because the salesmen, marketing agents and even some producers in the music industry started the unhealthy, mindless trend of competing in loudness instead of competing in musical content, interesting compositions and sound quality. >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcKDMBuGodU

But the orchestra exists much longer than microphones, EQs or digital music production. So they had to solve the frequency issue with the things they had there (right choice of instruments, fitting octaves/pitch, fitting articulations, greater use of volume and timing of each sound event, right "panning"/deployment of the musicians/players of the instruments) if they played the orchestra live for the public. I don't think that those ancient orchestras and ensemble sounded bad without this high tech stuff - maybe rather the opposite. But I think that the people in those days could have had sharper senses, sharper minds and probably a greater knowledge of acoustic sound design within the technological possibilities the had in those days.

I think there are much better alternatives than just cutting off frequencies - for example... 1) reducing just the volume of the less important track. 2) reducing the velocity of the VSTI samples or synthesizers at the less important track. 3) using a wider stereo panorama distance or surround field distance to hear both competing tracks clearly or by putting the less important one far to the side or in the background. 4) changing the color/timbre of instruments - might be similar to cutting or adding frequencies but it 's a more natural, realistic variation you can perform with many instruments. 5) Sometimes it's not even necessary to cut off or add any frequencies because the blending frequencies of the different tracks make a really good new soundscape together. When it comes to things like this I always ask myself how I would set up a track like it was an orchestra where you don't have those possibilities to cut off frequencies (except with some special playing techniques with which you can influence the frequencies a little bit) - even if I use synthesizers instead of acoustic instruments.

Hey, thanks for the feedback. )) I'm not a big fan of cutting off frequencies of instruments (because this can make the sound really dull) - but I could add some higher frequencies to the harp at the point where the harp goes wistfully up into the bit emotional part at 0:43. I guess this would make totally sense - because I did some high band pass filter automations of the digital voice synth at this point (added some higher frequencies there). An early thought was that the synth at this point should go a bit higher and melt with the harp. But now I think it's better if the harp goes higher there as well - as you mentioned it - "to shine". (I already recognized that the synth - before I did the high bandpass filter automations - stuck out at this point much more. And it sounded pretty well.)

This might be the beginning of my first little own soundtrack I've composed within a few days. Actually this track is based on an exercise I did for myself to imrove in writing notes for chord progressions and where I tried to find out which chords and chord sequences harmonize well with each other. But then I was really in the mood to compose some additional melodies and it resulted in this little soundtrack. And of course I wanted to work with my brand-new great synthesizer collection Titan 2 which I really cherish. It contains over 12500 unique synthesizer presets of famous synthesizers from the 70s, 80s, 90s and the modern digital times. So, you can say I've bought a pretty melodic part of the human history in the form of a large, creative software. Although I haven't had listened to all synthesizer presets in Titan 2 (the package also contains all the synthesizers from Titan 1) I've already used two synthesizers from Titan 1 for this little composition. These are the really atmospheric digital voice pads and the pretty realistic sounding steel drums (was deeply impressed that it almost sounds like the acoustic version of some steel drums - was looking for such kind of stuff for estimated ages). For the voice pads I've also created some volume, panorama and high bandpass filter automations. The Celtic harp you can hear towards the end is a VSTI from my professional DAW software Samplitude Pro X3 Suite in which I have implemented the nice Titan 2 stuff. Hope you like my first try of creating my first very own composition far away from any kind of video game remixes. I guess I'll make a much bigger and longer soundtrack out of this one in the future. Feel free to tell me how you like this one. )) --------------------------------------- Newest version of my track: 1.0 >>> >>> https://clyp.it/pct2dsny

Yo, thanks for the feedback, dudes. )) For a comparison to the previous version, I've reuploaded this one into Clyp (I'll leave it there for a few weeks or so) - so you can directly listen to the changes I've made. >>> old Version 1.4 >>> https://clyp.it/sanzigqc And - of course - I didn't work 2 years on this version xD (about 2 weeks at all - maybe 20 hours in total) - was busy with other tracks and other stuff. But since I really like the new changes I wanted to share it with you. I didn't like the really outdated old version anymore and I wanted to create a much greater update with much more changes - but I need more time than I've planned. So, after 2 years I simply just wanted to replace the old version I don't want to listen to anymore with the much newer version that really sends me some chillz through ma bones - no shit. )) But yeah, you're right. There's a lot to do - especially in things like variation (primarily drums, basses, transitions) and much more new melodies that go on some very own pathes, changing rhythms, more alternations in speed maybe and a really completed, fading away ending. When I began with the track some years ago I really started with creating the whole track with a slightly alternated loop sequence (yeah, I was a big fan of the original theme and I had not the composing skills & knowhow I have today) - and now It's my mission to break free from this fixed structure more and more. But I don't want to cut the length of the track because I really want to have this one as a rare long Battle theme remix. It's not impossible to create a lively and varied track at this length and I'll make it someday as I progress with my composition skills (It's my 4th year now since I started with making music out of completely nothing - and it takes still a long time for me to write new stuff). Besides - there's already a FF7 battle theme remix on Youtube with a pretty great length (8 mins) and it seems to be possible to keep the listeners interested over such a long time >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl3DZfPR9oM Although it's pretty much loop-based as well - but the alternative transitions and the lively, dynamic orchestration makes it really interesting over this long time. I'm not a too big fan of this "orchestrated-elements-only style" for a battle theme with such a great potencial for various music genres - so, I have to create a version in my own style. But it gives me an idea of what is possible there.

Since the big update of my remix will take much more time than expected and cause I haven't updated the track for about 2 years (but I have composed lots of new stuff since then) I want to share a little preview of the current state of my music project with ya. I haven't even done the ingame video for this one - but at least I've created a little slideshow with some fitting pics of the FF7 series. I know it's still a lot to do in things like variety in a track with this length - but I think there's already some really nice stuff in there and I kinda like to hear the track over and over again. Maybe give me a little feedback how you like the new stuff and the improved sound design in general. You can find some additional information for this new version in the upload description of the Youtube link. So, here's version 1.5 of my remix: >>> >>> https://clyp.it/0wbdm03p (Because of the extreme length of the track I could "only" upload a 256 kbit/s file at my free Clyp account instead of my usual 320 kbit/s audio material there.)

Thanks for the feedback, dude. )) Really nice to get the opinion of a real drummer in this case.