zircon

I usually just use a setting of "Hard" on the FLStudio compressor. Occasionally, "Vintage" which I assume is more of a soft setting.

Yeah. The typical comp setup I use has a threshold of about -26db, ratio of 9:1, 15ms attack, 200ms release, and a makeup gain of ~13db. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. I then have a hard limiter to tame any unwanted spikes. Compressing the BGM might work - I've never really tried it. Master track compression would affect the remix review clips we play which is no good.

Yeah, it's more for recording than anything else. But even so, I can reasonably play and record my guitar at 10ms and it sounds OK to me.

It can be hard to gauge sometimes. With some BGM, according to the actual dB level, it's fairly loud, but the range of frequencies might make it sound softer than it should. There's also the level you're listening at; if you have the show on at a lower level, the music will seem EXTRA soft, whereas if you turn it up, it will be apparent to a greater degree (as in, the actual ratio of bgm:talking will appear to change). Finally, listening on speakers vs. headphones can also affect it. On headphones, even very quiet BGM will be more audible, especially if they are closed back, but on speakers it will sound much softer. What's the "right" setup to listen at, then? I dunno. That's why it's tricky.

Gonna be at least three trance/club style tracks.

Nope, not your fault, this info hasn't been added to the main page yet so it's a little hard to find. I don't blame ya.

OverCoat gave a somewhat incomplete answer. We just recently revised and updated our site project guidelines and you can find ALL the necessary information on the OCR wiki: http://www.ocremix.org/info/Album_Project_Guidelines

Let me just say this... Sytrus rules. It's such an underappreciated synth but it's massively powerful. It can put out the sickest VA-style sounds (massive trance synths and leads for example), but also crazy wavetable/FM/additive stuff. Great filters, great unison, very high sound quality because of draft/rendering oversampling. I can't recommend it enough.

ps. I am not kidding

I will do at least half of this project.

Yeah, unfortunately, several people dropped out due to RL stuff - too busy for ReMixing or just no interest anymore. analoq, GrayLightning, Scott Peeples, and Wingless to name a few. It's unfortunate, but at the same time we also got some great newer ReMixers like Sixto, Tepid, GeoffreyTaucer, and LuiZa. Pretty much all the vets have an open invite at this point. If Gray ever rematerializes I'll find a spot for him no matter what.

Yes. You simply need a MP3 encoder. Examples of ones on Windows are RazorLAME and dbPowerAmp. In terms of cross-platform stuff, there's iTunes. Also, most audio editing programs and hosts (like FLStudio and Audacity) can load WAVs and then export as MP3s of varying bitrates.

You guys are the best! Keep it up. Just a couple seconds a day from all our listeners and we would never need to worry about this stuff ever again. Just remember, please, only click on the ads legitimately. Don't tell your little brother to sit there and keep clicking on 'em. Don't refresh the page 500 times to increase our traffic. Much like how we don't support proxy voting at podcastalley, we don't want people doing things that are less than legal for us.

Larry echoed most of the issues I had with this one. Underdeveloped first half, soundfield that was overly pristine and somehow sparse, etc. I would love to see a denser texture throughout and more tangible connections to the source tunes in the first half. Also, if you really want to emulate Zimmer's style, use some synths too He always does things like layer synth bass under his double basses to give extra presence to the bass. Refine + resubmit. NO

Yeah; because the ads are new, you're not gonna see a huge variety yet. Gotta have our site thoroughly indexed or some shiz. Anyway, thanks for support! Just a click here and a click there every so often is massively helpful.

Ha, this one ain't slipping past me I've probably heard about 50 revisions of this at various points and given ambient various different pieces of advice on it, some of which he took and some of which he didn't (at least, not verbatim). The reason I say this is because I *had* a lot of complaints and things I thought needed to be touched up, but I went through so many with him that we basically covered all the bases. I this is a strong rearrangement with good production and creative sound design. Everything comes together well. As TO said, this IS what a trance mix should sound like. It's not like bLiNd, it's not like Siamey, it's not like sgx... it's a unique style that works. YES

Hey, even though we're mentioning it on the upcoming show, I thought I'd point out the Google ads that are now on www.vgdj.net - we ask that you please do NOT block them, and if you're even slightly interested in what they're displaying to click on 'em. Takes seconds of your time and it helps support our ongoing costs (eg. prizes for contests!) So, if you like the show and have a fraction of a minute, click on one of our ads every so often.

To say this isn't "coherent", I think, would be incorrect. The songs aren't just pasted together. There is intelligent writing of harmony parts and transitions that were simply not there in the originals. We don't let cover songs or cover medleys pass, and this is no exception. We checked it compared to the originals and it had a lot material that they didn't. To say it's not compelling or interesting is a different story, but the interpretation factor IS there.

You guys and your <2ms latency... crazy! I'm happy if I run at 10ms.

Gonna take a wild guess here, you use a lot of delay effects in this song, right? Normally I don't hate on ReMix titles, but come on. You can do better than that. Ok, title critique aside, this is actually a pretty neat mix overall. I like the style a lot; good assortment of pads, inobtrusive synths, and some acoustic elements thrown in for good measure. The weak point in the chain is probably the percussive stuff, which tends to be on the boring side, and the pattern at 2:00 that comes in just doesn't fit at all. The sequencing is aight, but the kick is no good. Doesn't fit the style at all. Also, the piano is a little on the fake side - try the Clavinova soundfont, I think it would work a lot better here. You could probably tone down and re-EQ the ProTrax guitar later on as it's a little loud and low-end heavy. Lastly, using some intelligent compression and limiting on the master track to maximize volume and get a more 'full' sound would be advisable to really bring the most out of what you have. Arrangement seems to be pretty solid, to me. I'm never a huge fan of fadeouts - I think you probably could have taken out the fadeout entirely but left the rest of the material there and done fine with that. I also thought that you probably could have had more stuff going on in the middle section. You've got a long intro and a long outtro, so more 'meat' would help to balance that. You don't necessarily need to make the mix longer, but adding more instruments or layers to the 'climax' might not be a bad idea. This is a good start. Tune up some of the production things I've pointed out and refine the arrangement a bit, and you should be good to go. NO

The original is pretty short and simple. It'll be interesting to hear what you do with it. The intro is decidedly low-key compared to the souce tune; it's kind of ambient up until :57 where the melody starts to really come in. Even though you were introducing new elements after that point, like the distorted synth and the chuch bell, things still seemed overly empty. It wasn't until 1:57 that a more constant drum pattern was introduced to sort of 'ground' the remix in a rhythm. However, the pattern used is weak and doesn't really offer any extra energy. 2:33 is where the mix begins to pick up in all areas. I'm just wishing it came sooner and lasted longer. By 2:59 it almost sounds like you're ready to end things because of how you cut away all the parts. The following part to the end of the song is more ambient, just like the intro, though I don't know why you have that very basic bass drum pattern going on. It doesn't add anything. Looking at the big picture, this is a pretty interpretive take on the original, but I don't think you've quite got your ideas together yet. The whole mix suffers from pacing problems. If you're going to do a primarily ambient/new age style track, stick to that; no need to introduce the booming percussive parts. Conversely, if you wanted to do something more dramatic, you spent too much time on the intro and outtro, using only an extremely short climax section. Try to hone in more on the focus for the mix and then build on that when you have a more clear picture in your mind. There's no one thing that really strikes me as "wrong" here (though I do think the production is overly soft and muddy), but the different parts just aren't coming together for me. NO

Sounds like the original was pretty much direct sampled here for the intro, which is definitely a no-no. If you're going to directly use the source tune in your ReMix, you should do so VERY sparingly. Here, it's used as the foundation for the whole introduction. I would try to rewrite the intro w/o doing that. There are production problems all over, from parts that are too muddy (excessive reverb/bad EQ) to sections that are just overly loud and cause clipping. The choice of sounds at times contributes to the muddiness, such as the lead at 1:30. The drums are pretty bland in both their sound and sequencing, and don't fit at all IMO. The electric guitar part that came in is also not bright enough and soaked in too much reverb. Why only cameo it for a brief passage, rather than use it to play the whole melody? The playing seemed to be fine, and it made the texture of the mix more interesting. At 2:46, the transition is very awkward - the notes clash and there is clipping. The (original) section that follows is very sparse, and doesn't add a whole lot, before you get to 3:28 and pick up the arrangement again. I have NO idea why you used a synth rhythm guitar here when you had access to a real one, presumably. It sounds very fake and mechanical, especially when the real guitar comes in over it. They don't mesh at all. You close things out with the same original section that was used in the middle, which is sort of a cop out. The last few seconds that actually end the piece are flat-out ugly and way too abrupt. On the positive end, I appreciate how the texture gradually gets denser over the course of the piece, and there is at least some original material. However, you're going to need a lot more arrangement of the theme here to meet our bar, and you have a lot of production things you need to address too. Hit up our ReMixing and Works in Progress forums for advice from fellow mixers so you can polish your stuff more before sending it in. Better luck next time. NO

Whoa, I'd say you've got some mixing problems here man. The loud stuff right at the beginning borders on clipping, and after that everything sounds very densely packed together and cluttered. I'm definitely hearing either clipping or heavy limiting as the song progresses, particular in the e. guitar part, which is really not acceptable here. There's not a lot of room for the individual parts to breathe. Monitor your individual volume levels much more closely and make liberal use of EQing to tame highly resonant frequencies for individual parts. Some sort of stereo enhancement either through part doubling, stereo reverb, or ping pong delay on different parts would also help to make things sounds "wider". Postproduction issues aside, I also think the drum samples are not very good and could use some humanization. Guitar is nice, orch samples seem to be fine (though the clipping makes it kind of hard to tell). Focus on the mixing/mastering problems first though. The arrangement isn't as much of an issue as the technical stuff, but it's still on the weak side. You tend to stay pretty close to the original aside from a few break/transition sections (which are good - you just need more of 'em). Rather than repeating the main riff verbatim several times I would advise more variation on the melody either by changing pitches or rhythms. You can also change the chords or add your own to make things more interesting and give it your own spin. I like the concept here. Work on personalizing the arrangement a little more and redo the mixing and you'll be good to go. Resubmit! NO

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Wow.