Shenkhar's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[xKore - Cosmos (Hard Mix)]

My favorite flavor of house.

Hell yeah electro-house, nice polyrhythm bassline in the middle, love the track xKore.

[Snapdragon]

Great work!

Man, you included one of my favorite things - acoustic guitar. Great job on the composition and mastering, really enjoyed this piece.

NemesisTheory responds:

Acoustic guitar really does sound nice. <3
I think the best trio for bringing out emotion is Violins, Piano and Acoustic guitar. :)

Anyway thanks, happy to hear it. :D

[Planet Reloaded]

House for sure :D

This is a pretty tight mix, although it feels a bit empty on the melody/music side. Try adding in a pad or something to fill it out. Your SFX and over all mix is good though. Nice track.

Airprogressive responds:

When you say that I should add a pad or something, what are you refering exactly? to add a new melody and include more variation to it, or just adding a pad to the main melody. If so, where you think I should add that?

thanks!!

[[37mm] Nuclear Weapon *Final*]

Good work!

Fruity limiter works sometimes, but I'd suggest learning to use a multiband compressor like Maximus or a mastering vst like Ozone 3. They will help you keep the entire song balanced. The kick is not the problem, it is just that entire low end is not compressed and is killing all other sounds in the mid-range. The music is great, however it repeats a bit much. Great mix overall.

[:=>Donkey Kong 9-8 Remix<=:]

Nice work

Well done - but bring your master volume down, its clipping to hell.

Moltov responds:

Yeah, I noticed, it sounded fine in my speakers but I will make sure of that next time.

[She Was Dreaming In The Rain]

Thanks :D

One of my ALL TIME favorites - I've loved this song for years. A good rendition of the original - in my books far superior.

TenchuX responds:

thanks saying a lot, thanks

[[CE][Rising Emotions] New Dawn]

Thumbs up!

Awesome work! The composition is pretty much perfect, emotional and non-boring (its a word right?) Just grab some better drum/intrument samples and this will be amazing.

[Kazmo & Lira - Still Alive RMX]

Nice job!

Song is great, well mastered. Only complaint is that the vocals are being hidden behind the instruments, I can only pick out a few words at a time. Try "Companding" them a bit, (expanding the dynamic range, then compressing it - in order to get a "louder" over all vocal take, its explained on Wikipedia a bit more, also called Serial compression). The soundscape of the instrumentals is impressive, the reverbs match and the individual channels don't interfer with each other.

Kazmo responds:

That's the thing, in the original, that problem was even worse, the vocals could barely be heard over all the other sounds. This time around, I turned down the hats, the lead, and increased the vocals accordingly. There may be a few trouble spots still, but there are a lot less now.

Thanks for the feedback and advice! :D

[Sparks (Preview)]

Good work!

You've done a good job - even though its your first, its still really good!
I loved the arps and leads, and the progression was ok.

Just work on your intro a bit more, and maybe try putting a pad in closer to the beginning and you'll be golden

- Shen

[Late Night Awakening [SMD]]

Pretty good

Hmmm, it felt like the mastering was cluttered on this track. Instruments and channels were colliding with each other, while this gives is a "full" sound it also hurts its clarity and stereo image. As Sycross said, the drums were spread too far from the center of the stereo image, and the reverb that was on them didn't match the rest of the track. If you cleaned up the mastering and fixed the drums I think that this would be an enjoyable song - keep it up!

- Shenkhar

SmdSkata responds:

Thanks for the review... Yeah, I'm trying to get better at mixing down but it's taking me time to find my way up the learning curve. I got sometime today, I'll go back and see what I can do. Thanks.