Brandon Strader

I keep thinking I want to play D3 again but then I remember I don't have the phone anymore that had the security donger that lets me into the game. Edit: Then I try to remove the authenticator from my account and they call me a terrorist and lock it for suspicious activity

I LIED OK?! I JUST DIDN'T WANT TO APPEAR WEAK ok i am only human i'm gonna pre-order this as soon as Friday

Well I don't know the best way to explain it, I don't want to misinform. I'm not home to double check what difference it makes, but I know that general area (usually around 800Hz or thereabouts) is attack / honk or something of that nature, so I would have boosted there to emphasize the fingering of the bass a bit better.

If there's 1 thing to take from all the things I've been saying about why and how I EQ'd stuff, it is that it varies from both song to song and sound to sound. I boosted 2KHz on the acoustic guitars because it sounded good and didn't clash with the vocals, which I feel have a good presence in the mix. The acoustic guitars are hardpanned and the lead vocals are dead center, there isn't much overlap. I don't think it sounds painful, but it would be just as easy to turn that boost off and compensate by maybe raising the acoustic guitars volume by 0.5db in my mix. Maybe not even boost the volume, depends on how it sounds. Listening to how it sounds is more important than following some "standard rule for all songs". Maybe the 2KHz of the guitar wasn't that strong to begin with? All recorded instruments will sound different depending on a huge range of factors, from mic placement, to string quality, and beyond. These strings were not completely fresh but they were still kinda vibrant. I tend to EQ acoustic guitars differently based on how old the strings are because you DO get a different tone from them as time goes on. As for the boost on 630Hz on the bass, again, it's based on how it sounded to me. Different basses will need different EQ. You can't apply the same settings for every song or every type of bass. Not even the SAME BASS played for a different song. Things will always tend to sit differently based on all of the sounds you use in the song. I haven't experienced any 'pain' listening to My Choice over and over, and it sounds very cohesive when played on a big system with the subwoofer cranked to max. Experiment with EQ, don't be taking notes like "I should always boost my bass at 630Hz", that is NOT what I am setting out to say here. That's just what worked for this song, and it will be different in other songs.

we can have the party there

Maaan I'm so flippin' excited to play this wit you guys. I'll have the BEST town, and you can sell all your sharks there. Just counting down the days until the Pokemon X 3DS XL thing comes out and everything arrives.

Did someone tell you to cut 2KHz on acoustic guitars? It's a good area to boost. If you're working with HEAVY guitars, it's a good area to cut. It really depends on how your own recording comes out, though. Depending on your mic placement and such when you record from the amp, results can vary pretty heavily. Dunno what to tell you about amp sims, though. I try to avoid those, they're not so natural and I often find them very hard to get a decent sound out of. As for brightness of the entire song, maybe a multi-band comp, multi-band limiter, or linear-phase EQ (or all of the above!) can contribute to overall brightness of the song. I often find I get better results not pushing too far with these 3, but together, you can touch different areas without going overboard, and without sounding unnatural. I don't know if you can tell from the picture but the volume for the acoustic rhythms was 1 The piano has a natural panning through the VST (The Giant piano VST) where the high notes are more to the right, and the low notes are to the left. I figure this is from the traditional mic'ing of pianos which is to use a microphone on each side of the open top. I don't usually fiddle with the panning of the piano, and as for EQ, I don't think you need a big cut to make way for vocals. It's probably a good idea to do a soft cut at 800Hz or so to make room for more of the meat of other instruments (bass, guitars, etc) To soften the attack of the bass.... I posted a pic here before, but to shelf down the EQ for the high end gets rid of the click. It wasn't a picked bass, though, it was fingered bass. It's a heavy bass with very heavy strings, though, and the tone knob is turned wide open to allow a lot of the treble sound to be recorded, and then subtracted in EQ as you see fit afterwards. Ideally I could buy an acoustic bass, but eh. That's money.

you still insane bro

Not to be a butt, but I think there's plenty to choose from in the main numbered Final Fantasies. Opening it up to Tactics and stuff would just introduce themes that nobody's ever heard of, part of the appeal to this is hearing themes we all know and love. Whether it's Cloud, or FF9 Moogles, Kuja or flippin... Rydia from FF4.

How did you manage to get that hiss in the intro? The master is very saturated almost like you put some kind of tape saturation on it, which may explain the hiss, eh? The high end is very dulled in this version, and the bass is strong. With the high end more present, it might be more balanced. It also seems compressed or maybe it just seems that way because of how strong the bass is. The EQ on the bass guitar also seems weird. Almost like a resonant EQ that pushes up around 800Hz or so with a strong boost, gives it a strange tone methinks. As a whole it kinda sounds like a live recording with the microphones halfway away from the stage so that it has an interesting reverb sound. It sounds cool that it almost sounds like a "live recording" which is an art all in itself but your goal was probably not to do that? The flute was too loud, the strings seemed ok. The piano and mandolin did get very subtractive EQ to them that killed their dynamics (like in the intro) kinda similar to what a previous person did. So what did you use for reverb and such? Sends, or individual reverbs for each channel? The acoustic guitar didn't sound as full during your sax part because you seemed to have it a lot quieter than it should be. It's kinda buried in the mix. Yes, that's how live drums are usually recorded, with one or two overhead microphones. So you should leave this overhead stereo WAV centered to not affect the natural panning that is already present in the track. For recording live drums, you'd probably need to pan each overhead mic separately, exporting this as a stereo wav was because that's how it is presented in the drum VST, all of the drum outputs were simply stereo. I think the overhead is a combination of those panned cymbals, as well as other sounds like kick, snare, that is basically "Bleeding" sounds. They bleed into that track, I suppose to keep it "realistic", it's common in drum VSTs to have that feature. The answer is to either highpass it until you barely hear the bass of the kick and snare or just use a low shelf to curve it down a lot. You don't want the reverb for the overheads acting on the bass of the kick and snare. The reverb should be highpassed to around 800Hz anyway so that it doesn't apply to sounds that low. It's basically mud. I mostly use compression for make-up gain to raise the volume, the goal wasn't to really over-compress the drums but that could have been a side effect. It sounded good to me and didn't sound over-compressed, so it is what it is. NO LIQUID METAL 2 STEMS!!! I might post some kind of heavier stem at some point, but not that one. Ok... I'll show you how I EQd both acoustic guitar tracks. I don't usually highpass or cut as much body as I did this time, I suppose the recording came out with a bit too much bass for my tastes. You can see how I handled that here: I used a separate EQ for the highpass just because the built-in EQ doesn't have enough bands. You've got your light predelay and reverb sends, good stuff... I don't use a stereo bus, there's really no need to. I'll EQ an acoustic guitar roughly to how it should be, and save it as a preset, then for future songs I'll update the preset to match how the acoustic guitar recordings come out for that song. Then I'll just apply that EQ preset to all of the acoustic guitar tracks. So the settings on this (AcousticL) are identical to AcousticR. Maybe a stereo bus would make it easier to set the levels for all of the acoustic guitars in a song, but I'm not into that kind of thing, I like to do it all manually. I figure making the bus might be faster but I'm just not into it. Any other questions or anything I missed... feel free to ask again... xD I still need to explain my sends. I'll figure out the most effective way to do that soon, I hope.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a pirated version you could get that disabled always online and the auction house and all that bad stuff.

oh my doooog i could not be more flippin' happyyyyy oh my doooog look its ears are so flippin flappyyyy

I dunno, people could say they're dancing in front of their computer and not really do it. :3

You'd pick a top 3, and if someone else chose the same thing, it'd be settled with a coin flip... But maybe people could keep an eye on what has been chosen and not pick the same thing as someone else? So yeah, it's first come first served unless you wanna STEAL a character theme from someone else. 50/50 chance.

AWwww now now, literally anyone who has access could do it! It should produce the same results no matter who updates it. I would have loved if you did it, but without having access that's a no go. You ain't less special than Larry or Deia, my good man.

I don't wanna put anyone off but.... the 29th is the day after my birthday can we has party when compo is over?! Also DS you picked a helluva bonus theme AND I get to mix Splash Woman again. Hells yeah!

Can we have judge process thread update this Wednesday (or thereabouts?)

I don't know that you should really be taking what I say 100% seriously, most of the time I am being sarcastic or just silly. I find life too serious to always talk like I'm conducting a press conference. If I HAD to, I would, but at the moment the opportunity for such has not presented itself. The sig represents both my silly nature and my love for Nicolas Cage. Also the Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball music video and song are really good. I have watched the sig while listening to the song.

I listened to Liquid Metal 2 in the car on the way home and noticed that the mixing is completely off... apologies. I hadn't gotten a chance to check it on a bigger sound system before turning it in. I'll see what I can do to fix it for the OCR sub, sadly the youtube version and others that are uploaded will probably stay as-is. Should be good, haven't tested it on big system though. http://www.bstrader.net/remixes/lm2evenwetter.mp3

Obviously, selling Wii games is just a front for the actual money-making scheme!

Everybody and their mother wants to take over. Just be patient. We're probably going to wittle it down to a much more manageable size.

That's one of my favorite Hollywood cliches

I think I have to make a thread in the Competitions subforum for it. I'll get on that in a couple weeks, we need to wait until WCRG is done and everyone is ready to move again.

One more round.... I hope I get to work with Splash Woman again....

I checked with Matt and he's not doing Sonic Compo after WCRG, so we may start up after WCRG. Have not decided between tournament style or gauntlet style, will try to follow up with DS. Edit: Checking with DS, I believe we will stick with the tournament format. So it would be you against another mixer for the knockout, or your crystal will be shattered, the original concept. Character themes, no bonus themes.