wandschrank's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Wtfepic Battle]

Epic indeed!

I did a few remixes of my 8-bit stuff as well, it's interesting how they can sound like with "real" instruments.

My main criticism are the drums & the guitars. In my opinion, the song looses a lot of power because of the rather thin guitar distortion and the sound quality of the drums. I know how hard it is to get a decent guitar sound; I am never content with mine.

Apart from that, the drum patterns were good and the choir was a very nice addition to add some "epic" feeling..

Overall very good!

Regards,
wandschrank

SourJovis responds:

I think I get what you mean. But the issue not with the sound quality of the instruments, but with the mix. The more instruments you put in a song the less good you can make the individual instruments sound.
Guitars are quite difficult to create in a DAW. It took me quite a long time to make them sound like this, but I'm happy with the result. They give a nice wall of sound over the entire spectrum. Unfortunately I had to use some heavy low and high pass filters on them, to make room for other instruments. Also the middle is suppressed a lot, leaving only two peaks of in the low and high. The low peak got a little drowned out by other instruments, so it's mainly a thin high peak you hear. The base guitar is very deep though. If you listen to the guitars and base guitar without the other instruments, they sound quite powerful.
The same goes for the drums. If you listen to the drum track separately it sounds very energetic. Unfortunately in the total mix you mainly hear the clicks of the attacks. I had to process the drums a little too much to make them stand out at all.
I've put links to the description so you can hear the guitars and the drums don't sound too bad. They're mixed and mastered the exact way they are in this song, but without the other instruments.
I'll listen to some of your remakes of your 8-bit songs.

[Jiggly Butt]

I was surprised to find this under the techno section, but I like it! :)

Here are some things I noticed, just my personal opinion, maybe it will help you, maybe you'll disagree:

- Catchy melody, overall quite hypnotizing song
- The gate at the beginning (0:05) sounds very harsh
- Vocals could be mixed in more, they sound pretty loud compared to the rest of the song, this makes it loose a lot of power in my opinion (for example at the part beginning around 2:30)
- There are too many time effects / glitches involved, but I guess you did that on purpose because you also put it in the tags. Gross Beat (if you use the FL plugin) is a great effect, and it is very tempting to use it too often.. I can tell from my own experience. ;D
- Kick and snare could use a bit more punch#

Keep up the great work!

Regards,
wandschrank

hammytechnoid responds:

Thanks for your insightful review. I appreciate the input.

[Kidnap the Princess!]

This reminds me of good old games during the SNES & later the PSX era, sound- and compositionwise.

Chiptunes and guitars, what more could one wish for? I can't say anything negative about this song. It has not the best sound quality, but since I guess that you wanted to create a retro videogame song, everything fits perfectly.

Regards,
wandschrank

LowAim responds:

Top Gear 1 on the Snes has some of the best music ever made in a videogame I think and the soundtrack is a huge inspiration for me, I can always put it on and feel inspired/pumped up to try and do something similar :)

Sound quality is my greatest enemy when it comes to producing, I really need to buy a proper headset and/or studio monitors my hardware is getting old and doesn't seem to keep up with frequencies anymore sadly.

Thanks for the review, means a lot coming from a great producer such as yourself!

[League of Legends (Remix)]

Very high recognition value for LoL players. ;)

I liked the intro, but from 0:47 on, there are some things I dislike:
1) The kick has a crackling noise in it, you can hear it clearly at the calmer parts (around 0:53), around ~0.5 seconds after every kick sound. I could hear it with my studio monitors and my studio headphones, but not with my normal ones, so it may be hard to notice.
2) The whole part after the drop lacks power. I really liked 1:04 on (especially the lead synth), but the bass needs more work. The snare after that sounds more powerful & overall better than the claps before, but it does not cut through the mix.
3) The whole song is too short, it consists mostly of intro & outro.. sadly. ;D

All in all: Very nice intro, drums & bass could be better. Keep up the good work!

Regards,
wandschrank

LowAim responds:

Massive review, thanks man!

1)Hm yeah this was my first song that I really tried to mix properly but my speakers are getting old and they might not play all the frequencies, I'll look into it though!

2)I was going for a "calm before the storm" right before 01:04 kicks in but it might need more work, it does feel kind of weak. Mixing is my biggest weakness I think, especially with my old speakers but I'll look into it now that I've got some new frequency meters :)

3)Yep that's just me being lazy and not having the patience to play around more with the original material. And I find dubstep to be super hard to keep interesting, I'm not very fond of playing one section twice, I try to have as much variation as possible hehe.

Big up to you sir for taking the time to comment and offer in depth critique!

[*preview* Your Worst Nemesis..]

You should probably put this under misc.. ;D

.. because it's too unique to fit into a specific genre. I can't give a lot of feedback to this one, it sounds good so far. I'm looking forward to hear the full version, hurry up! ;D

Dungeecount responds:

Thanks :D that makes sense, I would have thought since it has sounds from a video game it would end up in video game, but then again I can't really see this put into a game XD I've been working on this on and off, it'll be done within this year XD

[Vermin]

Moar!

I didn't expect to hear anything like that on NG. Really good! Although it lacks the typical hardcore drum (sounds more like hardtechno to me), it's really good! I've tried to make drums like that in the past and was never quite content with the result, it can be a pain in the ass.

Well done, 10/10 and favorited.

Lashmush responds:

The kicks in industrial hardcore, especially Enzyme X tracks, vary incredibly. It's quite an experimental genre really.

Thanks for the review.

[Chiptune #2]

Pretty good!

I love chiptunes! :D Pretty good song. It was a bit short, though, and I couldn't figure out a climax. But the melody and the synths you used are nice, 9/10! :]

regards,
wandschrank

Will responds:

Thanks! It's more of a loop than a song really, hence the short time and lack of beginning-middle-end structure.