timaeus222

Sounds kinda like a sad flashback moment when that flute comes in. For me the stereo field was a bit odd; maybe it was mixed on speakers, because it's pretty much hard-panned. That aside, pretty solidly executed, and enjoyable as a vintage emulation with an oldies sound.

Y'know, I'm curious: I wonder what @zykO said about it in the DP comments; I remember @Chimpazilla mentioning it

If you wanted to manually fix those loud peaks at 0:57 - 0:58, try looking at your kick and snare, and maybe the toms; I think it's their sum that's getting that loud. ----- Anyways, I agree that the instruments overall sound subdued. I'm not sure how that's happening, but you might want to check these things: Did you lower the Dry Mix on any digitally-applied reverb for any instrument? If so, try resetting the Dry Mix. For example, if it's at 0%, your instruments would sound distant, since only the results of the reverb can then be heard, but not what's going into it. Are you scooping the midrange (specifically, 500~2000 Hz, though the midrange extends higher than that) on the lead and rhythm guitar? It seems like that frequency content is particularly missing. It's what I would call "hollow". If so, try bringing those EQ bands up to 'neutral' and seeing if that makes your leads more upfront than they are now.

I think that means you can stand to practice on more than mostly Serum; I agree that some sounds made in Serum are not quite possible in other synths, but in principle, you can get pretty much the same sound from different approaches, and so, there shouldn't be any reason why you can't get similar sounds on two different synths (besides how certain synths have filter models that others don't, and the different synthesis engines may make tones that inherently sound more "pure" or more "dirty"). For instance, a Reese bass is basically just octave detuned saws with a notch filter LFO; you can technically make a Reese bass, whether it's on Serum, or Massive, or Zebra2. Not to mention, Serum can import Massive's wavetables, so whatever Massive can do, Serum can as well. Meaning, if you make a sound you can make on Massive, it's worth considering whether you should just make that on Massive. Thinking about synthesis when it comes to the basic principles on how to construct a sound, rather than the habits you've formed on how to make the sound, can help you spread your skills across multiple resources. ----- Back to the topic of your EP, it might help you to watch this video, just to see how you can work with Fruity Limiter anyways with little to no overcompression. Basically, with a higher Ceiling (which I did mention earlier was one solution), you can go above 0 dB without overcompression. I did also mention that it was a bit risky, since now you can get clipping if you go too far. That's why I gave you a suggested loudness standard, so that you don't go boosting too loudly.

Being conservative about RAM doesn't necessarily mean you don't use a lot of it. It just means you use it efficiently. If you can use a less RAM-intensive synth to create the same sound, why use a more RAM-intensive synth to make that sound? That's the point.

"10 GB RAM" isn't exactly a "standard minimum". I've never gone over 4 GB (except through occasional bridging), and still manage to get by with music I enjoy. It may just be a problem with the choices of samples; Serum takes up about 200 MB per instance, and you seem to use it a lot; on the other hand, I use Zebra2, which takes maybe 50 MB per instance. As for whether you should use 64-bit or 32-bit FL, I have been using 32-bit FL for years, with mostly 32-bit plugins, and I haven't had any crashing issues unless I open an old project file and the data becomes managed differently in a newer version of FL, causing me to go over 4 GB in that newer version. It may even be a good exercise for you to try using 32-bit FL as a way to force yourself to be conservative on your RAM usage, if you have a lot of 32-bit plugins. If you've somehow came to believe that 10 GB is normal, then that sounds like a problem to me. ----- Yep, the overcompression is fixed; now if a drop isn't as strong as you want it, then it's just due to how you made it and the samples you chose, and not because you pushed against the limiter Ceiling. And right now, I do think that it's just a limitation based on what samples you chose for your drums. As I mentioned before, using the Layer tool is extremely helpful to create strong, punchy drums. zircon made a tutorial on this kind of thing here: ----- As for going above 0 dB, it's as I mentioned earlier; using a tolerant limiter, like TLs-Pocket Limiter, or FabFilter Pro-L, allows you to push against 0 dB more than something like Fruity Limiter does by default. You don't necessarily need post-render master-track compression to get loud, and you don't necessarily need to get loud to make good music. But you do need to be at a good loudness. This would be the loudest song I could listen to for extended periods of time: If something you listen to is louder than this, it's probably too loud.

Added a quick ear training video on detecting overcompression due to Fruity Limiter. Now I can just send this to people who aren't hearing it.

Basically, the issues are: You've raised the Gain within Fruity Limiter, boosting your music against the Ceiling, promoting overcompression. You don't seem to be using Fruity Compressor as a compressor, but as a volume slider, basically, which doesn't make anything better or worse. Maximus has compressor characteristics, so I would avoid using Maximus unless/until you know how to use it. ----- In the image: On the first waveform, yes, your song is past the 0 dB mark, which, without context, could mean a lot of clipping, or a lot of overcompression. On the second waveform, it looks like it went past 0 dB, and then you lowered the volume after-the-fact (retaining the clipped waveform shape), meaning that it's still too loud in terms of dB RMS (average loudness)---the literal volume is just quieter. The third waveform is probably fine, as it isn't hitting 0 dB, and it wasn't lowered in volume after hitting 0 dB either. On the first video: When you raised the Gain on the EQ pre-limiter (0:17), the overcompression became even more apparent, as the volume is raised before it reaches the limiter. Raising the Gain within Fruity Limiter also raises it against the Ceiling, which adds more overcompression. It results in peaks getting squashed in louder parts of the mix whenever they run into the Ceiling (pushing the quieter instruments down a bit as well, as Fruity Limiter has no internal filter). So, if you don't adjust any settings on Fruity Limiter, you should either use a different limiter (like TLs-Pocket Limiter), or finish your mix on low Gain without a limiter and "master" your track with some post-rendering compression (which requires that you know how to do that). Or, if you raise the Ceiling on Fruity Limiter (which is at 0 dB by default), it'll be harder to overcompress (since the Ceiling is higher, assuming the Gain wasn't altered), but you will run into clipping issues near 0 dB more easily, so it's more of a risky fix to do that. It makes Fruity Limiter more transparent, but then depends on you knowing what clipping sounds like. I don't think you need Stereo Enhancer on the Master track. You know what that "STEREO SEP" knob actually does, right? It adjusts the phase of your L/R input, creating phase cancellation that either separates your L/R input (counterclockwise) or merges them into mono (clockwise). You shouldn't need to do much, if any of that; you should have already prepared your stereo field while doing your regular mixing. I sometimes use it to narrow my drums if they are oddly-panned out-of-the-box, but other than that, not much. At 1:04, you do have a volume difference when toggling it on/off, so you should probably turn it off so you know exactly what's boosting/lowering the mix. I like to be able to keep track of what's going on in my music. At 1:54, you shouldn't just check Fruity Limiter. You also have Maximus, which can perform compression, which means it can contribute to your overcompression. At 3:20, Fruity Compressor, Maximus, and Fruity Limiter should be turned off to compare how it sounds with and without them. All three of them are some form of compressor, so they can contribute to overcompression. On the second video: At 0:53, you also have the Gain raised within Fruity Limiter, which again, promotes overcompression by boosting the volume against the Ceiling. At 1:49, while you do have Fruity Compressor lowering the Gain, with those particular settings, that actually doesn't add overcompression; it just lowers the volume going into it. If you reset the Gain to 0 dB and toggle on/off, it shouldn't sound that different either way. There is a slight limiting characteristic to Fruity Compressor that alters the waveform a little (barely), but there isn't usually an audible difference when you load the default configuration of Fruity Compressor. Since you weren't really using Fruity Compressor for compression, you didn't need it. The way you were using it, it pretty much acts as a volume slider. It's not to say compressors are inherently bad, but right now, you should reset their settings (by reloading them) and experiment more with them before you finalize your music.

Interesting, I like that bass ostinato that pervades the track. It allowed you to use the source effectively without making it sound too forced. The last two minutes add more complexity to the wobbles, which definitely helped add dynamic contrast and interest all the way to the end. Not quite as complex as "Saria's Drop", but I can tell that it's "your sound". Great work!

Yes, it takes a while to be able to be objective about your own music, but it's possible - I'm getting there. The important thing is to realize that not everyone "gets" your sound design nearly as much as a memorable composition, so if you have good sound design and good composition, it's probably going to appeal to a greater audience. "Redemption" - seems overcompressed. I like the composition itself as it develops, but the details get a bit lost since the limiter pushes down on the mix almost the whole time. Either that or you have a lot of master-track compression. "Puzzle" - Not exactly overcompressed, but maybe overly-compressed or overly-sidechained. Whenever the drums hit really hard, the everything gets pushed down and it becomes hard to actually hear what notes are going on. "Drums on Fire" - Generally, a percussion-dominant track like this is hard to remember, because you can't hum it. I liked the breakdown, but I do hear a bit of overcompression whenever the drums play. "Restless" - I like the softer parts, as they are relatively clean. By the 1-minute mark, I think this is the best track on this EP. It actually presents good glitching without obscuring the melody or tonal elements in the mix. I also don't hear significant overcompression yet. However, there could be more low-midrange bass motion, instead of just sub bass and midrange, as the bass currently sounds hollow in that respect (resulting in a soundscape that isn't as full as it could be). Also, 3:52 doesn't hit nearly as hard as you made me anticipate, as there is overcompression there, and the drums just don't sound strong. The ending just kinda dies out - it could be extended a bit more. "Salvation" - Similar remarks as with "Drums on Fire"; has some overcompression, and the composition is hard to get attached to. The style kinda reminds me of this. Maybe you'll find some inspiration from it. This is also another interesting dubstep remix that has some orchestral components. You don't have to just use strings.

I don't personally do these "mixtapes", but writing "I don't own . . . " doesn't really help. If you actually want to legitly do this, try reading this: https://www.harryfox.com/license_music/youtube_license.html

Hot damn, this is a work of genius. Loving all the metallic + dark textures.

This probably counts. The intro feels a little random. The 303 arp at 1:11 adds more clutter to what's becoming pretty muddy. By 1:32, I'm not sure this has a focus to it; it sounds almost like a sound design experiment with Lavender Town pasted on top. Finally, at 2:24, what you grab from Lavender Town changes up melodically, but I honestly think it took a bit long to get there, and it only stayed for like, 30 seconds. Nothing wrong necessarily with using one part of the source for most of the mix, but to me it felt imbalanced. Overall, it's a good idea that can have a more focused execution and cleaner mixing and arrangement decisions in the low-midrange. Right now it's a bit too esoteric for me, and I normally love sound design.

When I installed it, I put it in an external HDD, so it shouldn't matter too much what the parent directory is. For me, I have it as F:\Storage\Kontakt Library\Kontakt 5 Library\Super Audio Cart, and the Data, Documentation . . . subfolders and the Super Audio Cart.nicnt file are in that Super Audio Cart folder. Have you tried simply deleting Super Audio Cart completely, re-unzipping the files, and refreshing Logic X to try to detect it again? Also, is it possible for you to record a video of what you do when this occurs? Sometimes it's easier to get what the issue is when we see what's going on rather than when we read some text.

I think I still got #436 - 500 to go through, but yeah, maybe more assignments, @Liontamer? EDIT: got #442 - 500 left

Okay, hold on. We need to clear up a few things here: Yeah, that's fine. It's just that some people say "Sanic" to poke fun at Sonic, just like saying "Pokemanz". Are you saying it's recorded with a microphone? Because you mentioned having a MIDI keyboard, which tells me you can (and should) record MIDI so that it's easier on you with the mixing side of things. Just because you recorded it with a keyboard doesn't mean it's not MIDI. In fact, recording with a MIDI keyboard generates MIDI data (notes, Modwheel, PitchWheel, and so on). The best part is, when you have MIDI data, you can fix it after-the-fact, and with live playing (actual live recordings), you have to do it all over again. Since there are so many tracks, it's hard to give critique on a few tracks, and easier to give general feedback instead. So with me, I picked a few tracks as examples, and gave more general feedback. Okay, so there is a joke song in this. But not all of them are joke songs. Slimy didn't say it like that, but it may come off that way. He really meant, "Is this topic supposed to be for sharing music that you made as a joke?", as in, he was wondering if he was supposed to laugh with you. People have made joke songs before, such as this parody of club music: https://soundcloud.com/zeb-ro/hashtag Honestly, I've shown that to a friend of mine who isn't by any means a music composer, and he literally said, "wow, that's actually really well made. If you didn't tell me it was a joke song, I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought." I think if you can get that kind of reaction for a joke song, that's pretty awesome. It means it's "so good at being really bad", being good in production but doing all the cliche things you find in club music (builds that lead nowhere, copy/paste, one synth for most of the leads, lazy drums, etc). That's good that you really like your own music. Hopefully you can put the critiques to practice so you can find what makes writing music so fun.

Sorry @Gario, but I have to agree with Slimy here (plus, thus guy asked for "feedback, pronto"). I'm not hating, but it's hard not to hear the sloppy rhythms. I don't mean to say the rhythm is terrible, but that it's "too human", or that you had recorded "live" MIDI with significant latency and didn't fix the rhythm. It's particularly noticeable on "Gaster's Amalgamations" since the piano is by itself for most of the song. Fortunately, at least a good portion of your stuff isn't quantized (computer-perfect rhythm), so it makes me think you might have a MIDI keyboard - do you? If so, it was a good decision. "A Possibility of a Fight" is actually not that bad. It kinda sounds like a garage jam. Granted, the guitars aren't the most realistic, but it's fairly enjoyable. "Wrong Enemy" is alright, but the sounds are fairly dry; that is, lacking reverb. If you want instruments to gel together more cohesively, it helps to add reverb to give a sense of similar spaces (even if it's to the subtle extent of a natural room). "The Wrong Number Song" sounds comical in nature, honestly. I think it's a funny listen, with the speech synthesizer lyrics and oompah rhythm. Unfortunately it's not something I would put on 24-hour repeat because the vocals are too loud. "The Great Papyrus" has better rhythm than "Gaster's Amalgamations", though there are still a few rhythmic errors. I think the average Undertale fan would like it, but it's super loud, especially at the 1-minute mark. "Hold On To Your Hopes And Dreams", like "The Great Papyrus", gets quite loud at 0:22 and on, and it clips. So, you should use a limiter to watch your peaks. TLs-Pocket Limiter is a nice, free limiter that doesn't give you overcompression (it does, however, allow overcrowding, so be aware of that). I'm going to stop with the critique at this spot in the playlist though, since you probably see a common theme: many of these tracks are pretty loud. Like @Gario said, it would probably be more practical to choose individual tracks that you want to work on more, and post those in their own topics, as it's time-consuming to critique an entire playlist, in the amount of time you deem as "pronto". My advice is, try not to keep boosting instruments until you hear each one over the other. Instead, treat it more like a balancing act between instruments, with a specific maximum loudness that you don't want to exceed. Once you get the volumes down, try EQing at clashing frequency ranges so that the characteristics of each instrument can be heard. In general, it's usually better to cut than to boost with EQ, since it's less painful (to anyone's ears) if your sounds are hollow than if they're overboosted. Here's a frequency range chart to get you started: Also, here is some music for you to listen to for comparison, so you have a mixing reference. https://soundcloud.com/isworks/shreddage-2-srp-the-devils-mudflap-by-andrew-aversa-power-metal (power metal) https://soundcloud.com/isworks/henning-nugel-leaving-dressed (cinematic) https://soundcloud.com/isworks/tetralogy-worlds-most-wanted (jazz, funk) https://soundcloud.com/biggiantcircles/borderlands-2-tropical-paradise-exploration (ambient) If you really want to get better, it would be well worth your time to take criticism with a thick skin, and not be saying "I'm not tolerating haters". Sometimes that's necessary. You may also want to listen to many styles of music so you have a greater knowledge of multiple mixing contexts. Hope that helps!

Arrangement-wise, it sounds literally note-for-note, to me. Not necessarily a bad thing if you meant to do a straight cover, but I just wanted to note that just because you want to transcribe it for orchestra doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be naturally playable as it is. For some reason I hear a bit of a hole in the soundscape in the middle-left every now and then. Maybe the reverb is not simulating a wide enough room, and maybe your panning's just a bit too wide. Not a big deal, but I thought I should let you know. Also, each note on the leads (brass or strings) has a really similar attack envelope (each one swells up from a similar starting volume), which tells me that you don't really have that many round robins if any, and that the legato notes don't really connect together naturally - did you overlap your legato notes? That should help them connect a little more. Shifting slow notes to the left would also help them line up with the beat. Other than that, I don't think I hear much if any expression automation (CC1, CC11, and maybe something else if available) on sustained notes, so it comes across to me as "MIDI orchestration". Also, I pretty much agreed with @Slimy here on his crits. A Pokemon fan (like me) would probably like this as it is, but in terms of "does this sound convincing", it needs some work. Hope that helps!

Hm, the drums seem disconnected from the ambient soundscape because they're rather upfront. I'm also not sure why, but the background just seems to smear together; the bells are maybe just too thin to be distinct with that amount of reverb present. At about 3:18, the bells get pretty loud though, so there's no problem hearing them then, but at that point it would have been more appropriate to change up the soundscape, IMO. Overall, nice ideas, and I love Pokemon, but I would have liked the soundscape to have had its textures change, and the drums felt too upfront.

"Somehow, Jordan managed to deliver his smooth funky self through a calm/relaxing piece." <--- Timaeus says, as if Jordan couldn't pull it off.

Volume 2: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03293

Huh, interesting; I think I find this more dubstep than orchestral, but pretty cool. The wubs add extra aggression to what would also have been uplifting and "mountainous" (from the taikos and ethnic pluck). I think they could have been more complex, actually, but what's there works nicely. Katskachi's choppy/chopped singing really fits the electronic soundscape well too.

I don't see why @zircon would have you pay $199 for something that normally costs $149...

It's not bad, per se, it just feels to me like a sample limitation or something. Ah, okay. Just making sure! Yeah, I'm not sure what it is either; maybe a latency issue? Sometimes if I have a really memory-intensive project file, and I get clicks all over while previewing, I get a few while rendering. That hasn't happened in a good long while though.