Chimpazilla Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 (edited) Remixer Name: Nemix website: https://soundcloud.com/nemixmusic Email address : Name of game arranged: Castlevania Symphony of the Night Name of arrangement: Synth of Illusions Name of the song arranged: Dance of Illusions Thanks for considering my submission, Nemix Edited June 7, 2016 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted May 19, 2016 Author Share Posted May 19, 2016 I love the approach, and the intro vocal clips give me chills in the best way. THIS IS A LOUD MIX. I'm seeing -4.9db RMS on this bad boy. I think the final limiter could be dialed back just a teensy bit, but that's just because anything over about -6 makes me nervous! Still I gotta admit this master is clean, I don't hear unwanted distortion. Mixing gets a little busy when the vocal clips are competing with the big bass synth, in the intro and again later on. I'm hearing enough source and I really like what you've done with it. Overall, this is pretty badass. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Well, I really enjoyed the arrangement of the source material - there's a lot of originality in the harmonization of the source. The vocals are quite well placed, and I kind of appreciate not using the original text (it's funny, but this sets the mood better). You kind of go for a more old-school electronic sound, which stylistically works pretty well. I'm not feeling this production at all, though. The mix is very overcompressed - virtually all the sound that you have gets lost behind the bass. Looking at the waveform, every peak of the bass just completely squishes the other sounds that are playing. On top of that, the mix is redlining throughout, so even while compressed there's still clipping throughout. Even without looking at the waveform, it's easy to hear that most of your instruments are just getting lost behind that bass. The vocal clips are impossible to distinguish once the music is in place, instead just sounding like washed out noise. I can't see any other fix other than mixing that bass down enough for the other instruments to come forward, or dropping some of the instruments when you want to go with that full bass sound - everything together simply doesn't work, as far as production goes. You need to get a good balance of sound before you compress everything. On a relatively smaller note, I felt the drums were on the weak side, when it was just bass and snare. They sound thin, like they're there just to fill the space. The toms were pretty cool, though, and sounded like they had a better presence, so I know you could probably find something with more definition than that. Before I can consider this for a post, you're going to need to fix the compression and clipping on this one - it's not at acceptable levels, as it stands. I would also suggest looking into defining the snare and bass better, as they just sound too thin, to me. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 As I listened to the extended speech intro, it was obvious the mixing wasn't ideal, especially around :34 where the voices were more buried. When the synth lead finally arrived at 1:15, it had such a muddy feel to it; where's the high-end clarity? When Gario mentioned later voice clips being buried and the sound being washed out, the bad omen already sounded right from the beginning that this would be a potential problem. I also agreed with Gario on the drums being weak. While the kick has presence, the core pattern was too plodding overall, which dragged this piece down. I didn't time out the source usage in the arrangement, so I can't definitively speak to that, but I do know the theme and recognize it, so I'm not too concerned on that. It's mainly the production that's jacked, along with the beats lacking sophistication. If you can strengthen those aspects, Nemix, this would be in much better shape. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_NutS Posted June 3, 2016 Share Posted June 3, 2016 Gario said pretty much everything that I wanted to say after listening to this. The mix is just a big mess, and way too compressed. The heavy sidechained growl bass basically obscured everything when it came in, including the rolling bass you had going (2 bass synths, rarely a good idea). I felt the rolling bass was a cool choice, but the lead synths weren't as strong. Near 3:20 the voice effects are too distorted and piercing, and I hear clipping at some spots like this one, and towards the end it becomes near unbearable. When limiting make sure you limit to -0.1 db to prevent these kind of issues, but the compression and mixing issues are something that will require more finesse to fix, but a good start is to just make everything less loud. The arrangement seems ok though I do question some intonation choices surrounding the growls in context of the rest of the music... but the production issues are just too big of a deal for me to give it a pass, and distracting enough that they make evaluating the arrangement on its own pretty difficult.NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 Over compressed is definitely what I'd use as the descriptor of this mix. The bass, while cool sounding, eats all. Mastering is hot, which is noticeable in heavier sections where things begin to waver sonically. Less busier parts are relatively clean, but individual sounds get eaten up by the bass in busy sections, especially the drums. Arrangement is not too bad - writing could be more varied in places, but the drums are definitely a stick out point here - very generic with nothing much in the way of variation or fills. Lead is a little strong in the high frequencies at times. For me, I think a lot of the issues would be solved with less compression all round, and some drum variance so things don't plod along as they do. Some further variation to the overall arrangement would go a long way but I wouldn't mandate that. As is, it's a NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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