Decibel's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[[DJ_ITD] - Theory of Motion]

Review Start

When it started, I expected it to be a little slower, at least 130BPM, this seems too fast for my tastes, and I know it's strange but the drums seem more suitable for a slower song.
Next in business, the ride is way too loud and the clap needs a bit of a lowpass filter.
The Piano melody is quite nice, the layers it had were spectacular, so yes, congrats on the pianorification my friend.
I fell in love with that lead synth/bass thing, it's amazing.

I gotta go shower, you get a 10 :p
and 5/5 too.

djInTheDark responds:

It's supposed to fall under Hard Trance, which tends to be in the 135 to 145 range, so that why I did what I did. And thank your for the other two volume notes, much appreciated. Also, it's funny because the lead synth use to have a lot more to it, it was detuned and vibrating and a whole bunch of other stuff but it became really over powering so I got rid of all the window dressings and got this. Less is more I guess!

Thanks for the review!

[Goodbye Sober Days (loop)]

bad news bro

thats not dance music, it's more like the backround to a bad chiptune song
if you took the precussion away, made it slower, and had the instruments softer than it would be quite good.
the pad makes a good melody, make a remix or something and it will sound VERY good.

[Endless Day of Grass Fiel]

Ambienteh :P

I've heard this for about 11 times now and I never really took the time to sit down and analyze it well, in fact, I can honestly say that for the first 10 times, I didn't like it, I don't know why cuz it's pretty sweet. Another gem from the library of SBB's audio schtuff :3
The first thing I noticed was that Rhodes thing in the background, it sounds quite synthy but at the same time realistic, I have mixed feelings on that, even though it's probably my favourite sound in the entire song.
Second thing would be the synths, oh the synths, How I love the synths :P They were very simple, triangles and sines with a lot of editing, still nice, don't get me wrong. Nothing needs to be complicated in a song like this, made simply for relaxing.
The other thing which I really like was the guitar, It's probably real, and I loved it, It's nice that certain NG people can play an instruments.
My favourite part was probably 2:30, it kinda took a break from the normal song structure and it was very funky as well.
In addition, I liked the drums too, simple, as are the synths, but hey, I'm not complaining.
The bass could be a problem though, Not for me, I have a monster sub-woofer which can clearly project the bass, but for the people who are using shitty as laptop speakers and can't appreciate the bass.
Something to improve on would be depth, It had a lack of pads in it, It needed some more air in it, so to speak, maybe some synthesized wind effects too? White noise would do in the case, just some reverb and highpass with compression and minor EQing.
Overall very good job.
Also, this is my 200th review :)
10/10
5/5
Fave'd

[Inferno (Preview) - F-777]

VST :3

Looks like someone got their copy of dBlue in their arsenal :P

Anyway nice track, very good basses and lovely hoovers, it has that Upbeat f-777 style, it's pretty fuckin' short though.

[-On The Break-]

Can You Explain to Me...

...Why the hell did you get into this competition? I mean it's not fun if you win immediately, it's not good for us either :P
In all seriousness, a beautiful track, no wonder you're in the Top 8, It just screams, I won.
Very pleasant intro, could have done without the kick though, I would have added like a pad one octave lower getting highpassed and then a Huge, Big Room Reverb Kick.
The build-up is very nice, although it takes a long time to build-up, like, half the song, another reason to extend the song I guess huh? :D
It's progressive house/ trance, but not the generic kind, It's extremely original, the sounds are flawless and you can't go wrong with those drums of yours, I applaud you for your song, Mr.Cardboard box of Dairy :3
10/10
5/5
Fave'd

[Xkore - Moar Unfinished Lololo]

Yet again, another marverllous set of WIPs

My favourite were :

0:00 ;; This pure, artistic piece of music was very wow-able, The only thing I'D do to it is remove the highpass on the instrument lead.

0:52 ;; Sweet little piece right here, it's got that little heartfelt melody that immediately grabs the listener, plus it has a couple of pretty nice effects on it.

3:00 ;; The majority liked this, I'm pretty much the majority as well. Even though I miss your good old house days, this litte piece of dubstep was quite original and worth continuing.

5:40 ;; That was very nice, I loved the synths and pretty much everything in it, except for the bass, it seems a little too grainy. =/

[sPhly - Memories]

Review Backk :))

Reall Sweet sounding, it has that certain cuteness to it and warmth and stuff.

The only problem I encountered were the drums, They were a bit simplistic but other than that, it was pretty awesome, it progressed well, melodies were original and it was very good quality -)

Nice Job, Keep it Up =)

[deciBel]

Shoephly responds:

^^
thanks alot for taking the time to review this, means alot.
As for the drums, i agree to a certain degree, but it was a conscious choice i made, wanted it to sound kinda simple/funnyish.

But yet again, thanks for the review ^^

[Remember (Down-tempo Loop)]

Pretty sweet :)

It starts of with an amazing piano melody, I would have fixed some of the chords, one or two of them don't harmonize very well :/ But other than that, that 16- bar piano melody was sweet throughout the uh, 16 bars ;P

The piano itself could have used a little bit of the delay with the cutoff at maybe 30% but that's just personal preference.

The drums were amazing, I really loved them, seriously, they were amazing. I loved the ragga-ish rythms, like the guy under me, but I also loved the fact that it's in a trance song, that's a wonderfully original way to got, I applaud your creativity.

The drum hits themselved were very good, high quality is another factor which I like in the drum beat, bonus points for that ;)

Although, for some reason I heard like a split-second long crackling noise, I think I was anyway, I suggest skimming through the song file again, just to prove I'm not crazy :P

Another Thing I loved about the drums was the slight swing on them, the wow factor just doesn't end.

The other synths were very good too ;;

The bass-ish synths which went every beat was very nice, sounded a bit rough, i would have added a parametric equalizer and reduced the trle by half, raised the bass and middle by just a smidge and lowpass it, with a little reverb on the top, but again that's just personal preference, do with it what you wish.

Last thing before I stop, That ass was pretty sweet, I'm not sure if it was 'hand'-made or a sample but it fit pretty damn well with the rest of the song, congrats.
I don't have anything else to say, but congratulations, I haven't heard a song like this in a long while, it touched my heart :')

Yet another amazing song from one of my favourites =)

10/10
5/5

Take Care :)

djInTheDark responds:

Well you probably already know this if you listened to the original version, since that one had a swing to it, but since the speed was twice the speed as this one, (if I recall the original was somewhere around 132 bpm or so and this one is around 73 bpm I think) the swing became twice as apparent. All this entire song took was some simple rearranging, and excluding things that wouldn't have worked, like the ride cymbal or some FX that I was using. All of the instruments are exactly the same as the other version, with the add of the extra synth I put in for the sake of not being too repetitive at 1:45.

And the crackling is actually, believe it or not, a cpu problem. My computer tends to lag when rendering very high quality sound files, since the system is very bogged down right now and I'm running out of space. That, and I have Vista. ;P

The bass synth, was in the original as an arpeggio. So it's appearance is as upfront which is why it is so present with it's current eq settings. I may go back a change a few things eventually.

Oh, I'm glad you think my ass is so sweet. No, unfortunately, my ass is not hand made, but it can fit very well in quite a few places besides this song. :)

Lol, jk. I know that was a typo. There were several bases involved to make the whole section (obviously). The upper bass with the most strong mids, along with two other pad-type bases were made in massive. Then there were two subs I used, both were samples, one an actual sample of a primarily percussive sub, and the other was a revamped sine wave.

Tbh, there was almost no creativity involved, lol (at least from my perspective). It was a simple "hmm, what is that? aha!" moment. Thanks for the review!

[Dan Roth - Breathe]

I figured I might as well review back :)

1st of all, there's an ear-slicing high pitched sound throughout the entire song and it hurts, like lot, especially with surround sound -.- Fix that please ;)
And the second thing is that the reverse claps are not in time with the claps.
Other than that, it was pretty sweet and is in dire need of some vocals.
Melodies were spectacular and bass and arps were pretty damn sweet, I can understand why this is first in the house listing.
The breakdown was wonderful, never have I heard such an amazing breakdown in a newgrounds house song.
These 7 minutes were a wonderful ride, of Energy and emotion, I'm liking this track, nice job Dan!

Take care :)

iheartsonyheadphones responds:

Another person commented on that sound but I've never heard it myself, how good quality are your headphones/speakers? Because mine are pretty awesome. Just trying to see if it's a problem with my headphones or something. And secondly, I know it pisses off a lot of listeners, but when i created the Rev. Clap i left a little bit of space in between the Reverse and the Original, just to be that little bit more different (Because I'm awkward like that xD) I just thought it would make it all sound snappier and punchier in a way?

Anyways, you won't believe the amount of effort it took me for that build-up! Apart from the mastering and mixing, that was definitely, for sure, the hardest part of the track. However, despite how tricky it was, it gave me the most pleasure to see how well it fitted with the song. The outcome of it was very rewarding (:

I'm extremely pleased that you've reviewed back, it does mean a lot to me to hear such kind words from great artists such as yourself!

And collabing?

Wow, i'd love that. That would be an honour <3

Thankyou for every kind word and detail in that review, it's all deeply appreciated!

Thanks again,
Dan Roth.

[NGHH'11 - Smorg vs Gasmasq]

Smorg vs.Gasmasq - Gasmasq

Gasmasq won hands down dude. That Rap was epic.