zircon

Agreed that the arrangement and instrumentation is remarkably similar. Solid as a cover - very much like the approach S.S.H. takes with some of his material - but not interpretive enough to be an OC ReMix. I also agree that the mixing/mastering could have been a bit better. The rhythm guitars are very thin; they're mostly high end, with very little low end to low-mid "chunk". There's a lot of reverb overall which could be slightly toned down. You could probably increase the volume on the snare too. However the main problem is definitely the lack of significant arrangement. NO

I wouldn't worry too much about the max recording freq being 96khz. That's really more than high enough. I challenge anyone to A/B between 96khz recordings mixed down to 44.1khz for a CD, and 192khz mixed down to 44.1.

I feel the same way about other projects, even those like C.S. and Relics of the Chozo, despite the fact that they may be uniform stylistically. In fact, I think uniform is boring, if you're just playing straight through. It is really rare that I'll queue up an entire album even from one of my favorite artists like BT or Hybrid. Listening to an hour or more of the same style or the same artist is rarely interesting after the first couple times you do it. With VotL, there's such a variety that I feel like it IS a great album to simply queue up and listen through. The reviews haven't been that mixed. The majority of people have really enjoyed the project. The reviews we've received at Squaresound and M4G were very positive. If I had to do it all again, I wouldn't really do anything differently. Of course there will always be a vocal minority; too much techno, not enough techno, too much arrangement, not enough arrangement, overproduced, blah blah blah. We had a private project forum and a private chatroom where people interacted to give and receive feedback on their songs. Many people also sent songs back and forth via AIM/IRC one-on-one.

The whole mix definitely sounds weird. The kicks have all this sub, but not a lot of 'punch'. There's a gaping whole in the lows and low-mids. The rhythm guitars should be taking up way more space, particularly some beef low-end; likewise the bass is only really audible in the mid? The hats/snares sound tiny. It's hard to comment strictly on the lead when the whole thing sounds off - I mean they do stand out appropriately (maybe a bit of reverb/delay to wetten it up?) but I think you need to revise the entire mix.

Intro is pretty nice, though the transition is abrupt. I like the overall volume now - good job fixing that. The phasing on the lead seems OK now. However, my problems with the drums still stand. There's still hardly a groove to speak of. That's a big problem. Additionally a lot of the synth sounds are pretty plain; they're all stabs and leads. No soft harmony arpeggios, smooth 'string' type instruments, etc. A very homogenous texture. Try using vibrato on your leads too (LFO applied to pitch) to make sustained sounds more interesting. I would also rethink using the low synth chords (eg. the sound at :50). They just muddy things up. Try pad sounds instead, and focus more on a legato lead. Maybe some sort of parallel synth at 1:11 playing a harmony with the main lead. In general the arrangement is OK but it feels sparse, such as around 2:15. Elements drop in and out with no sense of an overall dynamic contour or curve. Listen to some of the other posted electronic remixes to get a better idea of what we're looking for. This should be driving and high energy, but it just doesn't have any momentum. With regards to production, the mixing in general is a little off. It's muddy in the subs and as vig said, 200-500hz seems a little lacking (low-mids). The kicks are a little too loud, and I think overall you could use some compression to 'glue' everything together. This probably isn't the main issue you need to be worrying about though. Sorry man, still not quite there. NO

Well, I'll be the first to say that I love trying new musical styles. Still, I wouldn't force that on people - it's too risky for something like FF7. What if the mixers came up with, as you said, a catastrophe? I guarantee you LOADS of people would have complained. Plus, people already complain that there's "too much generic techno" (which I think is untrue) - imagine if I just picked one or two genres for the entire project. Ultimately, this is a subjective matter. I definitely enjoyed Project Chaos but it was not run any differently than VotL insofar as genre and style selection goes. The project leaders let the remixers do their own thing. They just had a different set of remixers. BotA was also good, but look at Vurez' "New Mexican Thunderbird" which sticks out like a sore thumb in the "urban" theme. I don't think that song detracted from the album at all. As for C.S., I disagree with you there as well. I think the concept was good but the execution was lacking in that there were a lot of inexperienced remixers, so the general remix quality was often inconsistent (and poor). If people like Jeremy Robson, Steffan Andrews, Russell Cox, and Vampire Hunter Dan had been on board, it would have been stronger. Not to say the final result was bad; it wasn't, but it wasn't without flaws. On a related note, one of the things I said at the beginning of VotL was that I wanted every song to be OCR-quality in both production and arrangement. I think at worst we may have a couple songs that would be borderline votes, but the vast majority would be YES or direct post. I feel that this is one of the best aspects of the project, and a standard that I hope future project leaders will try to follow.

New blood??? So bustatunez, Hy Bound, pot hocket, Tweek, Hemophiliac, and Fishy aren't new blood? How about AnotherSoundscape, LuIzA, or norg? None of these people have more than 1-2 remixes up on the site, if that (some have nothing). Saying VotL "needed new blood" is a really unfair criticism considering the massive contributions of new remixers to it. Not to mention the remixes from Dan B, Jovette, and Steffan Andrews, among others, all of whom delivered material rather unlike their previous remixes on the site. Frankly, as I have said before, I think it would be a crime to FORCE people into doing just a handful of genres. Do you really think I should tell bLiNd to do a soft waltz instead of a kick-ass trance mix? Or that Bladiator should do drum n' bass instead of a piano solo? IMO, that's dumb. FF7 had a massive soundtrack with TONS of genres. In my opinion, the only way to properly do justice to it is to let great musicians do what they do best.

\m/ If you pick up Antigravity (see sig) check "Warhead". It's AD's spiritual successor. Good gaming adrenaline music has gotta be SSH. That guy gets you PUMPED!

Wow, if there is one word I had to use to describe this mix, it would be "wet". TONS of reverb all around. I gotta say a lot of the riffs here are ultra basic, like at :44. Sheer arps. The voice samples before that could have been a bit more sparse, I thought they went on for too long. More importantly, every synth and drum sound is textbook trance. Sounds like vengeance/VIP drums with Vanguard and possibly Nexus presets. The basic trancegate rhythm on the lead and 16th note arpeggiation in the bass is simply not interesting when you have it going constantly throughout the song. Even the slight variations on it are not enough. The soundscape feels homogenous across the board. The rhythm never really lets up for a smooth breakdown of any sort, which would have been a welcome break. 3:28 or thereabouts would have been a good spot to cut everything and do some menacing sweeps + arpeggios with some softer sounds and NO rhythm at all. Again, there is too much reliance on the trancegate rhythm(s) that NEVER let up which really drives me crazy. Arrangement isn't bad, at least in terms of variation, but the majority of original material seems to be basic trance filler which we have frowned on in the past (eg. Siamey). What I mean by this is there are lots of tonic-note passages with octaves and fifths, not really creating original chords, melodies, harmonies, or interesting rhythms, but ultra-simplifying the source down to the key and just playing a couple notes from it. As Larry pointed out, there is some noticeable repetition as well. Lastly the mixing could be improved. While there's no clipping or distortion, you have delay and reverb on basically everything. The compressor/limiter is used to sort of 'glue' everything together and there is a lot of pumping towards the end with the dark piano sound. I think you need to cut the reverb/delay back, and use EQ to carve out spaces more. Then bring down the pre-compression input so it's not pumping like this. Maybe sidechain the kick/bass. Not feeling this one yet. NO, RESUBMIT

What you would do is load up any standard multi-track editing program, say, FLStudio (get the free demo). Load the song on to an audio track (or in FL, load it as an "audio clip"). Then, where the curse words are, FADE the volume out. Then you can take a sound like a 'censor beep', which is really just a synthesizer making a sine wave, and put it over that spot. Then fade the volume of the song IN again.

We tried, through several avenues. Nothing came of it- most likely because Gabe & Tycho are deluged with email daily.

You're not entirely correct here. While remixers don't get direct permission to arrange the original works, to date NO composer has ever expressed anything other than sincere appreciation and gratitude for what we're doing. And we've heard from a lot of composers. Some of them have even submitted to the site themselves. Suffice it to say that while we are aware that, in theory, the copyright holders could ask us to cease & desist, we strongly doubt they ever will as it's good promotion for them and completely harmless.

I didn't know there was an FF6 remake even announced.

Yeah. The whole release was rushed on my end, but I'm glad that in hundreds of tags, I only made that one mistake.

Err... there are plenty of samples of old-school chip sounds as well as VSTs that can produce them without much trouble. It was no problem for Suzumebachi to create a WAV using them (I don't know the exact method), then send that to Steffan, who simply put it at the beginning of his mix and wrote other parts surrounding/under it.

Yeah, that's the full version of Hajime on there - it's an original song from her upcoming album. I had actually posted about this recently; check Radio Mystic's front page.

It has had one for years. FL has a lot of innovative features, eg. direct automation of VST parameters (NOT just MIDI CCs) that other sequencers are only just now catching up to. As for S7 or C4's 64 bit engine sounding better, let's test it, shall we? Let's load Pro-53 in a blank project at normal volume. Project samplerate at 44.1. On the default preset (super sync lead), hold C3 for one measure at 120 BPM. Render that measure and any decay from the patch release/reverb to 16bit/44.1khz WAV (no dither). I'll do it in FL, and we can see if the files null out. I'm betting they will.

The only people who I have seen making broad statements about one DAW sounding "better" than another pretty much do so on completely unfounded assumptions and misconceptions, with no basis in reality or any form of scientific testing. They're just following a group mentality or buying into hype/branding. That IS dumb.

The arrangement is liberal, but especially after seeing Larry's breakdown of where the source was used, I feel comfortable that it's not TOO far out. This mix is excellent in every area, from performance, to recording, production, drum sequencing, variation, original material, etc. House's musical abilities are really quite diverse even within guitar-based mixes. An obvious YES! YES

Yes, the MIDI Outs all correspond with channel volume. Say you have strings loaded into your sampler, MIDI channel 1. A MIDI out pointing to that sampler, channel 1, will affect the strings' volume if you move its volume knob. Very simple.

Well, VSTs != audio, necessarily. This test is primarily important for people that are dealing with pre-recorded audio. He's saying that the mixing engine is identical across the board, which is what many of suspected, but some dumbasses have called into question (PRO TOOLS SOUNDS SO MUCH BETTER THAN FL.) VST handling, that COULD be a different story, but since most hosts support variable samplerate and run at 64-bit float, it probably doesn't matter.

Heh, kind of funny... I did OVGMC originally, then TOMC/CMC spun off it, now we're back to OVGMC

This isn't exactly a new idea... the record label Magnatune has offered all of its albums at buyer-defined pricing for years. It does apparently work well for them so I imagine Radiohead will make a nice profit too. Of course, it helps that they've had major label backing and promotion, hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in them, and a huge name to go on.

Does FLStudio sound worse than Reason? Does Pro Tools make all your songs sound better? People ask this crap all the time and somehow even some audio professionals buy into it. http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2749054 This puts the topic soundly to rest, when it comes to 'audio quality'.

I agree with Vig's assessment of the trumpet as being fake - definitely try to find a live player, or a better sample. However, I don't think the panning is a big deal. That said this mix definitely needs more meat on the bones. There are very few parts, no rhythm section to speak of (besides the snare), no bass. There are some interesting sound choices towards the end with the choir/bells, but in general all the harmonies just feel very sparse and a result, not very enjoyable. Definitely needs more instrumental parts interacting together to flesh out. Use the WIP and Workspace forums to fine-tune your tracks. NO