Saga Frontier 2 - Thema Remix

[bluelighter]

Thanks for your detailed comment !

I've made some adjustments: www.reverbnation.com/bluelighter
•    More stereo with guitars and bass
•    Lead guitar more emphasized
•    Fade out at 3'38 reduced
•    More reverb on choirs
•    1'50 : less toms (some groups of toms deleted)
•    Some instruments deleted
-> there was yet some suppression in precedent version, but I recognize some was really useless and sometime annoying (notably strings in bass that I've well reduced).

About the kick drum, I've yet used Parametric EQ in FL to filter some frequencies. I don't see what I can do more to improve this.  Is it really still too loud?
 

[timaeus222]

Hm? You did mention the guitars are now supposed to be wider, but it's still narrow; wide implies it's in both the left and right speaker in far positions, just so you know. Also, when I talked about the choirs, I actually suggested a decrease in their reverb, and unless that was a typo, you apparently did... the opposite?

 

It's improved, but the clarity is still lacking. Listen to 1:49, and be honest: can you hear the kick well enough? I can feel its thump, but not hear its presence above 2000 Hz. For this musical approach, one should hear something near 4000 Hz on the kick, called the "click". Also, look at the Master EQ and look near 200 Hz. That will tell you how much frequency clutter there is near 200 Hz in the track as a whole. Even if you can't hear it, you can see it; the brighter it is, the louder it is. Ideally, the only instruments that should occupy that range in your ReMix are guitar, bass, kick and snare, and occasionally pizzicato. Almost nothing else, for as long as they don't play low notes, needs anything below 200 Hz. Why keep what's not there, right?

 

Even though I didn't say it was too loud, I did say it was lacking clarity due to frequency clashing in the low-mids (also known as muddiness). That's the main issue right now, and some of the causes for that muddiness are having too many instruments to work with, and possibly not filtering them at a high enough cutoff frequency.

[bluelighter]

I think this time, it's the good version

http://soundcloud.com/bluelighter0085/wave-of-blood-in-paradise

• Kick drum : filtered on mid frequencies, instead of bass
• Guitars: double to have one in the right and in the left. I think it's what you meant
• Reverb reviewed on choir, a little less than the first version.

Thanks a lot for your advice! It's now clearer for me.

[timaeus222]

What's going on? You said right in your post that you did pan the guitars left and right, but it didn't happen. Are you aware that it didn't happen at 0:30 and on? It's important that your audio system can tell you whether something has been panned or not, and that you can hear it.

 

This did improve a bit more. I hear the kick a bit better, but the soundscape as a whole is still rather narrow compared to the previous versions, and there is noticeable overcompression when the kick plays quickly (e.g. after 1:49). See if you can get the guitar panned like you are stating, and again, check your instruments to see if there are so many that some instruments don't contribute enough to be audible. I hear some extremely faint brass at 3:20 that is just almost impossible to notice, for example. I get that you may want that brass there because you believe it makes the soundscape more intense, but try taking it out and really comparing the differences; I really believe there won't be much difference at all. If that's the case, then it might as well not be there. It's like someone screaming in a screaming crowd of people at a live metal concert; it doesn't matter whether that screaming person is there or not because no one can hear that person.

 

Try comparing the soundscape at 0:35 - 1:48, at 1:49 - 2:12, and at 2:16 - 3:34. Are you noticing how it gets more cluttered as the track goes on? If you do, that's a clue to compare those timestamps with each other to make them sound about as clear as the clearest one. I would use 0:35 - 1:48 as your standard for now.

[MindWanderer]

What's going on? You said right in your post that you did pan the guitars left and right, but it didn't happen. Are you aware that it didn't happen at 0:30 and on? It's important that your audio system can tell you whether something has been panned or not, and that you can hear it.

I'll take the bullet and say that I don't actually know what you mean by this.  As far as I know, panning far left means that 100% of the sound is coming out of the left speaker, vice-versa for right, and centering means that the volume is split 50/50 between both.  I imagine that what bluelighter did was simply copy the same track twice, each one hard panned to opposite sides, and then reduced the volume by half to compensate.  Which would have the exact same sound as centering it in the first place.

 

The only thing I can imagine you mean is that the two speakers should be different somehow--different takes of a live instrument, different samples in a round-robin, microvariations in timing or velocity, subtle differences in FX, etc.

 

Since I've heard this criticism before, I imagine I'm totally wrong about my understanding and would appreciate correction.

[timaeus222]

I'll take the bullet and say that I don't actually know what you mean by this.  As far as I know, panning far left means that 100% of the sound is coming out of the left speaker, vice-versa for right, and centering means that the volume is split 50/50 between both.  I imagine that what bluelighter did was simply copy the same track twice, each one hard panned to opposite sides, and then reduced the volume by half to compensate.  Which would have the exact same sound as centering it in the first place.

 

The only thing I can imagine you mean is that the two speakers should be different somehow--different takes of a live instrument, different samples in a round-robin, microvariations in timing or velocity, subtle differences in FX, etc.

 

Since I've heard this criticism before, I imagine I'm totally wrong about my understanding and would appreciate correction.

 

Panning implies an imbalance between the left and right, so when I say "wide implies it's in both the left and right speaker in far positions, just so you know", that emphasizes my suggestion to have the signal be in two far positions. To do that, you would need either two signals panned separately, or one signal with specialized delay (I let him decide which way to do it, but yes, I could have just said specifically how I would do it). When I listen here, I hear a narrow signal, not one I would term "wide".

 

(I should also clarify that if you pan 100% left and 100% right and you lower the volume, that does not turn it into a centered signal; it's just a quieter wide signal. The signals in the two stereo positions remain the same, but each signal's volume was just lowered)

 

Ideally I would rather have two different guitar takes panned at around 90~100% left and right, respectively, and the takes should be different enough in timing, tone, and offset in such a way that the overall perceived tone of the guitar sounds bigger, and a more complex tone is more easily achievable in this way than with one tone with that specialized delay (ping pong delay with small echo times [<15 ms] that are imperceivable to the human ear as distinct reflected echoes, and instead are perceived as one wide signal).

 

Just so you have a point of reference for panning for electric rhythm guitar (and it doesn't have to be omega-heavy deadly doom metal), here's a narrow sample of a recreation I did of a friend's band's metal song that approximates your panning, and a wide sample of the same thing, but how I would actually do it. Just to be clear, there is no exaggeration here on any of the guitar panning. Both the drums and guitars have their panning altered, while the bass stays centered.

 

(My suggestion of this panning in far positions should help to free up some of the low-mids that gets cluttered later in the track)