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*NO* Ratchet & Clank "Droid Station"


Rexy
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Your ReMixer name                                      Mellow Sonic
Your real name                                            Sandro Kreher
Your email address                                      
Your website                                               www.mellowsonic.de
Your userid                                                  29600
 
 
Name of game(s) arranged                         Ratchet & Clank
Name of arrangement                                 Droid Station
Name of individual song(s) arranged          Gemlik Base
Composers                                                  David Bergeaud    
 
Edited by MindWanderer
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  • 3 months later...

oh boy, some straight sausage on the waveform here. let's see what it sounds like. interesting original to pick.

starts out with some very wide-freq pads and sfx. there's a lot of rumble in this, and it doesn't sound great. the synths that come in though are pretty neat, very crisp, and the drums that come in after are also pretty good. lots of complexity which i appreciate.

the lead comes in around 1:16 and it's got some fun gating and sweeps on it. around that time however the heavy emphasis on the upper bass / low mid range started to really bother my ears. this has so much clutter down low, and the really blown mastering only makes that more noticeable. there's a break around 1:55, which is nicely handled but doesn't actually really lower the RMS much since there's still so much noise down low.

the arp takes the lead coming out of the break and it's nicely articulated. 2:34's a great step up in the energy too. it sounds so busy and cluttered though. there's just too much noise everywhere. 3:13's a bigger break and this is the first time without the bass booms and pads, and it's a huge relief. 

3:40 or so we're back into the build, and i'm noticing that while there's some new interesting synth work going on here, it's much the same as the opening sections. around 4:30 the melody comes back in, and we start to work towards the end. 

this is a well-crafted track that takes a melody-light original and makes a clear connection to it throughout for over 5:30. the issue i have with it is simply that there's so much low mid clutter throughout the entire track. it's difficult to listen to. the big low sfx / pad you've got throughout needs a significant cutoff below a certain point (at least 40hz if not 100) and you need to notch in better what's going on down there. additionally, this is way blown out, as evidenced by the waveform. i'm willing to bet that if you turned every single instrument down by 3db and let your compressor actually compress rather than be triggered for the entire song that you'd see a significantly different and less uncomfortable listening experience.

this is an excellent track that i'd love to see on the site. fix some of the mastering and it's an insta-yes from me.

 

 

NO

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  • prophetik music changed the title to 2020/10/13 - (1N) Ratchet & Clank "Droid Station"
  • 9 months later...

Two things Germany does well are sausage and heavy industry. “Mellow” Sonic serves us a hefty helping of both here, and I’m loving it.

Right off the bat, the soundscape is HUGE. It’s packed with detail, and instantly sets the scene, transporting us to some kind of deep space mining colony. It’s crunchy, it’s robotic, it’s metallic, it’s vast, and all these elements combine to create a wonderfully rough texture that pulses with energy.

Whilst I do love the texture and intensity of the first minute and a half, however, you’ve got to know when to give the listener a break. A real break, that is, and drop out that sub bass rumble that’s sitting at 37Hz for almost the entire first 3 minutes. I’m all for some heavy sub, especially in a mix like this that embraces the chaos, but at 1:55 the dynamics would really improve by dropping the bass out. Not only that, but the real climax of the track at 2:34 would be markedly improved by bringing back the bass energy at this point.

The larger break at 3:15 is more than welcome, although we do get some more bass rumbling in there after just a few seconds of respite. The synth arps are really well designed and varied - there’s an almost atonal, metallic one, a digital-sounding one, an acid one, and a nice spacey sine-wave one. Tons of detail in the design and implementation, it’s just a shame that my overall impression was that my ears hurt!

This is honestly super close for me, but at times the bass is outright rumbling (see 1:55, 3:22), and it does become unpleasant over such a long track. That’s not to take anything away from what is otherwise a very impressive offering, and I’d love to see the bass reined in and this resubmitted.

NO (resubmit)

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  • DarkSim changed the title to 2020/10/13 - (2N) Ratchet & Clank "Droid Station"

I can't argue with any of that, and I'll add that I found this to be pretty repetitive.  Starting at about 3:30, there aren't any new ideas, just minor modifications to stuff we've already heard, and the track is barely over halfway through.  I kept thinking I had this track on repeat because I felt like I was hearing the same things over and over.  There just aren't six minutes' worth of ideas here.

If the bass were less intense, and either the composition reduced down to about 4 minutes or some more creativity were on display in the second half, I could be on board with this.

NO (resubmit)

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  • MindWanderer changed the title to 2020/10/13 - *NO* Ratchet & Clank "Droid Station"
  • Liontamer changed the title to *NO* Ratchet & Clank "Droid Station"
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