Dafydd

Nice guitar performance! I think the lead guitar sounds a little naked, and the snare drum feels a little out of place, but maybe that's exactly how you want it, I don't know.

Good question. I think (though I could be mistaken) the issue was with using mascots images in a way that made it seem like this was somehow official or affiliated with SE in any way - we broke the 3rd commandment, so to speak. I don't think the risks are very high anyone will take a forum member for an SE affiliate just because they have an SE sprite as their forum avatar, though it's still technically a copyright breach, if SE sees it that way. It's a discussion that doesn't really belong in this thread, though.

Very nice, to be sure! The only thing I missed a was a little more modulation on the longer guitar notes.

I haven't submitted anything since 2007 for that reason - don't want to be wasting the judges' precious time with anything I don't feel reasonably confident will pass the panel.

So in the case of the BX8 D2, one giant woofy sine at 38 Hz?

That was very informative - thanks! However, by "most people", do you include people who mix dance type music? A kick often has very low frequency components, but maybe you don't need to be able to distinguish between them...? Also, by "faking" 20 Hz sounds, do you mean the speakers are adding overtones of very low notes to make it sound like it's actually playing them even though it's not, or boosting the EQ on the low end to make it feel more bassy (might be the exact same thing, now that I think about it)? But yeah, like you say, hardly anyone would be listening to whatever it is I mix on better equipment than these monitors, so in the end I guess it's a moot point. I do need monitors though, because everything I make sounds competely different on every speaker system or headphones (to the point where some intruments seem to completely disappear on some, yet dominate the soundscape on others) I try playing it on, in a way that professionally mixed stuff doesn't.

So basically, if you try playing some really low sub-bass notes, with these monitors, you can't really tell which note is playing? That makes sense I don't think we can tell frequencies apart that well in the range below 40 Hz or so anyway - didn't think of that. Then again, if you're playing A0 on a piano, the overtones are helping you figure out what note is playing, and if you were just playing a sine wave at A0, it would probably be impossible to tell it's an A without any other sounds for it to resonate (or not) with.

Reading on the specifications page for M-AUDIO DX8 D2, I notice the frequency response is listed as "38Hz – 22 kHz". Is it normal for monitors to have a freqency response low end at nearly an octave above that of the human hearing range? Typically, when you look at speaker specifications, they're usually around 20Hz - 20kHz, even for cheap headphones (a promise which I admittedly don't know if they actually deliver on, but there it is), and some even ranging down to 14Hz or so on the low end. These speakers, however, go outside human hearing range on the high end, but the opposite on the low end - and the product page even claims these speakers' new design is "adding additional low frequency extension", which would suggest their old design had an even more limited frequency response on the low end. I'm sure there's a perfectly valid reason for the seemingly high lower limit of the frequency response, but I haven't been able to find one. Does anyone know?

Never even played the game, but I really liked this. Sure it's a little repetitive for being an OCReMix, but it keeps evolving, and I don't really mind repetitiveness anyway when it comes to music that doesn't really require your attention. This is excellent rainy mood stuff. EDIT: After reading the judges' take on it, I have to agree it's a little muddy at times. It only bothers me when I listen closely, though.

I agree with the previous poster - finally a QuackShot ReMix! And a well-made and unusual-sounding one, too. It's a shame the instruments are so MIDI-ish, but the arrangement is certainly a fresh breeze!

I also don't see how the above tasks, albeit horrifyingly boring, could take any more than a few minutes in total. Anyway, is djp solely responsible for doing all that as part of mixposting? Is there any reason why any of the above but the actual write-up couldn't be taken care of by anyone else on staff? I would have thought this was already the case (Larrybot), but from what zircon wrote, it doesn't seem to be. Reducing the workload on the bottleneck (djp) as much as possible should be in everyone's interest.

Fair enough - I believe that's the answer I was looking for. Again, no argument there! If you think we could do that without getting in trouble again, I'm all for it! I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to help finding fan artwork, or make some.

That's a shame, but I'm sure you did your best. I appreciate the heads-up, and look forward to seeing a new set of mascots to fill out the void. It's been too long since any new ones were added. I don't wish to protest in any way, but I am curious as to what their concern was, exactly - whether it was the usage of their copyrighted images as such, or the way in which they were used (a question of clarification, rather than additional information, I would think). Not that it matters, really - like I said, I'm sure you did your best, and that if there was anything you/we could have done to keep the images (or other solutions, such as other images portraying the same mascots), you would have done it/asked us to do it. I would like to know, however, if there's anything we can do to avoid something similar from happening again. Also, the mascotless bios should probably contain some kind of message explaining why they're no longer available, to avoid rumors and rage, however unlikely (hey, this is the internet). I would like some help in writing that message to ensure it doesn't sound wrong. Good thing their issue was with the mascots and not the ReMixes.

I love this song! The lead synth could be a little fatter, but other than that, I dig the cheesy eurodance style (this doesn't sound like psytrance to me, haha), which is very fitting.

Thank you for doing doing this. This widely disliked soundtrack really needs more love.

First, eh? In that case, color me impressed! You ARE using a compressor, right? Or are you just playing this way too loud? If you're using a compressor, reduce the ratio and increase the threshold. You'd probably also want to lower the volume on all channels and on the mixed output. It sounds to me like, whenever the drums are playing a note, EVERYTHING else just gets pushed down in volume. The interesting thing is, even the drums are pushed down. For dance tracks, it's very common to have the drums control the compression to make the feel song like it's "pumping", but this isn't really a dance track.

The compression here is so intense that even the drums are drowning in it.

Intro is terribly MIDI-ish. Everything except the guitar sounds about as realistic as it does on the SNES. Some better samples would have been nice. Organ could use some modulation. Arrangement is nice, otherwise.

Not everyone loves trackers.

This is really cool. That is all.

Soule is getting way too little love around here. So - thank you. As far as the ReMix goes... I liked the source mostly for the rainy mood, and your ReMix hasn't kept any of it. It also feels a little generic and background-ish for its aggressive style. Hopefully someone else can put that into words better than I can, assuming anyone agrees with me.

Word of warning - it rarely takes once or twice to record a piece if you have any standards at all. I've done vocal recordings with people who can sing really well, and I still needed to break the piece down into roughly 20 sections, each of which was recorded at least 5 times (excluding rehearsals, of course). I was hoping to nail my recording (6 parts, 3 people) down in one evening, and it ended up taking weeks. I'm not saying this is necessarily how bad things will get for you, but in my experience (and I've been in several choirs, all of which released albums that took forever to record) you're being dangerously optimistic. So, you're definitely doing the right thing getting the arrangement all done before even beginning recording. Good luck!

I agree on the drums, it's like you ran it through reverb and left no dry signal at all. There's also hardly any bass. Lead guitar perfomance is great!

From what I can tell, the arrangement is pretty nice, and this would probably sound really cool if the performance was better. I have to say though, it takes courage worthy of Link himself to post something like this! I think you should keep it all-male.

This was fun. And the string sections were unusally well made, I have to say. Seen this, by the way? http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37565