sleepFacingWest's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[test upload/new mic]

You have plenty of headroom on your recording, so I wouldn't add any compression on the recording phase unless you're REALLY familiar with how compression works. Artistic color choices aside, you'd only really need to do that if there were extreme volume issues (like you were working on a script that required some yelling or screaming) so you don't accidentally clip and ruin a take. Other than that, it will give you (or the mixing engineer) far more flexibility if you leave the compression for post-processing.

If the audio is being sent to a mixing engineer, you should be good to go. If you are uploading things yourself, you'll probably want to "normalize" your audio. This will take the loudest part and set that at the maximum volume before it clips. That way, your audio will make use of all the headroom you've got (all the vertical space in the waveform). If you are sending it to a mixing engineer, don't normalize. They'll typically appreciate being able to take care of that themselves.

The recording sounds pretty good! You could probably get a little closer to the mic so it picks up less of the room, and then crank your gain down accordingly to keep the levels from clipping. The gain is set a little high right now which makes the mic a bit more sensitive allowing it to pick up sounds that are bouncing off the walls or ceiling. One of the benefits of using a preamp/audio interface like this is you have more control over the signal as opposed to a mic with built in pre and converter. Get a little closer and turn the gain down to compensate and it should help remarkably with the ambient sound (although it's honestly not terrible). If it remains a problem, you could buy (or pretty easily build) a reflection filter. I could step you through a few options if you want. Audacity is fine for recording audio. The app that you use generally won't make a huge difference when it comes to recording. There are slight differences in workflow when editing, but even then, they all basically do the same things.

It seems like you're recording in stereo which is why it's only coming out of the left channel. At the top of audacity there should be a dropdown between the input menu (icon of a mic) and an output menu (icon of a speaker). If that middle dropdown says 2 (Stereo) Recording or something like that, you'll want to change it to Mono.

Feel free to DM if you have any questions or want to chat about it further.

DrSevenSeizeMD responds:

Thank you so much! I was worried that I had the gain too low. I fiddled with the gain forever and was never sure if I had it right, so I decided to just ask yall!
Ok, so lower gain, closer to the mic!
Thank you so much! I'll also switch it to mono!
I'll harrass you if I have anymore problems! I appreciate it!

[glass rainbow]

great work as always! The instrumentals really seem to float in space on this. So ethereal

[fireo dominus]

that choir sounds amazing! Is that a virtual instrument or did you sample actual singing?

father-p responds:

two VSTs, layered. and both are free! it's the SAM orchestra and Labs Choir from spitfire. Both are good on their own but the free version of sam has a very limited range, and Labs sounds pretty boxy on its own. but if you layer them and pan them separately a bit it sounds great!

[NG STARS Full OST]

This is really good. You are insanely talented.

[TL - Credo]

sounds great as always! Love the sacred music vibes early on before the dominant 7th.
I like how loose you're able to make this feel despite being created in box.
You might want to consider some parallel compression in the drums to help give them a bit more presence and punch, but that would be overly nit picky.
Best of luck with the internship. Is it music-based?

TaintedLogic responds:

Thanks so much for the review, SFW! I appreciate your critique of the drums. I've been trying to get better at mixing drums in Logic for a while now, and admittedly I'm not quite there yet.

And no, the internship isn't music-based. I'm studying to be an urban planner, actually. Cheers!

[Dastardly Deviants and Dizzy Detectives - VAC14 Round 1]

awesome!

[Supervillain II]

Really awesome hearing this sort of thing from you. The pointilist horns are pretty cool and work well against the backdrop drone of the strings.
If you're going for realism, I might suggest automating swells for the strings. String sounds are almost never fully stagnant and it can be a challenge to keep perfectly straight energy across the string for the entirety of the bow from frog to tip. Most notes will swell ever so slightly in a parabola (either across a number of notes, or swell in/out per note depending on how you want to phrase it). I also might toss the entire ensemble in a bigger more reverberant room. If these horns and strings were recorded live, they'd need a pretty big soundstage. The dry samples sound a little unnatural.
And if you're not going for realism, please ignore all of my stupid suggestions. Your music never needs any help.

[grotte sous-marine]

this is awesome!

[longing (or, wedding song to a broken soul)]

just lovely vocal arrangement!

[r e v i v e r]

this sounds great! Is this all synth? That distorted drone sounds almost exactly like an ebow on a guitar!

Troisnyx responds:

Yeah, it's all synth. ☺️ Glad you enjoyed it, thank you for listening!