Jerome Isma-Ae - Fiction Remix Competition with Jee Productions / 12

[Tekalight]

That would be definitely a good idea !
Oups !! Just saw it was already granted, so that is a very good idea !

[Tekalight]

@Mistaellis ( Chemtrailz ) : the wave form of the audio file you uploaded is truncated all way long, looking almost like a square. I don't know if you normalized your final mix after rendering it out of your DAW or if you were already clipping on your master level but as a result it's missing dynamic and it's incredibly loud ( I had too level down my speakers quite a lot here !! And the low end takes over all the rest which makes the track kind of "monotonic" when it's full of other nice elements that can't really breath and it's killing your nice arrangement.

To all remixers : it's not because a track is loud that it's good, the gain you get cranking up the levels of your kick & bass is making the track more loud but that's perceptive loudness and it's fooling your ears but not a pair of good average monitors ! Jerome spent some time on showing us subtle automation all along the tutorial to make the track "breath" and even if there's not an incredible plugin mastering chain on the master, there's at least x-Fer OTT and the track is already gain staged & mixed before reaching that master fader. Just try the following : take all the stems from the remix competition download, drag them in any DAW in order to playback the full track and crank up the kick and the bass to that level you think it's making your track punchy... You'll see ( and ear ) what will happen then !
Sorry for the long post and to bother you with that without having myself submitted a remix yet and I don't mean to criticized other's work and I know that it's hard to get there with a decent quality track, but I really think that gain staging & mixing levels are important before getting to your favorite compressor or limiter !!
Peace & good mixing for everyone ! We now have a better time schedule to try to work this out thanks to Chris & SA.

[chris_agnelli]

Hey @Tekalight what you are seeing there is not a truncated loud master, but the waveform not displaying correctly via our player. The player requires an mp3 file to render the correct waveform. Upload a wav or aiff and the waveform will display as you see there.

But a timely reminder to watch levels and remember dynamic range.

[Tekalight]

@chris_agnelli Hey Chris, thank you for that precision, I didn't know about the player requirements . I always wondered if the uploaded tracks were passing through any kind of algorithm process like it's done with many other web sites. I was confirmed that it's not the case when discussing on Paolo Mojo "The Feels" remix-comp topic.

So what's the best way to upload a track on S.A website then ? Is it better to use a high quality mp3 ( 320kbit ) or will it not make a difference if we use the 44100/16 bits mix-down rendered from the DAW in WAV or AIFF format ?

And by the way, what are all the accepted formats : mp3, wav, aiff, flac ??

Thank you

[Tekalight]

@OChemist OK, we now have an explanation for the wave form looking truncated thanks to Chris but never the less I found your track very loud and with too much low end comparing to other frequency ranges. It's increasing the rumble effect ( which is proper to Techno of course ) too much. Talking about contemporary Techno Masters, I do agree, but there's now an overall tendency aiming for the end of the "Loudness War" for the sake of clarity and music quality and even YouTube, Spotify, SounCloud and all the others have review their "levels normalization" algorithms. So that's a matter of choice to jump for this new tendency and it will take time.

Well, that said, I'm not here to judge or criticize once again, I'm just trying to give my listener perception to other's work. I hope to receive constructive critics as well when I'll upload my track.

[Mistaellis]

Thanks for the feedback btw. I was planning to go over my highs to see if they were putting too much strain on my limiters. Uploaded it early to do some referencing.
Also, yes. We all want more dynamic masters and that is definitely the goal.. But Umek once told me, the last thing you want is Carl Cox having to adjust the eq on your track live to make it fit in with the rest of his playlist. The loudness struggle is real..

[Tekalight]

@OChemist I agree with your last comment about loudness but that's relative to playing back a track on a big PA system, here we are just listening to digital streaming music, a lot of artist release track's version for digital marketing, cd's and then they will have another version for live playback on PA with different levels & mono/stereo field compensation.

But hey, it could be a long debate, right ?

So let's go back to work, I'm still far away from a finished remix !!
It's definitely a good thing to have more time now.

All the best and keep on the good work !

[FrankyCaldera]

@chris_agnelli Yes, extending the contest is a good idea.

[Willscape]

Great work everyone! Just submitted mine. Went for a more festival/peak hour progressive vibe and added a few melodies. Hope you enjoy and thanks for listening!

[chris_agnelli]

The Secca mix is very very tasty !!

[chris_agnelli]

Hey @Tekalight 320mp3 please

[Secca]

glad you dig it! i edited some stuff and re uploaded

[Secca]

Indeed sounds like it! diggin the sound of your remix!

[Willscape]

@secca thanks buddy, appreciate it!

[Tekalight]

@chris_agnelli Ok, thanks for your reply and the 320mp3 info.

@secca Better & better .... Just watch out to not crank up those levels too much and keep the balance between low & high freq. !! Lol ...and maybe your fx noise presence almost all way long, it's adding the nice dirt & saturated sound to the mix but some times less is more..

Since the start I liked your arrangement, now it's really coming through, I still find more clarity & dynamic in part 2 but hey, good work done so far !! Like it, very entertaining track.

[MASKD]

Does anyone know if we are allowed to upload a version of our remix to Soundcloud. Obvs without free downloads!

[Tekalight]

@MASKD & @Sonic_Academy No clue about that, you can probably do so using a Soundcloud Private Link for your own testing but about making the track public even with no download option I don't know. SA staff could answer this question maybe ?

@MASKD Like your track but think it could really benefit of Kick & Bass levels adjustments, to my hearing, the kick is quite loud while it's missing some bass.

@Nagx Also like your track but it could also benefit of levels adjustments I think, in your case I found that both kick & bass are too much in your face not allowing other parts to shine through. Especially because you're using a very tight & sharp kick quite high in pitch, maybe it should not come through that much.

[MASKD]

@Tekalight Cheers man

[mariuszchodorek]

check my remix

[Tekalight]

@mariuszchodorek First of all mixing wise speaking, you did a great work. Now to my liking I would have liked to hear those pads & synths much more, especially during part one.
To finish, and again it's just my listening experience, though your arrangement is original and quite different I was expecting more tension, even if you decided to make your track a bit more relax & easy listening than clubbing like. But again, congrats for the mixing quality, nicely done, the beat really shine through the mix, maybe a tiny too much comparing to the synths

Last but not least : fade the end of your track, it's now truncated and has a brutal ending like the track is not finished !!