*NO* Chrono Trigger 'Devotio Aeternus' *RESUB*

Remixer Name: Darangen

Real Name: Michael Boyd

Email:

Website: www.darangen.com

UserID: 8948

URL to Remix:

Game: Chrono Trigger

Songs: Undersea Palace

Schala’s theme

Original Soundtracks:

Previous Judgement thread: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=39405

I thought I had lost this with a computer crash after an obviously incompetent computer repairman told me it was irretrievable. Luckily I had a few friends who were able to guide me through restoring most of it. I still had to redo some things but most of it was salvaged well enough.

Anyway, here was my original write-up:

"Oh noes, a Schala mix! There’s a reason everyone remixes Schala though.

I was listening to Chrono Symphonic at work one day and Rellik’s “Beneath The Surface” came up. That got me thinking about the undersea palace theme and through various other tracks with Schala’s theme, I eventually started molding them together in my head.

Then this track was born. It’s working title was Killer Studio Chops.

It’s somewhat symphonic heavy metal. Schala’s theme has been converted to 3/4, and the section in the intro is in 11/8. I tried swapping between 3/4 and 4/4 for the two sources, but it just wasn’t gelling like I wanted it to. I’m happy with the result though.

As always, hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it."

I've taken this to the WiP Forum and I'm confident that I've addressed many, if not all, of the issues the judges previously brought up. Some of the adjustments I've made include adjusting eq and compression to clear out as much of the mud I could, updating the string samples to East West, updating the drum samples as well, adjusting levels so that the theme is always easy to hear and playing around with some filters for some interesting effects.

I had a lot of fun coming back to this song on new software (Upgraded from Sonar X1 to Sonar X2) and my new KRK Rokit 5 monitors. Yay for Black Friday deals!

This is sick. Love it.

YES

Nice. Great concept and arrangement.

The biggest flaw in this track is the performance. More precisely, the timing...the rhythm guitars are WAY ahead of the beat at :30 and various sections thereafter. It's not constant, but on two or three sections it's extremely noticeable.

The only other issue I have is a mixing problem: the strings are extremely shrill on the higher notes. Check out 2:05. That violin passage has some frequencies poking out at what turns out to be about 12kHz and above. It sounds first of all unnatural, but more importantly at least to me, it's pretty painful.

I'm so tempted to pass it because don't get me wrong, this track IS sick, but those two issues are to me so glaring, and also so easy to fix, that I couldn't just let it slide.

NO (resub)

Great track but Jesse's right on the money regarding the timing on those rhythm guitars - this is too good a mix not to see if Michael can address the problem. The high frequencies on the violins I can live with, personally, but the disjointed rhythms - most noticeable at 0'30" - really compromise what is otherwise a mix I'd love to see featured on the site.

Gah, this is SO good. I've loved this arrangement since the first iterations, and I will say without a doubt that this is the best version to date. The mixing sounds much improved, and your new transitions are really cool

However, Jesse touched on a few issues that are still holding this back. I'm in the opposite camp from Dave, the strings actually bother me more than the timing problems, especially because the strings are so exposed for the first section of the arrangement. I will admit that it makes the guitar lead that comes in later have much more impact, but they're exposed enough throughout so much of the mix that I still feel like they need to be fixed before this can be posted.

NOT QUITE

Gonna sign off on the above. These both should be relatively easy fixes to be honest. I'll only add that I thought the FP filter effect at 3:00 felt a bit sloppy in it's execution and could be improved.

Hopefully, Michael can get this back to us quickly as it is a great arrangement.

NO resubmit, please

Yeah i'm going to sign off on what Vig said i'm afraid. Very face-meltingly awesome, but the performance of the rhythms is very off putting, and I had to turn it down to a pretty quiet level to stop those strings from hurting my ears.... I don't really have anything to add other than the track feels like its pumping with over-compression a tad too much.

Its great, but the issues are a bit too problematic imo - I vote resub, and do resub, cause this is sick

NO (resub)