Reviews for Equilibria - Nebula

[Krichotomy]

The drums are loud, but I think appropriately so. There are many tracks on Newgrounds that have drums that give me headaches. But I'm playing this track on my studio headphones and my head feels fine. The drums do have a strong punch, but they have a soft tone structure. They make my heart race, but they don't make my head hurt.

Nonetheless, I probably would prefer the drums to be a little quieter (pre-compression) to bring them a little closer to all the other instruments in the visual space in my mind.

Nice work man!

Dylnmatrix responds:

Thanks man! Drums definitely aren't our strongest suit yet, but I'm glad they weren't too loud on your end. I think what may have happened is we mastered prioritizing studio headphones, monitors and car systems, but slipped up on regular headphones. But due to not having anything different from those setups atm, it was hard to reference to be able to do so.

But yeah, maybe the drums could have been a little more balanced with the rest of the track, which is why we've done so in the Entropy VIP we're finishing up now.

[Azhthar]

Nice work! I really can see that you put lots of effort into the developement of this piece. There is so much going on here. Nice transitions, nice melodies good chord progressions and enough music material to keep this track from anything but being boring. I´m sorry that I have to agree to the last reviewer that the drums (and also the wobble bass and some of the leads) are mixed a bit too loud. I´m not talking about the loud mastering. This is fine for me, because I just have to turn my volume down ;) Although I have too say there are guidelines for too maximum loudness for broadcasting... The problem is that you cover the nice melodies, you have with the other instruments (like the piano). That´s a pity, since you put so much effort into it. I don´t think it would be bad for the dynamics in the track too mix the dubstepp elements a bit more quiet, since the structure of the track is already very dynamic. The other thing is that the orchestral parts and the piano are a bit too heavily quantised for my taste. Some humanizing and some more velocity editing would really improve this track a lot. I hope this review doesn´t sound too critically, because the track is great! I just wanted to give some input, since you asked for a review ;)

Dylnmatrix responds:

Thanks a lot for the review! I appreciate the added input on the drums and mixing. Since I started Equilibria, I've been taking new approaches to mixing my tracks better, so I'm still a noob at it pretty much. I'm just glad to know that it wasn't the mastering or eq, I was worried that was the case as I'm the least experienced at that and I'm the one who did the final mixdown and master. I think I may have boosted the high mid range a bit too much in Ozone, causing the basses and leads to be really loud, as they're actually really quiet in the premaster.

I'm glad you liked the chord progression and melodies, as this track was far out of our comfort zone when we wrote it. I'm really proud of this progression, since I wrote this whole melodic line in one go and we went from there.

I do agree about the humanization and velocity editing. With Action Strings, it's a little bit harder to humanize the strings with it being preset phrases only. We had also recorded it to a wav file, since I didn't have Action Strings at the time, so editing was pretty much out of the question then. Velocity editing still confuses me, simply because I want the piano to be forte all the time since it will be hidden behind everything else. I edited it in this track, alongside messing with the color knob in The Giant, to get the humanization done to the best of my ability.

Again, I really thank you for the review. I actually really didn't have any doubt that Keitomine was right about the drums, I just really dislike short vague reviews, which is why I gave him the salty response I did. So no worries there ;)

We'll be using these tips in mixing the rest of the tracks on the EP so thank you very much once again!

[HazardOxyde]

This Is amazing! I had to download this incredible piece of work <3

Keep up the good work hun!

Dylnmatrix responds:

I do hope you go and buy it from Bandcamp instead of using the .wav download NG has in its code, as it being on Bandcamp for Equilibria's EP is the reason I disabled downloads in the first place. Please and thank you.

Other than that I'm glad you like it!