Qshunt's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[RW - Garden of Seborhin]

This is quite interesting. overall production quality is pretty good. levels are nice, melodies are great. Nice arps too.
Drum and Bass music is my forte, so I might be being overly critical on certain aspects. Please feel free to contact me for a more detailed explanation of any concepts that you may not understand, or any of my descriptions that aren't clear enough.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, the overall production quality is quite good. I'm finding it a bit flat though. It doesn't sound like you use much in the way of compression or limiting? These are STAPLE devices in a drum and bass track. Usually I sidechain the kick track to the percussive elements, in varying degrees....the overall amount that i use compression in a track depends on the style of DnB i'm producing. eg. Liquid, i'd be using a light-ish overall track compression, plus the aforementioned Sidechained compressors.
If i were producing some neurofunk, i'd be using much heavier overall compression, and more "ducking" on the percussion.
Try just lowering the threshold on your master limiter to start with...you should get a noticeably better "sound" overall from that minor adjustment.

next, I was missing a sub. I couldn't hear a nice driving sub-bass holding it all together. again, that should be an easy change for you to make too. A simple sine, with a longish decay/sustain will do.

The eq on the kick (if you are using one) should be adjusted so that the kick has a touch more punch, at slightly lower frequencies (around 75-100hz..this is dependant on the sample you are using too)

Same for the snare. Give it a bit of a peak around 170-210 hz. adjust to taste.

Please check out my stuff, in case you don't feel me to be qualified to pass judgment on your music!
I hope I have been of assistance. Any questions, just inbox me, i'll reply pretty promptly

Keep it up, bro...you have some nice tunes..that with some minor tweaks, could be fucking awesome tunes! Would love to collab some time. Peace!

Indigorain responds:

Haha, of course I feel you to be qualified for this kind of judgement, I was really missing some good criticism like this, it's extremely helpful!
You're absolutely right on the compression, I do use limiters, and some simple forms of compression, but the main reason I don't really compress that much is because I suck at it.
About the sub, I actually did that intentionally, I wanted to make a really light track with not much subbass. Next time I get to a project like this, I'll be sure to give it a firm sub!
And thanks for the EQ tips of course, I'll boost that up next time, now you mention it, the kick could indeed use a bit more punch.
And I'll send you an inbox with some questions, if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to learn more! :D
And thanks a lot, of course, this has been extremely helpful! :D

[The Falling Mysts]

Melodically, this track is excellent! keeps things interesting with all of the change-ups.

From a purely technical/production standpoint, you've got it bouncing off the limiter far too much. When there is lots going on the hihats just kind of squish out of the audible range. When they're not squishing they warble a bit. instead of using the limiter for compression / sidechained sort of effects, use a sidechained compressor on each of the seperate tracks, using the Kick as your duck source. Lower the master volume, so that its just touching the limiter, rather than the levels being hard up against the limit.
Great work though! with some minor touch-ups this could be quite professional sounding.
Check out some of my tunes! I'm quite alright at this music thing ;) 4.5/5

Dimrain47 responds:

Mixing/mastering is what I struggle with the most. Thanks for the tips, much appreciated!!!! I'll try that out next track.

[Its Beyond It]

Nice work. Are all of the Amen chops manual? or did you use a plugin like sugarbytes or glitch? nicely done! reminds me of oldskool omni trio or something.

I'd probably lessen the white noise / distortion thats saturating the drums though. or layer another track with the drums on, as a "dry" track! either way. Decent effort!

SonicKDT responds:

The Amen Chops are Manual...and thnx 4 da feed

[Guetta - Titanium (Remix)]

nicely done! vocals sit nicely in the mix. djgabe is a fucking twat...using the words "steal" and "remix" in the same sentence proves this. Stealing it would mean something like calling it "PrEmoEffect - wickedshit (my very own mix)" and claiming it as your own,...which you didn't do. Wheras "Remixing" someone elses work is making your interpretation of someone elses track (which you have clearly done) but stencils is right. Using vocals or any other copyrighted stuff is frowned upon by the newgrounds admins and they CAN remove your account because of it..if they notice it.

PrEmoEffect responds:

Haha, no worries, but thanks for standing up. I just wanted to share some inspiration with my fellow newgrounders since I really love these vocals.

[Repair]

Hey there, decent track. i like the chord progressions and the synth are quite nice. i think that the hats and cymbals kind of overpower the drums a bit. maybe group the percussion tracks and give them a touch of sidechained compression. using the kick as the sidechain source. you could probably get away with doing it to the melodies and pads too. give it a bit of a pump and bring out the drums more. maybe have some motion and filtery type stuff on the baseline too. maybe even some distortion. check my tunes and tell me weather or not you think i'm qualified to comment on yours or not! :-) 4/5

Alloud responds:

Thank you for the feedback :D

I never really found the hats 'n cymbals overpowering... They've been stereo separated a bit so they'd be "out of the way". As the track currently sits, the bassline is sidechained to the kick, which is what I'd hope would give it that extra motion. I don't really want to distort it anymore than it already is since I wanted a fairly clean sound.
Bringing the drums out more seems to be a common request though.

I'll take what you said in to account though when I do the final mix, thanks again.

[Ja10 - Dubaudio]

nice work !

sick tune mang!

darthduba responds:

Cheers ! Didn't see it was you who responded first.

[Keep on Rolling]

very slick!

nicely done, oozes professionality.

keeps it up!

glitchs2d responds:

Thanks

[8wonders - slunchy.]

not bad.

..but theres some really bad ducking going on. and its not "good" ducking like a sidechained kick on a compressor in some electro house track. its quite distracting.

The bass sounds a bit muddy because of it.

It sounds like you need to roll the bassline off at about 55hz, very difficult to explain how I would fix it on here. I could quite easily fixx it though.

Effectively what you have is several instruments all competing for the same bandwidth in your perceptable EQ range. This means that your kick, and your sub / bassline are both occupying the same frequencies.

What i mentioned before about rolling offf the bassline, is because below 50 hz, you're "pushing air" ie the speakers are moving at such a low frequency that you cannot actually hear the sound, its far too deep.
Well this sound that you cannot hear, still exists in the mix, and therefore has an effect on your limiter, and might be what is causing this crazy ducking phenomenon.

your kick drum should have the low frequencies rolled off at about 70hz,m so as to not interfere with the sub. I can hear the kicks and the subs fighting it out. I hope this helps. I've probably gone overly complicated. you can PM me if you want any decent tips.

I'm assuming you use fruityloops/FL Studio? everyone on newgrounds except me seems to use it ;-S

kjhsdgf responds:

yeah, i realized it needed serious editing, hence the plea in the comments.
but yeah, good tips, i think i can finally get to mastering this track!
yeah, i use fl9 (it's the first one i heard about, so it's the one i got used to)
but there are some people who use reason and cubase around hurr,
but they're few and far between

[AF - Forever (Original)]

Melodicaly awesome!

Hey man,
Excellent effort. touch too much compression though. I can hear it ducking in the wrong places.

Build is far too long. I keep waiting for it to explode into a fantastic array of huge beats, pumping basslines, and keep getting disappointed.

Notice I gave you a 9...you have to finish this man. These are some of the nicest trance melodies i've heard in years (and i've been listening / producing electronica for near on 20 years now)

again, awesome shit man
9/10
5/5

aliaspharow responds:

Dude, your a freakin god

[Life is the Drug - BK]

pretty decent

Heya man, Nice track. Intricate melodies, nicely put together. I'm not keen on the drum samples, they sound a bit hollow. Even a touch of reverb on them would probably go somewhere towards phattening them up. A nice phat snare would improve the beat considerably. Try layering several samples.

Sounds like theres some clipping happening as well. The bassline seems to be competing with the kick drum in some places, it kind of muds out a bit. Also, purely from a taste point of view, i think this track is screaming out for some big sweeping pads in the backround.

I'm on my second loop now (its playing as I write this) I notice that the clipping distortion comes in when the dnb bit comes in at about 1:35 til about 2:17 if this is by design, you should maybe limit the distortion to only the bassline, and not the drums.

Again, Nicely done mate. keep it up!

check mine and leave me some reviews if you feel so inclined!

Bracksta responds:

thanks for the review and tips :), i have been working on finding and making really great breakbeat percussion, it is very hard to get the thick yet pop sound. the bass is distorted on purpose :), i like saws. thanks for your time and effort, much appreciated!