timaeus222

You need a mechanical license. Maybe like this. Extra background here. Example case for U.S. here.

Yes, 'cause since the specs are on the site for all to see, I think it's pretty straightforward of a dilemma to resolve. The context I'm considering is if the encoding is the same all across the board. When that's the case (since people *should* be able to follow a quick lil tutorial on encoding, as IMO it's fairly simple. =) ), the MP3 quality itself, unless I'm missing something, would depend on the mixing (or if it's live, the room treatment in conjunction with the mixing). Now if we were looking at youtube compression, sure, that would certainly make a noticeable difference, and it even opens up the possibility of someone normalizing or changing the volume of the music before rendering the video. If you don't upload a video with excessively high encoding (I actually do that these days, because my old videos were shockingly bad audio quality at times ), the audio quality suffers a little, depending on the circumstances. I don't really remember how much treble is cut off in 128kbps, but it's somewhere in the 15000~20000Hz range for sure. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think VBR1 simply is a dynamic bitrate that adjusts to the bare minimum instantaneous bitrate necessary to recreate any particular millisecond in a music file with the maximum quality as designated by the "Quality = 1". If that's the case, I would think that a 320kbps CBR is unnecessarily reproducing a music file at 320kbps the entire time, which is less space-conservative. Sorry about that; I mean the people who don't write music, don't remix, and don't actively listen critically or somewhat/slightly critically to VGM remixes. So some of the youtube viewers who say "OMG DIS SO GOOD" or "I love this! 100000/5", for example. Like I had said earlier, technically I *would* prefer 224, but I think OCR's bandwidth and (after additional thinking) the evaluation of many of the past mixes were factors in the decision for 192. I *think* I heard Larry say that we're moving towards higher encoding eventually, but I'm not going to 100% confirm that. He *is* storing WAVs somewhere though, and you knew that. Yeah, consumers as in anyone who downloads OCR stuff, or just consumers from the economics standpoint.

You Scandinavian you.

Did a quick google search, and it seems like it's probably obsolete by now.

Prosecute people for crimes with no repercussions. (Phoenix Wright)

We already are. Any "artefacts" [sic] that you hear are likely not from bitrate, but from the person's mixing. Every submitter is already required to submit in either 192kbps OR VBR1, and VBR1 covers a wider kbps range anyways, down to 32 and up to 320 if the remix goes that high (which it can in sound design). It depends on the song, but generally VBR1 is a pretty flexible encoding for practically anything, and at least, that's what I always use. It's pretty hard to hear the difference between VBR1 and purely 320kbps if they were both converted from the same source WAV/FLAC, even if you're using the best audio system you have (which may cost several hundred to several thousand dollars) since the difference lies in the 18000~20000Hz range. tl;dr: 192 isn't *that* low; it's the bare minimum where the majority of the remixes on the site can sound good enough to the majority of common listeners (whose headphones aren't *that* hardcore on getting super good treble ) while also playing nice with OCR's bandwidth. Personally, as a sound designer, I'd prefer the minimum to be 224, but I really don't mind since VBR1 covers that anyway, and the difference would be, what, an extra ~1000Hz above ~18000? That aside, Kyle covered it. Anyone who wants to re-encode is free to do so, but it's fair to just leave the consumers with FLAC or WAV files so that they can have the original lossless (or pretty much lossless) files to be flexible with.

I pretty much completely agree with Rexy. I'm finding the textures kinda sparse. In this, you have a bass, drums, a saw lead, and an organ, but that's pretty much all of the elements that have been used throughout (besides the 3o3 arp, which I hear as often quiet compared to the other instruments). The organ, for the octaves in which it plays, covers some high range, the bass covers some low range,and the kick and snare cover the remaining low range, while the midrange is left for the saw lead and the 3o3 arp. Since the 3o3 arp is substantially covered up by the bass and the saw lead feels thin in context, it's like your midrange is actually lacking, even though you actually have some theoretically midrange content in there. Overall, what I would suggest that you work on, besides the low-end EQing, drum writing, and cohesiveness as Rexy suggested, is the perception of whether or not an instrument contributed what you intended it to do in the midrange. If you want full midrange, it helps to have an idea of when it is full enough objectively, when it isn't, and when it's overly full. Perhaps you could try an experiment where you scoop the midrange on purpose to train your ears on the idea of "hollowness" in an audio frequency spectrum, so that you can avoid having that happening to a significant extent. Something else you could do is to purposefully boost the midrange and train your ears to dislike an excess of the midrange. The purpose of these two experiments is to simply get your brain going on a nice "middle" (not really in the exact middle, per se, just a balance) with regards to an excess and a deficiency of midrange. Midrange is essentially 500~4000Hz (covering low mids, mids, and upper mids). Loudness isn't as much of a concern to me because in my opinion and with what I've progressed through, an objective perception of loudness takes a long time to develop (it took me about 2 years), and sometimes you have to go through many different headphones/speakers before you get a sense of what's loud enough for you and for everyone. Different headphones and speakers have different impedances, which is essentially resistance to amplification. Voltage = Current*Impedance. The higher the impedance, the more voltage you need to amp the audio system to get it to a particular arbitrary volume, so generally speaking, the higher the input impedance, the lower the output is, relative to a "normal" volume. Since this "normal" volume is more or less relative to what you previously heard, that's why it may take going through different audio systems to find something you like enough that you stick with it. I would also recommend trying out several soft knee limiters and seeing if you like that better than a hard knee limiter. When I switched from Fruity Limiter to TLs-Pocket Limiter, that's when I felt I had more room in my dynamics. I wish you good luck on this!

I really liked the scales in this, and overall this was an overload of awesome.

Awesome! I really like this. Solid work, man! I actually hear the source in there after comparing, btw. Just for perspective, you'd need at least 84.5 seconds of overt source usage. Here's what I'm hearing, based on my own comparisons: 0:24.051 - 0:38.820 = Source Melody in bassline (0:07 - 0:14) + chippy arp playing blips from source (0:29 - 0:44) 0:38.820 - 0:53.590 = Source Melody in bassline (0:07 - 0:14) + chippy arp playing blips from source (0:29 - 0:44) + non-source octave lead 0:53.590 - 1:10.205 = Source Melody with stronger bassline (0:22 - 0:36) + Source Melody in lead with lower-pitched "bridging" notes between the actual source tune notes (0:07 - 0:14) [i think that could be fine] 1:10.205 - 1:26.823 = Source Melody in bassline (0:07 - 0:14) + solo (?) + chippy arp playing blips from source (0:29 - 0:44) 1:26.823 - 1:48.970 = Source (0:07 - 0:14) 1:48.970 - 1:56.539 = Source (0:07 - 0:14) [1:56.539 - 1:57.972 is too quiet to count, I think] 1:57.972 - 2:13.897 = Dominating Solo [quiet source usage, might not count] 2:13.897 - 2:21.282 = Source Melody with stronger bassline (0:22 - 0:36) + Source Melody in lead with lower-pitched "bridging" notes between the actual source tune notes (0:07 - 0:14) [i think that could be fine] 2:21.282 - 2:49.000 = Source Melody with stronger bassline (0:22 - 0:36) + Source Melody in lead with lower-pitched "bridging" notes between the actual source tune notes (0:07 - 0:14) [i think that could be fine] + interacting leads Overall, my personal tally is, not counting the solos (as in the worst case scenario): 110.973 seconds If I don't count the last portion with the interacting leads, with the assumption that they bury the source: 83.255 seconds So I think this could be borderline, but I think it'll fly.

Will this be able to be released by the intended April 21? This is an album I'm really looking forward to! =D

Maaaaaaaan, finally another Jazz Fusion remix on OCR! We'll never get enough of this, because it's so live-based and just demands so much harmonic skill to write. One of my favorites on this album already!

Great energy throughout, and nice solos!

Rock done with style.

I can't say I had gotten around to listening to Hard Times yet, but I just have, and damn, it really does sound like Ice Cap Zone. xD

Just for perspective, the For Everlasting Peace album had a month's work put into its songs, IIRC.

Whoops, that's not *quite* what I meant, but I see that I was a bit unclear. I was thinking of pretty much the same thing, except the snare roll was moved back to lead into the first ping pong delay cymbal. I'm not on my good headphones yet, but I think this is an improvement on the compression! =)

Best place to form a band.

I think the lyrics brought it over the top, man! Great job! (I actually voted for ya. ;D)

I thought the mixing was really good, so keep it up.

I'm not sure about recording the entire screen and leaving it at that, and while I could try doing that to start with and edit later, I've tried it before; I'd do it if I had more RAM, but ultimately my screen recorder would add too much lag if I recorded my whole screen. In fact, last time I tried it, my FPS went down from ~45 to about ~10. So I'd opt for moving my mouse more slowly. You'll just sit around for longer. =P

By rigid, I just meant that most or all of the notes play at pretty much the same rhythm; it's like when you sing in unison, except it's with rhythm. I did like this as a whole, just to be clear. This has lots of potential, so I hope you keep working on it no matter how it turns out in the queue.

Yeah, this is achieving a much clearer balance between the leads! Really the only concern I have left is that part near the end at 2:36 - 2:41, where some leads are actually fighting for attention; if you focus on that part, there are two or three leads going on at the same time, and at least for me, it gets hard to follow what they're doing. It does seem to go into that "motion sickness" idea that came up earlier, but maybe simplifying one (or two) of those parts with more extended notes (e.g. half vs. quarter notes) could put more focus on the melody with the most notes. This is actually a neat remix, and despite its repetition, it personally keeps my attention to the end. Great job! =)

Yeah, it did kind of feel a little empty at times, but I'm sure you'll fill it out when it's done.

I hope this gets done, man, because I actually really liked it. Jazz Fusion is very fun to listen to when it's all polished and stuff, so I think this'll be a hit. =)

That grungy bass line is so good. It creates a rather "let's get down to business" atmosphere, and it pairs so well with those unison bends on the guitar.