Chepaki's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dreamland Wanderer]

Dang, really a fan of this one. Not sure I can explain why very well, but first of all Im super impressed by how much bitcrush you managed to use ( thats a lot of bitcrush ) while still making the track sound so good
I can't find anything to complain about, every part feels like it's slowly transitioning to the next which I guess really helps with the "wandering" sensation
I've listened to it like 6 times already while trying to write this so yeah, not even boring, good job

FateModified responds:

Wow, thanks! I’m glad you like it. I’ve been falling in love more and more with the bit crush effect, so I’ll probably have more overly-bitcrushed stuff in the future lol. Thanks for the comment! :)

[Ocean Tides]

Good stuff all around, pretty chill and really fitting the calm ocean floor you're describing

One little complain I have is about that bassy synth you use during the whole track, panning it left and right; it's doing good most of the time but its really wide, loud and eating up a lot of frequencies so making it grab less attention in some way ( making it more "mono", cutting off some frequencies or just lowering the volume ) when other instruments were trying to shine and giving THOSE instruments some more depth could have been a good idea I think. This bassy synth stood a bit too much in front of everything else.

One part where this isn't as much of a problem would be at around 1:40 when you start using it for higher notes, I feel like the change is very welcome

TebyTheCat responds:

Appreciate the feedback! I guess it got too wide... I'll take that into consideration, I wanted the "back and forth" effect, but didn't know how wide should I go, I'll keep guessing and learning

[Creepy Crystal Cavern - 8-Bit Wandering]

I can really hear how you tried to respect the theme of the challenge more than most people haha, like, the title can't describe the track better than that
+ the main synth with this mixture of saturation/crush and reverb really felt like it came right out of hyper light drifter
Ngl tho it took me quite some time to notice most of those heavy hits ( for exemple the one at 00:08 ), at first I only heard the sidechain following it which left me kinda disturbed, and I only noticed them in later parts of the song ( but it may be 100% personal as I see myself complaining about sidechain very often tfgbyhjk )

ian-booms responds:

Thanks very much :) I really love the lofi sort of aesthetic from Fez / Hyper Light Drifter, glad I was able to capture that properly!

My headphones have really bad bass response so sometimes I mess up on my bass volume so that could totally be my bad, also I was aiming for a very dramatic sidechain effect so if that's not your cup of tea I can totally understand that.

[Underwater Bitz [Pixel Day 2021]]

Fantastic track on many aspects ( honestly surprised its 7 minutes long, it really didn't feel like it ) but this sidechain is going way too crazy in the beginning of the track for my taste, like I couldn't even hear the music anymore during those kick rolls at 1:27

Teckmo-X responds:

Yeah I noticed that too! See I kept trying to mix and process the lead but every time I'd do it I wouldn't find the right level. The compressors helped but it wasn't enough. I'll definitely go back and fix that too. Thank you, I'm so glad you liked it!

[Twilight Jungle]

The rythm and sound of that bass immediately gives me the jungle vibes and the rest gives me the "twillight", anxious vibes, so yeah, first of all I definitely feel like I'm there myself and thats good! One of the little thing that kinda bugged me was the heavy pan modulation of that bassy piano at 0:56. I don't think its annoying when it happens to the other instrument at 0:22, maybe because that one doesn't gets as loud and is more high frequencies oriented, but with that bassy piano it really called for too much attention when it was completely on the right or completely on the left.

OliRO responds:

Thanks Chepaki for the review and critics! It helps me get better! :D

[Onwards]

Good track and cool ideas but the amount of sidechain/compression you put on the whole track when the main kick is there seems kinda off: the synths you use for melody from 0:30 to 1:45 are completely "eaten" by it

skydev responds:

thank you for the feedback, it means a lot for my development. i totally get what you're getting at, i'll keep it in mind. thank you once again!

[Pangaea Ultima]

Nice! Well first of all, good job on the 5/4 time signature, and really great track overall
Only thing I can point out is the difference of volume between the tracker and FL studio parts: I guess it's intentional but the result is that one of them always sounds either too loud or too quiet, probably would've been better if the two were around the same volume.

skydev responds:

thank you for the response! this was my second time experimenting with this kind of thing, mistakes were bound to be made haha, i suppose at the time it sounded alright, but listening back i get whatcha mean. thanks again! (late response, my bad hah)

[meteor]

Hey, so I listened to some of your stuff and yeah everything still sound very "wip" to me, but you could definitely make some cool stuff from that. Start by adding instruments and/or try to structure things a bit, I guess

buggagumpus responds:

yeah pretty much everything i upload is unfinished, though as of now i dont really know how to go about turning them into full tracks.

[Throwaway Soulmates]

Hell yeah be proud of it this is super good!

Codefreq responds:

Thank you! :D

[Blood on the Horizon (Airplane Dogfighting)]

Super nice and well yeah really fitting the setting you're describing!
Now time for 100% subjective remarks: I know the intro is obviously not supposed to be as loud as the rest of the track but here I really had to turn up the volume at the beginning of the song and immediately turned it down at the end of the intro
And then uuuuuh I'd say that the first "kick" of each beat stands out too much? Like, not always but sometimes I feel like he can get slightly distracting
That's all I could think of!

Codefreq responds:

Thanks for your review! I'm happy to give your suggestions a try. It's a pretty old song, and at the time I hadn't developed my mixing strategies I have now.

I appreciate the feedback. :)