zircon

That pic was from a 2007 Baltimore meetup (day before Easter, I believe.) It wasn't taken for the interview, nor do we ever actually do that to judge a mix. Still a great group pose though

Platonist's style is really growing on me. It tends to be dry, up-front, minimal, and tight; none of which are negative adjectives in this case. Most electronic music I hear is drenched in reverb and densely layered... I'm guilty of it myself, but it takes some skill to slim down the soundfield to the essentials and still have something that's enjoyable. This remix is very well-crafted in that sense. The drums and the various bubbly synth stabs and arps are excellent, particularly the constantly moving FX at 4:12. The arrangement is also quite creative, even though the lo-fi sounds might make indicate otherwise. Even though Platonist never leaves the source too far behind, there's a ton of effective original writing. No doubt some people will dislike the simple synths and sounds, but hey, haters will be haters. Don't listen to 'em. YES

Yeah, there are worse things than dongles IMO... I just wish there were a universal dongle brand so you didn't need two or three kinds.

Correction to what Kanthos said: smaller buffers make your computer work harder, not larger ones. Increasing your buffers SAVES CPU power.

This is sick overall; reminiscent of Advent Children's OST, stylistically. I have to agree the cymbals/hats are too loud, and the drums are kinda plain, but in general the production is quite good, and the mix of sounds is highly creative. I like that it's not just straight-up guitars, drums, and bass like so many other tracks we get that are guitar-driven. The female vox, whether they were sampled or live, were a nice touch. Great interpretation & performance. YES, conditional (fix highs/cymbals)

No more off topic posts please, from anyone. Stick to discussion of Sonic Unleashed - if you don't care, don't post.

Awesome interview - a pleasure to read. It's even funnier if you've met Larry in person or heard him talk - "dayum", etc

Update your QLSO to the latest version of Kompakt. Run it once as a standalone and once within your sequencer. Then it should load fine into Kontakt.

That's completely incorrect, bro. ANY Kompakt, Intakt, or Kontakt Player format library will load into Kontakt. I load all my Kompakt-format stuff into Kontakt 2 every day.

The general level of musicality here is amazing, as is the production, the creative sound design, the structure, etc. The SOLE issue, in terms of our standards, is the interpretation of the source, as other judges have noted. This is an incredibly hard vote for me - I am making all the connections Larry pointed out, and the source is certainly in there, but the stuff that pushes the mix over the 50% bar (like the chimes/snare pattern usage) is, as CHz said, in the way back of the mix. All things considered, I cannot pass this as-is. It does technically qualify as having dominant source usage, but I've rejected things less liberal. It's not JUST about % source tune usage - how the source tune is used in relation to the other parts is equally important. Sorry man. I love this one but you gotta just inject some more audible source tune in there. NO, resubmit

These are effects, they don't generate sound. You need to run sound through them (eg. a guitar sound) since that is what they are made to do... act like amps and pedals.

Are these original works or remixes from games? You need to post these in either the WIP:Remixes or WIP:Other forum, depending on which it is. Also, it's good form to only post one song at once (and not to make a bunch of different threads for different songs at the same time.) I'll lock this for now and you can repost one song at a time in either of those forums, depending on what you're doing.

Nah, you were just (trying) to take a jab at the site. But without people like you we wouldn't be able to make jokes about judgehate (etc), so keep it up. Always good for laughs every time Looks like the best idea put forth so far would be to have no more than one thread a day, and if there are multiple people that day, to consolidate those people into one thread for the day (eg. Happy birthday Coop, Edgecrusher, blah.)

Haha, I can't wait to graduate. As is I don't have any free time. Life will be so much easier when I'm done, as I'll be able to actually devote entire 8 hour blocks to working, instead of having to worry about going to classes and doing homework. As is, I have to squeeze in all the work that I do to earn money in between my school schedule.

Man, always gotta love the haters.

I'm not going to make up a new forum policy without asking other site staff, foo.

We're not making a birthday subforum. Look, I hate to say it, but every single forum member does not deserve their own thread. Not even every remixer does. We're all thinking this, but no one wants to say it. We simply have too many for that to be realistic, and now that it's the new fad, the forum is getting clogged.

Agreed, I was going to talk to the other staff about this today. Not sure if we'll limit everything to one thread or what, yet.

Gold has more samples, release tails, and way more articulations. Whether or not you NEED those articulations is another story entirely. Many of them may be extraneous for you. I suggest looking at the comparison chart at SoundsOnline (I think you can see it in the page w/ the Platinum orchestra.)

That would be a low pass filter with the cutoff being decreased over time. Filter = A tool that "filters" (removes) frequencies from the sound. You can download free filters, but your sampler/drum plugin/synth probably has a filter to begin with. Low pass = The filter only lets the low frequencies pass through. Hence, low pass. In other words, you will cut out a lot of the high frequencies. Cutoff = The point at which the filter starts removing frequencies. So, a cutoff set to 1khz on a low pass filter means all frequencies above 1khz will be either severely reduced in volume or eliminated. Doing it over time = "Automation". Different sequencers do this in different ways.

There is no way you'll convince me that there was less (or equal) variety in game design and presentation in the 8-bit and 16-bit era as there is now, all things considered. Assuming we are talking about the game market as a whole, not every single game that is being created, including student games made in Flash that only a handful of people will ever see. "Primary" market only, if you will. The rest of your post... ugh. That's like saying "Portal is just another FPS with one new mechanic." You don't need to reinvent the wheel and implement a million new features to have a unique game that stands apart from everything else. That's completely ridiculous. Video games as an art form and medium of expression are VERY young. Movies have been around for over a century and filmmakers still find ways to surprise us and break new ground. Don't give me that BS that we've already exhausted ALL creative possibilities with video games. That's beyond inane. "Oddball" and "odd" are two separate words. "Odd" means "unusual or out of the ordinary, not what is expected." An odd gem doesn't have to be some sort of goofy game with a million colors and anthropomorphic bears. "Oddball" carries a different meaning. We DO want the games that are currently "odd gems" to become the norm, because "odd gems" encapsulates a WHOLE slew of games. No More Heroes is an odd gem. So is Portal, Audiosurf, Cave Story, etc etc. This is really exhausting to keep saying over and over. How could you possibly argue against this? It's mystifying to me. Why don't you actually read why I'm saying?! Come on, man! I didn't say NO games were being created by just one guy. Yes, I know about Cave Story. I'm saying that before, especially in the PC market, POPULAR, mainstream games were being created by very small groups of people, or perhaps one person. These were the games that your average person played. Today, you can still find games created by indie teams, but these are in the extreme minority if you were to take a sampling of ALL game players. They are completely marginalized now. This was somewhat inevitable because with modern hardware capabilities, everyone expects a certain level of presentation and gameplay depth which is BY AND LARGE only possible with a larger team. But... it isn't, comparatively speaking. Once again, you need only look at classic games like "Leisure Suit Larry" (which was basically done by one guy) and their massive popularity. The "homebrew" scene was far more influential and successful in earlier years of the computer gaming industry than it is now.

Frankly, I don't see any good reason to use EQUO for common tasks instead of Parametric EQ2. EQ2 is as easy to use as you can get. You click on a band and drag it around to affect the sound, plus there's a visual reference. Is there something specific you're looking to learn about? You should read my production tutorial (fifth in the series) in the Guides & Tutorials forum, for a general overview.

"Niche and goofy" wasn't what he was asking for, simply more variance and creativity from game to game. Not gritty FPS rehash in brown environment #5134. Yes, I'm sure he would be complaining if every game was a bright, colorful Mario ripoff, but he wasn't asking for that. He was just asking that people consider trying NEW ideas and paradigms rather than just taking existing ones and making small modifications (or no modifications). And you really can't argue with me about the fact that publishers and developers in general are way less willing to take risks now, because they don't want to lose money, those discouraging people with the resources to potentially make a really cool, unique game to actually attempt to do so. Yes, there are indie developers doing some cool stuff, but they are in the TINY minority, and it is rare some of their awesome ideas actually come to light and get distributed widely. Because of the demands of modern gamers too, it is unlikely that a single person can basically create an entire game themselves like they could before (eg. Al Lowe).

I think they were. When video games were first developing, up to where they really started hitting the mainstream with the PSX, new genres were regularly being created. Gameplay paradigms we take for granted were still being experimented with. While I love modern games as much as the next guy, it's impossible to deny that massive budgets and expectations lead to less risk taking, just like Hollywood summer action blockbusters. Back when graphics and music were simple, and entire games being programmed by a tiny staff (or just one person) was the norm, people had more liberties to do fun stuff. I mean, that's what Al Lowe was all about with Leisure Suit Larry. He had the freedom to do that because people were still experimenting with new game concepts and settings. He wouldn't be able to pull that kind of thing today - and in fact, he had a new game idea fairly recently (I can't remember the exact description, but it was something very unusual, but unique) and he couldn't get any publisher interest. No one wanted to take the risk. So don't tell me it has always been like this.

People here keep missing the point. He's not saying there aren't odd gems. He's saying that those odd gems should be the NORM, not the exception.