bwmusic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[After Everything]

Love the dynamics overall, a lot of excellent areas. To me, the reverb seems a touch bright though. I get it for ambient effect, but it personally I would take a little of the brightness away.

Ceevro responds:

You may well be right on that one...personally, I tend to like my reverb just a little too much - this is actually toned-down from how I had it to begin with!

[Monovale]

From a mix critique perspective:
Your organ lead at 1:03 is way too loud. It drowns out the initial arp line. There are various ways to tackle this problem, which leads me to another constructive point.
Upon a quick listen, this is a very I-mix; by that, I mean most of the audio is in the center of the stereo field. You could push the organs to the L and R fields, which would increase their definition (being further away from the center stereo field increases definition of an instrument); this will help create a wider mix, and help to combat a little of the masking issues you have (masking issues are when there are two or more instruments that occupy the same frequency spectrum range and fight each other for space).
The low end of the organ (or if that is a bass patch) could use low end EQing; even a simple HPF at a -6 or -12dB slope (experiment between 30-120 Hz) would reduce a little bit of the over bass muddiness, but add definition and clarity.
The overall levels mix is rough. Elements are extremely quiet, where others are extremely loud. Instead of using buss compression, this sounds more like a levels issue to me, and just requires a remix (versus using compression and upwards compression) I kept turning up and down my monitors to hear certain elements, only to be blasted by the organs or an SFX. This should be a HUGE no no in a mix; I should be able to have my monitors set at a comfortable level and be able to hear the entirety of mix (maybe with slight volume variations)

Take these little points, and try and experiment, or rework this track. Experiment with panning, EQ and masking. A lot of times interesting pieces are run afoul by novice engineering. Keep on writing though! You only improve, both in writing and engineering, by doing. If people offer constructive criticism, take it, experiment with it, reverse engineer it and learn from it.

MikeeUSA responds:

Thankyou for your review. I have very little experience mixing, I've been using audacity mostly after recording into a Tascam. Your information on how to make a wider mix is appreciated, I didn't think of that. Now that you mention it it reminds me of one of Kansas' songs: the one about Iccarus. I rember when once my speaker on the right blew out the bass was gone: they panned it all the way to the right. When listening you didn't notice but it was interesting once it became apparent.

I'll keep recording and trying. Many of the songs might not be good, but I've found that the only way I ever make something nice is to make alot of stuff and some will be ok (same thing in 3d mapping and everything else I've ever done: I'm usually mediocre or crappy)

About synths: I've been thinking of getting the MS-20 reissue, in your opinion is it worth it, or is what I have enough?