Lich's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Mini Kick Sample pack (zipped)]

I could definitely use these, thanks for providing them! I'll be downloading straight away!

[Kilkshake]

420/69, sik beat m8 sunds gud on my dre phonez

Anyway, another solid track, going straight in my Favorites list! Your lead-work in your more recent tracks along with your Kick distortion is starting to sounds pretty vicious. I could see a live audience probably enjoying this one quite alot on an awesome speaker system or something, haha you should totally play this live somewhere and let us know how it goes!

[MJFarts EPIC electro track!!]

420/69, gr8 trak m8

midimachine responds:

solid review
m8/10

[Satsuryukuddin]

I do fully agree, you should definitely make more tracks like this! Already favorite'd haha, really enjoyed listening to this track!

[4'Lich]

420/69, would drink and dance to this! Thank you :)

DESHIEL responds:

glad you like ;)

[Datsmik]

Dat sexy CD Label

Anyway, I'm digging the subtle and smooth(ish) sounding Arpeggio-Saw sounds in the background and your SuperSquare-driven sequence just before the middle of the track (I have a thing for that kind of sound, especially when it's saturated, naturally!) Does sound like you are missing some high-end in the track though but that might be Newgrounds weird-ass track compression which plagues many of us.

[Abyssal Depths]

Pretty much displaying a near-mastery of sound design using Sytrus. You are probably the only person I know who actually uses WaveShaper efficiently.

I do agree with Rahmemhotep below, this would be very fitting in either Earthbound or even Mother 3 but for some very strange reason it does remind me in it's atmosphere of the Cave before fighting The Pain in MGS3: Snake Eater.

Mastering-wise, it's spot on. Sounds beautiful coming through my ADAM A5X's and even on my cheapo headphones it sounds pretty damn decent aswell. Can't really fault it composition-wise although I do slightly question some of the notation which is introduced just after 0:54 in, it sounds inappropriately off-key compared to the rest of the elements going on but then it might be done like that on purpose?

Oh I do have something special cooking up, it's just now down to cutting it down to uploadable lengths (It's like 11mins long cut down), not killing my vocal-chords and getting some Dialogue sorted out by either myself or a special voice-actor ;)

JRob responds:

There's still quite a bit I need to learn with Sytrus, though. WaveShaper's an easy one, however I usually use it just for distortion - and even just a little bit of it can give any synth more "oomph," which is especially great for basses (there's one just for that purpose on the droning bass).

Sadly, I haven't played any Metal Gear Solid either :(

The only game I can think of that may have had some influence on the way I wrote this would be The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (it was something of an influence on my writing style when I first started writing music using computer software/DAW's - and when I first got FL Studio and pulled up Autogun, I really loved how some of the synths reminded me of some of the instruments in the game), but it's been years since I last played it, or even listened to any of the soundtrack.

About half of the layers I used in this song are detuned to some degree; I made the custom bell/chime synth at ~0:53 in Sytrus using frequency ratios of 3 on the first operator, 8 on the second, and 8.1 on the third, which is why it sounds off-key. There are quite a few dissonances in the song, all of which were intentional - I really love the use of dissonances at appropriate times as they can really make a song sound even more interesting and dynamic.

11 minutes? I remember the days when it was difficult to get 6 minute songs up on here without reducing the quality.

[CryptDisease(EBM)- Mastered]

The intro heavily reminds me of the opening to Soilbleed by Grendel (back when they sounded awesome). I fucking love that Monstrously de-tuned Supersaw lead used in the opening, any chance you could pass on how you designed that sound?

Anyway for the actual track I'm sorry to say but the Mastering sounds abit crappy EQ-wise (to be fair, my earlier stuff sounds even worse), I can't hear anything below 200HZ or anything above 12,000HZ from this track at all which is a shame. It could do with being Stereo-widened some more aswell. Plus some individual parts of the track sound like they don't go very well together (the composition is still pretty decent & sound in general though).

I may have to check out your newer stuff, see how that all sounds!

[Hail - Charm the Animal]

Lets get what I immediately noticed out of the way first:

- It sounds pretty flat on the Higher-end Frequencies, it sounds like most of the individual instrument recordings (especially your guitar-work) have been compressed a little bit too much. I would consider 'brightening' each recording up alittle bit. Make your hats hiss, get your guitars to liven up and your vocals to be abit more piercing EQ-wise the next time you master this track (as I'm struggling to hear individual words as opposed to whole lines). I would consider referencing this piece to another track of a similar style done in a professional Studio and spot the Mixing/Mastering differences and adapt from there.

- Second of all, I would consider introducing some more stereo-widening to the track overall. The whole Master sounds rather 'Centered' in the listening spectrum and I think it could sound better being widened some more.

Other than that composition-wise it's a solid track and it brings forward a decent variety and never gets boring to listen to. It would be interesting to see how any future work from you sounds!

[Discretionary Contention]

As individual elements, your arrangements included go well individually but sounds messy all combined into one track. I have also notice on both my headphones & my ADAM's that your drum samples used keep ending up being drowned out by everything else. It would be worth introducing some more stereo widening to them & making them slightly louder. Apart from that, Mastering is fairly decent; I can hear everything nice and clear & you have some interesting sound design going on in your pieces.