timaeus222

Nice! I usually don't like rap, but I liked that. Something you could try for next time is VirtualDub's "nearest neighbor" resizing filter (available in the "Filters" dropdown option). What that does is resize a video, making it look like it stretched the size of individual pixels, and that ultimately gives you clearer video quality than any typical resizing job. If you try that and resize to 640x480, or 1280x960, or something near the size that you think is good enough for the quality you want, it should give better quality than simply inserting the clips you already have into Corel 6X and rendering it as-it-was. It wouldn't take more than 10 minutes of your time per video, including the rendering from VirtualDub (not to mention you don't have to watch it render). The setting up should take less than 3 minutes if you wanted to try it. This is something I started doing recently ( an example), and an example of how a similar video of mine looked before I did it (that remix is soooo old). Notice how on the first one, you can actually see every single pixel past 0:18, and on the second one, it's more blurry, so there's that difference for you to decide between.

If you ever get stuck trying to find a particular patch sound that you need, PM me and I could give a shot at making it for you on Zebra2. Many of the sounds I hear are just emulations of old synths, like the Minimoog you have, the Juno, the CS-80, etc. Some others are mods of pretty common sounds. Ectoplasm's arp is a mod of a 303. Colours of Rain has some soft saw pads, vintage filter basses, ambient hits, and bells. Zircon's Zebra Tetralogy, which you have, would do the trick with the pads on Flow and Scottish Highlands Walk. I also recommend Arksun since some of the leads match the one on Ectoplasm, but past that there's still loads more great stuff to try out in that bank. Scottish Highlands Walk starts off with something you can get from OP-X Pro II, I'm 90% sure of that. I really can't remember what the patch is called, but it sounds like a soft E. Piano to me. There's loads of magical stuff though that you might be able to find since some demos on youtube name the patches off.

I edited my post. DarkeSword said:

Yeah, I have a computer faster than the current one you have, and I still get some buffer underruns on extremely large projects (ones that take up around 1.2~1.6GB RAM usually), but it doesn't bother me as much as it would other people because I've talked so much about humanizing velocities and timing that I naturally fix it to a pretty close result compared to what I could have gotten. For other people, it might cause rhythm issues beyond what can be manually humanized. It wouldn't be that much of a bother if you start off using the MIDI keyboard on an empty project and work with that until you get to a point where you get the latency issue (maybe near 400~700MB RAM). As you start out using it, you might just be using it to get ideas and to develop early WIPs, but I don't think it'll be until much later than a few weeks that you get used to using it for humanized timing and velocities.

Hey, it means a lot that you publicly thanked me like this, seriously. Thank you from the bottom of my heart (what about the top of my heart?), and may I say, I'm totally looking forward to both our tracks on Gunstar Heroes to get published (and others' toooooo).

I'd recommend getting a newer computer first, and then getting the MIDI keyboard, if prices aren't convenient. If you get the keyboard first, by your computer specs you're going to get a lot of buffer underruns in your busiest project files.

Woah, don't render as AVI and then just use it like that. That's gonna turn out huge compared to other extensions. Other extensions might be 3 times smaller or even smaller than that. Something you could do to alleviate the ridiculous file size (if you happen to have AVI files on hand) is googling VirtualDub. It's essentially an AVI file processor. If you open an AVI in there, set it to a codec that should turn out smaller (like Microsoft Video 1, or a favorite of your choice), chop the video length if you need to, etc. It's actually pretty easy to get used to. Then just re-save it (in a different folder) as a new AVI (you might have to actually type in ".avi" without the quotes or it might accidentally save as a "File"), then if you want you could just replace the old file if you like the new product. As a result, it should turn out even smaller when it's rendered as a smaller filetype than if you didn't process the AVI in VirtualDub. Try out some of the smaller extensions like M2T, MP4, MP2, WMV, MOV, etc. For some reason or another, even though YouTube doesn't explicitly state it accepts M2T or MP2, I've uploaded M2T in the past (a year ago) without any problems. Who knows, it might have changed. You could try it anyway with no drawback. Extensions like that are going to render and upload faster, and from what I've done, the quality is reduced by a negligible amount. Something I do sometimes is sharpen the whole video a little bit via video FX (maybe 10~20%) to compensate for the pixel quality reduction. Try to keep it, say, under 400MB for 2 minutes if you can. It really depends on the video content. For example, an HD WMV file could be around 100~200MB or so at 2 minutes' length. YouTube accepts, IIRC, 100GB or less, but smaller is much more convenient IMO. It's not like you really need to upload a 30+ minute video many times... right? That aside, around 2 months ago I decided I'd keep my audio quality up to par, so if possible and if that matters to you, it'd be a good idea for you to create a rendering template where the encoding is very high. 24-bit 48 kHz should be sufficient, although I actually overdo it on purpose and do 24-bit 96kHz. So far, I've tried watching my own videos in 720p and comparing that to 144p, and there's literally no perceivable difference in audio quality to me, even after YouTube's audio compression algorithm. I used to hear a huge difference before I changed up my encoding options, and many people would expect that to be the case too, with such a drastic resolution difference. Now, I don't, so I'm happy. You could also check this article out for more info on encoding for YouTube.

Since we're somewhat favoring Vegas here, I'll chime in and say I've apparently used it for almost five years. The UI is very friendly, and I seem to recall I got used to it in half a day.

Last I heard, closed back makes it difficult to mix bass.

Did you try FL's auto-bridging on 64-bit plugins (that is, if you still use FL all that much)? I have 5 GB RAM and I'm running libraries relatively well.

I'm just elaborating on what I believe you said, that's all. The quotation marks aren't supposed to make any difference; it just makes it correlate to the preset I named.

It just so happens that if you look at the waveforms of acoustic and electric basses, they often turn out to be somewhat wavy (often most evident ~1.5sec in). In many cases, on a C4, there's a 64-ish Hz natural resonance on the string that was plucked. Now, this is not always the case, depending on the amp, sample, or articulation, but it sometimes is. This particular graphic is of a 100% amp signal with no compressor on it, internal or external (this round robin shows it most at ~1.7sec). If you look in a graphic analyzer, it should show loads of bass at ~60~70Hz. Here's what that waveform sounds like. As you could see, it doesn't look like it could take up that much room in a mix, but sounds will stack up. Ecto didn't articulate this completely, but I believe the compression he is talking about is the kind to lightly push down on those natural resonances to "control the dynamics" (which is why there's a preset on Cytomic's The Glue called "Gtr Bass - Controlled Dynamics"). It lets the bass fit in the mix better, but it only transparently affects those resonances, which isn't significantly harmful to the tone overall.

Good luck man!

Yeah, the snare compression worked well enough; it's coming through pretty well. I don't really have much of an issue with the first saw lead (1:19). It's a neat timbre, and I like the late filter envelope on it. Something I noticed on that is it doesn't appear to have noticeable reverb when it's most exposed, so it's somewhat upfront, but I can still hear the background low-passed automated saw waves, so the volume and reverb aren't a big deal. I like the new chords on the piano, if that's indeed where you put them. I compared the first version to the second one in that post, and I like the (higher) volume of the snare on the first one and the (lower) volume of the lead on the second one. The snare was actually already really good on the first one. In short, the lead volume on the first one *could* be a bit lower, but that's about it for volumes (and anything else I noticed)!

At 0:11 and 0:20, I feel like the piano doubling up in a rhythmically same way as the lead is a bit rigid; maybe you could put chords there on the piano and skip the second note of every three note segment. If it's source, you'd still have the lead playing it. The drums sound like the strongest element in the mix; in fact, they seem to be the main proponent to carrying the mix. 0:48~0:54 is literally just drums and a lead, so you might want to add more there (and in other places). Filler content would really spice up an arrangement with an already-stellar modified 4/4 drum rhythm. Now that I think about it, I really only hear 5 (or is it 4?) instruments total. The two (or are there two copies of one lead for less phase-y polyphony?) leads, the bass, the drums, and the piano. The one thing that I find awkward in the sequencing is the two heavy portamentos in a row at 1:50. The rest is pretty safely done or well-done.

Great improvement! The only thing I'd suggest now is to do some light compression on the snare; just enough to get it to come through a little more, and that's about it! You really nailed an 80's/Modern Pop fusion atmosphere.

Sometimes it's a good idea to have a way to check whether it worked or not. FL Studio's limiter has a visual display, but I dunno what Cubase does on that aspect. I'd like you to try not sending the kick to the master and then checking with a spectral analyzer to see whether or not the bass looks or sounds like it was pushed down. If it does, then your sidechaining worked. You can compare it with an instance where the kick's instrument slot is turned off so it literally doesn't send any sound to your DAW, and it should look like nothing happened to the bass.

It does sound kinda 80's mixed with disco. Kinda like , especially in the bass. You might get some ideas from there.I think if you want to emulate the 80's snare, it might benefit from being a little lighter and more floaty. Right now it seems to cover kind of a thick frequency range with some frequencies that don't really contribute to the overall tone. The snare from the link sounds almost like a hybrid tom-snare; there's a more distinct pitch to it. I feel like the 3:04 high-passed pseudo-buildup puts a modern pop twist on the 80's feel. At the end, I was focusing on the toms at 4:17 and they felt somewhat narrow; you could try panning them (more?) and seeing how that goes.

I hear a noticeable rhythmic problem on the bongo-esque percussion playing (0:11, for example). Sounds like a latency issue?

Take advantage of that, man. Sing some deeeeep bass vocals (1:47)! =D

Yep, and that's basically how it ended up. I could have just said "follow the sending knobs", but hearing the difference might help me remember better. Oh, btw, I left you some feedback/help on your Round 1 track. =)

It sounds like you're saying you want to use a compressor on a send as well as another compressor in the mixer track. I happen to do that. The other option you suggested seems to simply be not using the compressor in the mixer track. Am I interpreting you correctly? Either way, the first method I described might be more risky, as you have two compressors in a row and you have to manage both, but as long as you know what you're doing and you can check your work somehow (like with a spectral analyzer), I wouldn't advise against it. I've never tried this experiment before, but I just did now: I was thinking the signal chain does go [mixer track (leaves wet) -> send (leaves wet) -> master], though if you follow your sending knobs it should be somewhat self-explanatory. Here's what I did: I went for the extreme and did some insanely bad-sounding distortion on purpose on the mixer track of a snare. I routed the snare to a drum send with a default reverb preset. In that way, it sounded like the reverb affected the snare after the distortion since the reverb was more prevalent. When I put the same reverb on the mixer track and put the same distortion effect on the send (i.e. swapped the plugins' spots), the distortion was more prevalent. As a result, I believe that it does go [mixer track (leaves wet) -> send (leaves wet) -> master]. That info should be of some use.

I almost wish I didn't go two rounds ago so I could go now, but hey, it's Darke's pick.

Pretty fun mix. Sweet soloing at 2:17.

As for the soundfonts I was referring to before, here are a set of (free) piano soundfonts I collected and sorted through for sufficient (purely bit-rate-based) audio quality. Add your own reverb and it should sound pretty decent.