JRob's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Poems for Darkness]

That staccato at about 2:00 actually sounds intentional; you really did a good job of covering all the little hiccups and errors, because it sounds perfect to me, even as someone who's played piano for about half his life. I think you should stick with this (and stick with the staccato at 2:00, because it actually sounds really good like that) as your final product.

Get that sustain pedal fixed anyway, though (it should be easy enough to fix on your own, though - something might be loose; I get the same issue with mine, and all I need to do to fix it is to just tighten a single nut).

MetroPiano responds:

Thanks for your review! I'll be sure to try and fix my sustain that way, cause I never thought of that.

[Tone Test]

That guitar sounds fucking awesome - though it makes everything else sound lacking in terms of quality. Sure, it's just a tone test, but I'd suggest finding the best combination of effects and such on the drums and bass to complement this tone before going any further with it.

Metallica1136 responds:

Thanks! Yeah, the bass and drums aren't anything too special,. but I just added those instruments so they could fill in their parts.

[Visions of Tomorrow]

Very nicely done and very innovative in terms of style/genre, though the percussion gets a little too loud at a couple transitions, so I suggest toning them down at those points (around 5:00 and 6:40)

Phantasma000 responds:

Thanks for your feedback! Yeah, I had some difficulty mastering those build ups with the snare, but I'll look at it again.

[LeviathanNetwork-ReInject]

You did a really great job remastering this (although, personally, I feel that it feels a bit too clear at points - the muddy quality of the original appealed to me more - It is a good thing that you did a re-upload rather than replace the audio file on the original); it feels more synthetic than the original, better fitting the technology theme of the song. A suggestion though - could you try running the last bit of vocals through a vocorder and autotune (I know what you're thinking; autotune = no talent, but there are cases in which it could supplement the theme/feel of the song - especially here) to give it that robotic feel to match the biotech theme; I bet it would fit very well.

Lich responds:

Thanks for the review.

I've already tired to run the ending vocals through a vocoder and it didn't sound that great... honest :3
I'm planning on doing 'Reinject's' of one or two more of my tracks so I'll be probably be giving some of my older or even unreleased stuff a polish-over if you are interested in listening to them.

[Before Dawn]

I would've rated it 3/5, but I gave it an extra half simply because it's not generic mainstream dubstep and you went back to the roots of the genre. This could have easily been a 4/5 or a 4.5/5 song - the bass part at the beginning goes on too long without anything else going on and starts to become too repetitive. At 2:25 - 2:27, something about the piano starts too hurt my left ear - some kind of audio artifact occurs - you might want to fix that. Finally, the volume on the drums could be boosted a bit, especially the kick.

Avalon69 responds:

Thank you for the review! I'll have a look at the things you mentioned, glad you enjoyed the song!

[[LLM] LeviathanNetworks]

As Eric Cartman would say, "kickass." Just the kind of dark, heavy-hitting, Industrial-Electronic music I've been looking for recently - this is going in my playlist with the likes of Quentin Grey's "Tiga" and Cradle of Filth's "Dance Macabre." One suggestion though - I would raise the volume on the vocals a bit since they are being drowned out somewhat.

Lich responds:

Thanks for the response.
Now that I have picked up some Monitoring speakers, any tracks similar to this will have boosted vocals and better mastering since I will be able to hear everything better :)

[The Raining Cave]

Very atmospheric and very fitting - though I might suggest experimenting with the reverb, slightly adjusting the reverb size to help provide a much better cave ambiance. It would be really cool if we could get a team of Newgrounds members to make a game (most likely an RPG mixing elements from the likes of Skyrim and Final Fantasy) based off of your musical world using the songs in this series as the background music (along with others' audio submissions) - this series would really make it feel more lifelike. Wishful thinking on my part, but it would be pretty kickass though.

DanJohansen responds:

Experimenting with the reverb is a good suggestion I think. I might actually take up that advice for the album release of the tracks. But I am kind of liking the unified sound going through the entire album right now, but DEF a good idea.

If you make a serious RPG sometime, let me know when you are way into developement and ready for the music. I LOVE RPG's lol

[Cyrus Battle]

Holy shit dude. I wasn't expecting the change to rave. I have nothing more to say about this.

AeronMusic responds:

Thank you. I love some rave! I'm glad you like it too, if I think so!

[Awakened from Cryosleep]

Okay, first I would like to say that notewise the song is great (5/5 great that is), but what takes away from it is the mixing/mastering (if you have ever seen any of my reviews or descriptions on my songs, you would know that mixing/mastering is top priority for me - I usually get really annoyed when I'm having a hard time in that general area). Starting at 0:28, the bass isn't loud enough (not the drums, the synths); from 1:50 - 2:20, the drums are overpowering everything else; from 3:13 onwards, the bass drowns out the higher range synths - bring up the treble range synths and lower the bass just a slight bit there. Other than that, just a little bit of fine-tuning may help. I like the song, the synths have somewhat of a Megaman feel to them.

RetromanOMG responds:

Thanks for the comment, especially since you pointed out flaws in the mixing. I don't have a particularly sophisticated audio setup, so I can't always catch these things, but with your input, I can definitely go back and make changes.

[Dreams]

You seem to have been zero-bombed - I tried to help fix that. This song is very atmospheric and flows very well. My only issue is that there is a tad bit too much tension on the snare drum; dropping the volume for the snare a notch may help or try fixing the tension, but overall, I give this a 9/10.

Pivvot responds:

Yeah, I noticed. Well, thank you for your support and the favorable review!