breaking news: cook makes banger tune, sets kitchen ablaze!

13 channels, every one is peak
i love this

leitmotifs go crazy aswell

w

Setting instrument volumes close to the max of 25 can cause audio clipping issues in jummbox.

Most people hover around volumes of 0-10 for their main melodies and instead adjust the master gain for extra volume, which can be done in the limiter settings (Shift+L).

That aside, banger.

I found out about the master gain knob a little late, admittedly. So my instrument levels may look on the high side.

What I did was push the knob until I heard artifacts, then pull it back slightly. I'm no audiophile, so if you hear something unpleasant, let me know, because I'm curious and want to improve.

Yeah, that’s understandable. A couple of the other submissions also used volume settings close to 25. There’s no way to know about it beforehand.

I’m not an expert on mixing and limiters but I’ll try my best to identify what I think could be improved.

Right now your kicks and snares (channels 9, 10, 11) are way louder than everything else. They bury the chords in the mix and shout over your melody. I think this is because of some minor audio clipping, their volumes being too high, and your limiter settings, which worsen the other 2 problems.

If you max the volumes of those you can exaggerate the audio clipping effect to hear how it starts to muffle your other instruments. I think it's most present at 0:33 (measure 20). Channel 11 is the biggest culprit because it has 3 stacked punch envelopes, which add a sudden burst of extra volume to the start of the note.

When you take a look at the limiter menu, you can see the volume bar going red pretty frequently. I don’t know exactly what the red means but I know it’s bad. Even if you turn the gain down to stop that, the volume bar still has huge jumps. I think this is because you practically disabled the limiter by reducing the ratio setting and maxing the rise+decay times. That means the limiter’s intended effect of suppressing overly loud sounds while boosting overly quiet sounds isn’t active.

If you reset the limiter settings and reduce the gain until there’s no more red, I think the mix has a lot more body and is no longer dominated by the percussion. It’s still a bit loud, but that can be fixed with volume tweaks.

I’ve never mixed this kind of instrumentation before so please take this with a grain of salt. Oh yeah, and the song is still a banger.

I appreciate your lengthy and thoughtful reply!

[The kick and snare] bury the chords in the mix and shout over your melody.

I can see that. I wanted punchy percussion, so I took the easy route and shortened the envelope and increased the volume, overpowering the rest. Next time I can try shaping the percussion with better detail or doing mixing stuff with modulation channels.

I think it's most present at 0:33 (measure 20).

Yeah, I think I hear a little pumping that sounds like the limiter kicking in during percussion hits.

I don’t know exactly what the red means but I know it’s bad.

I will counter and say red is not necessarily bad. The benefits I get from clipping are loudness, compression and peak reduction. Going back to my first point: I could spend more time tinkering to shape my percussion at the instrument level, but instead I use clipping to approximate that to get closer to the sound I want. I agree that the ideal mix will not clip, but I don't have that level of mixpertise.

If you reset the limiter settings and reduce the gain until there’s no more red, I think the mix has a lot more body and is no longer dominated by the percussion.

I prefer the sound of my compressed, clipped mix to the gain-reduced version with full dynamic range. I feel that it's a matter of taste. Maybe this was all a roundabout way of me saying I'm a complete idiot with no taste, but that's where I'm at right now.

Nonetheless, this has been a dynamic conversation about volume with some good feedback. I think I've signaled to you just how distorted my views are. However, there's a lot to gain from sampling each other's input and we could even reverse polarity. Together, we can amplify our mix of knowledge. Eventually we might end up on the same wavelength. I could go on, but to compress this message I'll clip it here.

aaaaaaaaa im in love with these melodies <3

gets better with every second. ggs

this is my personal fav for end-of-the-year-happiness vibes

aaaaaaaaa im in love with these melodies <3 - Part 2