Ryzmik's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Death By Dubstep (Megacollab)]

I love seeing people united by dubstep, I think it would be unfair if I just give a review to the entire track, since each one involved sound so different and has its unique concept of dubstep, so I took my time to rate and review each one's part with my honest opinions.

Neon-Skies: 7/10
The melody might not be the best thing, but the kick and most of percussion sound nice and punchy. and you managed to make the drop sound powerful with that dirty bass.

Garddie: 7.5/10
Good intro: the drop didn't hit as hard as I thought it would be. However, loved the warm chords.

4ttitude: 6.5/10
I liked the silent parts, gives an unnerving vibe and suspense not knowing what's coming. But there's too much reverb on the bass and is muddy af. Consider cutting the lows on your reverb and the zone around 200Hz on your bass. Nice percussion tho.

DJDUBSTEPCREEPER: 6/10
Mix sounds powerful, but I'm starting to think some growls sounds like random one-shots that came out of a Disciple samplepack or something. Not to mention the weird panning choices. It mostly needs a better arrangement

AETHERmusic: 8/10
Gosh, the piano intro got me hooked. Not very fan of the vocals, but your saw chords are clean. The only thing that dissapoints me is the snare, sounds very dim. I've noticed the phonk influence, so aside from the lack of the usual dubstep growls, the result still gets a bit of freshness blending two styles.

Dubstep-lover: 7.5/10:
Reminds me a lot like First of the Year. Great sound design. I think the drop needs a bit more variation instead of the metallic lazer bass thing sounding most of the time.

Creeperforce: 7/10
You have a very nice orchestra, but sometimes the scores feel a bit random, probably the lack of transitions between bars has something to do.
Although hihats have good transients they're very loud compared with the rest of drums, I think cause you used too much compression, so you should consider turn down the hihats a pair of dBs and do the opposite with the kick and snare.

Silvercat: 6/10
Nice atmosphere, but sounds too industrial to be dubstep, i guess?

NolTrollRoll: 8.5/10
Although there's not much growls, the scores are so damn catchy with all that variety of synths, and it has a pretty good use of phaser effects that makes the bars very interesting.

G2961: 9.5/10
Yeah, no wonder coming from the frontpage guy. Excellent mix and sound design, powerful drop. Nothing more to say, just totally nailed the vibe of a classic DubstepGutter release.

Creeperforce24 responds:

Thanks! Yeah sorry I suck wt music lol

[LightSpeed]

Pretty average.
It's a nice techno tune but aside from the bell synth it lacks some lead synth to layer with the chord progression. The arpeggio that goes after the first minute sounds cool but wish it sounded louder. As opposite with the hihat, seems a bit louder than the rest of drums. So my point is it needs a bit more balance and another score to fill those empty bars around 1:10-2:00

About the cracking noise, I can't help much cause I haven't experienced any cracking sound when exporting a song ever, try by boosting the buffer lenght on your audio driver, but it could be cause by another factors such as your FL Studio's audio settings or your export settings if you only hear it once it has been exported. Check those and look up some forums or tutorials.

angre839212 responds:

Thx for the comment.
I was just able to fix the cracking noise.
Will reupload soon.

[Rainbow 2]

Saw this at the review to review thread. The hi-hats could be a pair of dBs louder, as well as the general volume of the song.
Anyway, the synths are ok for a videogame theme, I liked a lot your use of the slide/porta tool, but I suggest adding some chorus or detune to the chords for more wide sound.
About sidechain, it is also good, not too long not too short, there are many methods to do sidechain but I didn't understand what you mean with fake saw ADSR envelope. I guess you talk about sidechain with an envelope controller and linking a bunch of gain parameters to it.
About the score itself, not sure if on the description you talk about a 'prompt' you used as one from an AI music generator which let me tell you, if that's the case, your melody would be based on something you didn't make, even if you cast it away and decide to change the style or just some notes. That's a big no for me in terms of originality :\
Keep learning more tricks, there's a lot of cool things. And remember to not rely on prompted music, that won't make your scores interesting.

PotangNG responds:

The volume thing you've mentioned is something I need to work on. I still don't know how to do it without clipping. Chorus is definitely something to consider, as well as more detune. Yeah, I altered the attack of a synth's envelope to create a sidechain effect.

About the prompt. I can assure you no AI was used in the production of the song. That prompt I mentioned? It was the prompt someone gave me when I was working on the original version. You can see the original here: https://youtu.be/NJFLKx_EF9M?si=ZdqMak4XMDxrrp4c
The melody was made by me. Completely original, except a remix of my previous song. If you're still in doubt, send me a message and I'll send you an entire screen recording of my project.

I hope that can clear things up and maybe get a higher score. Thanks for taking the time to listen!

[Plasma]

Just letting you know I still listen to this bop :) Those basses are worthy of Skrillex's.

HugoHMF responds:

Thank you dude :D

[mighty wyvern]

Your supersaw sounds nicely warm, and the melody played sounds catchy. The drum fill at 0:45 was on top although other drums like the first snare doesn't stand up... or maybe the supersaw is pushing it back.
Maybe if the rave stabs were made made of square waves and had a extra-short Pitch decay they could be less awkward as you say, but that wouldn't make them rave-y enough.
In short, It was a fun tune to listen. Nice one!

wineplume responds:

cheers
made the supersaw in synth1 (good synth (really good synth))

[Tryzon - Crowd Control]

Interesting choice of samples, and the drop goes so hard. Although I know the mix is generally loud, my main concern is the bass that comes at 1:53 has too much saturation and stereo information in the lows. Overall good groove, Ironic how's called Crowd Control when that's what you need when playing this at a club

TryzonEDM responds:

Thanks Ryzmik, much appreciated. I understand what you're saying. I wanted to keep it a bit airy there on purpose, as going too much mono sounded boring there. Luckily it's just a small portion though 😉 Yesss that's partly the reason for the title!

[Neuro]

First thing, everything sounds very dim to me... Like you seriously need to turn the highs all the way up. The 'neuro' bass has a lot of resonating frequencies I would cut. The synth with piano riff is actually cool. I also would turn up the stereo more in the higher frequency range and make it more mono the basses (especially the reese bass in the mid of the song).
Don't know if you tried to use MIDI notes for your Yamaha keyboard or you played it and record it yourself, in which case I have to congratulate you. I myself haven't done any song using my E363 yet.

Dynamic0 responds:

Thanks for big review!

Mixing is one of my problems when I compose a song. Thank you for mixing tips.
My keyboard has got an MIDI tracker. I have to do something manually, like instead of automation tracks I have to set the value through the time, but I think it's not hard to use.

[Joyride]

Casually lurking on my NG feed I came across this banger. I'm totally digging this electro-house and dubstep mix for the morning routines.
Very nice get-to-the-point structure and interesting choice of leads and other synths, my favourite was that kind of c64 sound (2:37).
So, is this how it feels when you have the motivation to finish your works?... I should learn a lot from that, lol.

EspyoNG responds:

Haha, so glad you still follow me and find my stuff every once in a while!

I am really glad you enjoyed the structure. I don't really mention this here on Newgrounds a whole lot, but to me the biggest issue has always been trying to arrange a song in an interesting way, so I am very happy to hear you liked that characteristic of my song.

To be honest, I have come to the realisation that finishing a track with motivation is a half-myth of sorts. Sadly, not every track you made will be finished before you get bored and want to stop making it. All you can do is speed up and push yourself really. My sole motivation to finish Joyride was that it was going to be my best track ever by a long shot. That doesn't happen often! Hopefully you understand my perspective here.

Again, thank you for the review! So glad to see you are still around here like an OG!
~SpeedoRH

P.s. That c64 sound was a sorta colour bassy sound I made with some FM sample I found from one of my samples packs. Sometimes opening FL and just designing some sounds can really help with music making!

[House Français Tentativas [OG Mix] (French House)]

OG House isn't one of my favourite music genres from a moral point of view due to the sampling issue, but I can't deny you did a good mix, although is kinda quiet. As for the drums, sidechain curve fits nice but the kick seems to lose its transient (0:20) when the main beat starts (0:25). Can't tell if it's a mix problem or the drums are pre-made loops.

xanxoepico responds:

I respect your point of view, but I just love sample heavy songs like daft punk's work lol, anyways the mixing issues are more because I didn't do much to eq the main sample other than a small highpass filter around 80-100hz iirc, the drums aren't pre-made but many elements from the original song are still there as a result from the mix