The Song Fight Bulletin Board

roymond wrote:

jeff robertson wrote:It's ASCIIbetical order, and Leaf is first because the MP3 starts with a capital "L". The song does rock, tho.

Reload the page and see who's first

Who looks at the page? I'm talkin about the stream.

jeff robertson wrote:Who looks at the page? I'm talkin about the stream.

Uh...yeah...I knew that.

Keep moving folks...

roymond wrote:-12 is pretty hot, which in my opinion is why so little dynamic range remains in modern pop/rock.

Hey, good to see some old timers in this fight. Feels like a mini reunion of sorts, I only wish catknifehorsebomb was here
Being an audio nerd I can't resist commenting on this one...
The reason normally quoted for making songs louder is that louder = better to listeners i.e. more attention grabbing. I guess that makes sense and they make commercials louder on TV for that reason too ("hey you! pay attention to these important messages!")
But another reason is that these days many people listen to music mainly in a car which is not very good for high dynamic range music as softer stuff gets drowned in the road noise. It used to be that just radio broadcasts would squash the crap out of albums they played but now it's spilled over to CD's because everyone wants their CD to sound good in a car.
I'm pretty lazy and let plugins do most of the work for me. I guess most of my songs end up around -15 as a result which is ok. But then bass eats up a lot of headroom and most of my mixes are bass heavy so I lose maybe 2-3dB or perceived loudness as a result.

This is the most alien discussion I've ever heard. Please, someone tell me where I can read up. I want to be a nerdy audiophile too.

EDIT: Leaping Leprechauns! First review? But how? I must have alot of time on my hands.

Looking back on my reviews, i seem to be a bit fixated on the vocals. So feel free to ignore that.


Leaf62 - For some reason, this was the first and only song i heard when i downloaded the playlist. Thus, the fight opens strongly with this one. You guys weren't kidding when you said your song rocked. I am trying oh so hard to find something wrong with this one. But it fits so perfectly into my library. My only real complaint is that no respectable person puts numbers in their band name. And you did choose kind of an odd note to end on. That is all.

Barstools - This is a good, solid song. But I feel like i hear this very chord progression so many times during this fight. So it's just not doing it for me.The chorus is catchy. The "doo doo doos" sound good. I wish i knew more adjectives.

Befores - Good production, not really interesting to me. I suppose this isn't my kind of deal, genre-wise. More than that, it's the fact that this fight invites overly romantic songs, and this strikes me as just another one of em'. Great vocals, when all is said in done. I could hear this in an emotional scene in a beachside movie or a show like the OC.

Ross - This song starts out sounding kind of White-Stripesish, maybe, and I like it. But the vocals really don't mesh with the music. Sometimes they're off beat, sometimes they're off key, and they are consistently mixed too low and/or not sung enthusiastically enough.

Carpetburn - I like the guitar. I do not like the vocals so much. They are offkey, sometimes at key times. On the other hand, you are behind them 100% which is something to be admired. In the future though, try not to overpower the guitar so much. You seem like you're competing with it.

Chief Takahah - This is kind of interesting. The interference makes it kind of hard to hear sometimes. This is well written, and well acted out. Very sad. But i don't have much else to say about it because there's not much else there. Wow. This is 13 minutes long. Maybe i'm a little slow, but i'm not QUITE sure what's going on here. And there doesn't seem to really be enough development to warrant the 13 minute song.

Eclectic Spoons - I have two words for this song: HAAAAAAAAA WHAT? Yes. I get that you are so horny. I also get that you like to say sex. Despite the random noise and the not-so-creative, barely audible lyrics, this kind of reminds me of clockwork orange. Which is at least one point in its favor. But really.

Damien Verett - (Jonas Murdock and the Child inside?) - This is okay. Nothing really great about it. I do like the line that goes something like "I know that it's my fault, but it's kind of yours too." The lyrics are pretty interesting, but they don't scan well. The music is a little shrill for my taste.

Dan-O From Five-O - Pretty good. Somewhat standard. The music is well done. The singing sounds great at most parts (except when you say "on my mind") I like the change that comes after the little bridge. There's nothing about this that sets it apart from the rest of the pack.

Flvxxvm Florvm- Please tell me how to pronounce your name. I like the harmonicas here. If you slowed this down a little bit, you could have a Tom Waits thing going on. The vocals go off beat during the chorus. Other than that, it's pretty cool. I would have liked them to be a little more understandable. I like the second half of the song more than the first half. More finesse is evident here. And you still manage to make it feel like the same song, which is good. The part where it switches back is not as good because it feels like the song has already ended by that point.

The IPA - You guys have a knack for creating sounds that are just odd enough to catch my attention. This is mixed a little soft, especially the vocals. Which is kind of a disappointment when you break into the rock. Because it sounds like you're trying, but the music isn't swelling behind you. It just seems like the elements haven't been pulled together. And then it abruptly breaks back into the original sound.

Jordan Seavers - I was anticipating this one. The sound is flawless. I don't like the lyrics, but that seems to be a problem with me, not you. This one's neck-and-neck with Leaf62 for my vote.

Kill Me Sarah - Turn it UP man! There's nothing really wrong with the song other than that, but there's nothing really RIGHT about it either, if you get my meaning. And the fact that it's so soft makes it harder to pick out cool stuff to hang onto.

Landfills - This song is off to a good start. What is that silly voice you're doing? I apologize if that is your actual voice. Not much happened in that song, so I don't have much to say.

Lil Moses and MC Minimum - That's-a-me and my buddy. I'm pretty happy with this one. I wish I would have laid down the vocals with a little more committment. And unfortunately, from reading the archives it seems that rappers only win fights in two scenarios: 1) There is an absence of REALLY talented musicians. or 2) Said rapper happens to be MC Frontalot. Jseavers and Leaf seem to have the talented artists thing covered, and I'm not the Front last time I checked, so we'll see what the future brings.

Lonbobby featuring Anita - Very phat beat. I like the atmosphere of this song. This is shaping up to be my favorite song in my fight. Good production, a unique tune, and i'm liking the lyrics. I am proud to be in such esteemed company.

Martin Chitty - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I was hoping to get through this fight without having to listen to sentimental piano. This is a supreme lack of creativity. I keep waiting for it to break into ... i don't know. Something original. But it doesn't. So I kind of tuned out. Damn you sir. Damn you.

Matt Glossy And the 8x10s - I like the tambourine. I think that's my favorite part. And the Chorus is fun. The main song, though, doesn't really distinguish itself, and that's what i've got to judge stuff on with so many entries. The lyrics are pretty interesting. Specifically the pattern. The samples are a nice touch.

Roymond - Interesting fusions of a bunch of different styles. I see a little bit of everything here. So it's definitely a unique tune. Sounds a little creepy, which is good. Then the chorus turns it into more of an upbeat kind of thing. Every once in a while your vocals kind of hop out of tune, but you generally overcome it. Fun stuff.

Ryan Rickenbach - Good vocal expression. The guitar gets a little repetitious. I can't help but feel that this song would do well with some more levels. The guitar alone just doesn't quite cut it. Good lyrics, but the harmonies at the end are a little flat. Overall, a solid song by a good performer.

Uncle Boltoph and the Deshead Kid: I'm starting to run out of different ways to say nice things about songs. Whatever that random noise is in the background, it's really messing with the song. Maybe just my imagination, but it sounds like you're recording in a wind tunnel. The guitar sounds really good, and the chord changes spice up the music. That's all I have to say about that.

Wages - This is not explosive enough to impress me. Unfortunately, your name puts you at the end of the fight so by the time i get to you i've already heard several other songs like yours. The percussion is a little fast in comparison to everything else. Nothing seems quite on beat with anything else.

X-Tokyo-River-God - You have some neat effects in here, but the vocals are lacking. For one thing, they seem overly breathy at some points, and the lyrics aren't easy to follow. Actually, the lyrics are good, but as i said, hard to follow. The song overall seems very ethereal, which seems like the kind of effect that you're going for, but it also has the effect of giving me nothing to really sink my teeth into.

theyre talking about when audio peaks.

haha, so i just wrote like most of the reviews, and i closed the window.

deshead wrote:

roymond wrote:-12 is pretty hot, which in my opinion is why so little dynamic range remains in modern pop/rock.

Ya, I totally agree. My two favorite articles on the subject:
The Death of Dynamic Range
Over The Limit
According to that second one, the Rush albums from the late 70s ran at about -18dB .. That's a lot of headroom!!

roymond wrote:But I am curious about your RMS tools, Des.

I use Ozone too, and sometimes the Waves plugins. Ozone's dithering sounds cleaner to me, and the limiter is definitely more transparant than the L2. But the Waves C1 compressor is (to my ears, anyway) a lot cleaner than the Ozone dynamics stuff, so if the master mix needs compression, I'll go that route. (And the L2 has its place .. When you want the edgy sound.)

I don't use anything fancy to monitor .. Just the Sonar meters (and lots of A/B listening comparisons to commercial mixes.)

Ah, I'm reading the first article. This actually brings together some knowledge I already had and makes it more sense. Now I understand what the amplify tool in Audacity does and what the the slide levels mean.

MC Minimum wrote:Xtokyoradiogod - Why did you put an X in front of your name? That just ensures that by the time I get to you, I'm so tired and jaded that your song will not get the review it deserves. Also your song is broken. It will not play on my computer.

The link is fixed. It was just that it was under the wrong band name originally. The band is X-Tokyo-River-God. It just happens that I have a podcast called the X-Tokyo Radio Show. The mix up was bound to happen sometime. I think I'll change the podcast name in the future. As for the name landing us at the end of the stream, why don't you just hit shuffle? I never listen to the fight stream in alphabetical (or is it ASCIIbetical) order.

MC Minimum wrote: Flvxxvm Florvm- Please tell me how to pronounce your name. I like the harmonicas here. If you slowed this down a little bit, you could have a Tom Waits thing going on. The vocals go off beat during the chorus. Other than that, it's pretty cool. I would have liked them to be a little more understandable. I like the second half of the song more than the first half. More finesse is evident here. And you still manage to make it feel like the same song, which is good. The part where it switches back is not as good because it feels like the song has already ended by that point.

If it has to be pronounced at all, "Flux 'em Floor 'em". I'll post lyrics.

As for the vocals going off beat, the guitars lost the beat and by the time I was laying down the vocals over them, I had to choose whether to stick with the drums or go with the guitars, and didn't quite manage either. Of course by that point it was too late to re-record the guitars, because I can only lay down guitar tracks on Tuesday night when my wife goes out with her friends.

Niveous wrote:

MC Minimum wrote:Xtokyoradiogod - Why did you put an X in front of your name? That just ensures that by the time I get to you, I'm so tired and jaded that your song will not get the review it deserves. Also your song is broken. It will not play on my computer.

The link is fixed. It was just that it was under the wrong band name originally. The band is X-Tokyo-River-God. It just happens that I have a podcast called the X-Tokyo Radio Show. The mix up was bound to happen sometime. I think I'll change the podcast name in the future. As for the name landing us at the end of the stream, why don't you just hit shuffle? I never listen to the fight stream in alphabetical (or is it ASCIIbetical) order.

Sorry For being grumpy. I was tired and hungry and the playlist wasn't working as it should.

EDIT: It works now. Will post review in my original post.

Hey MC Minimum, you forgot me...:0

jeff robertson wrote:
If it has to be pronounced at all, "Flux 'em Floor 'em". I'll post lyrics.

As for the vocals going off beat, the guitars lost the beat and by the time I was laying down the vocals over them, I had to choose whether to stick with the drums or go with the guitars, and didn't quite manage either. Of course by that point it was too late to re-record the guitars, because I can only lay down guitar tracks on Tuesday night when my wife goes out with her friends.

Haha, I know the feeling. By the way, I like the names of your imaginary band mates.

MC Minimum wrote:

My only real complaint is that no respectable person puts numbers in their band name. .

umm... yeah. See, a few years ago, I'm in this retarded mood, and I needed a band name for soundclick, (or so I felt), and I was so tired of stupid numberband names that I just COULDn"T resist naming my stuff like that.. like some kind of sarcasm, that only I seem to get...

And ever so often someone grills me on it.. heh heh heh.


So, it's a long running joke that I just can't abandon, probably cause I'm the only person who thinks it's funny. In fact, I was tempted not to explain it, but if I did that I'd lose my claim to "most defensive person on the internet" and I JUST CAN NOT ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN.

Ryan Rickenbach wrote:Hey MC Minimum, you forgot me...:0

Ack. Sorry. Playlist was not behaving as it should. Here goes:

Ryan Rickenbach - Good vocal expression. The guitar gets a little repetitious. I can't help but feel that this song would do well with some more levels. The guitar alone just doesn't quite cut it. Good lyrics, but the harmonies at the end are a little flat. Overall, a solid song by a good performer.

deshead wrote:

kill_me_sarah wrote:Is there a standard?

Commercial mastering engineers aim for an RMS level around -12dB.

The average on Songfight is probably higher than that. The last 30 seconds of the Uncle Boltoph tune is at about -9dB RMS.

How to get yours louder depends on what system you recorded with. In general, you simply turn the volume up, but use a compressor or limiter to make sure you don't clip the peaks.

Ok, so now that I understand this to some extent, can anyone explain why negative decibles are louder than positive?

kill_me_sarah wrote:

deshead wrote:

kill_me_sarah wrote:Is there a standard?

Commercial mastering engineers aim for an RMS level around -12dB.

The average on Songfight is probably higher than that. The last 30 seconds of the Uncle Boltoph tune is at about -9dB RMS.

How to get yours louder depends on what system you recorded with. In general, you simply turn the volume up, but use a compressor or limiter to make sure you don't clip the peaks.

Ok, so now that I understand this to some extent, can anyone explain why negative decibles are louder than positive?

Hah! This thread IS confusing.

Actually, it's still the case that the higher the DB, the higher the volume. What people are talking about in here is the fact that the more you compress your song (thus enabling you to raise the overall volume) the more you loose in dynamic OOMPH. Which can flatten your song / make it sound dead.

MC Minimum wrote:

Ryan Rickenbach wrote:Hey MC Minimum, you forgot me...:0

Ack. Sorry. Playlist was not behaving as it should. Here goes:

Ryan Rickenbach - Good vocal expression. The guitar gets a little repetitious. I can't help but feel that this song would do well with some more levels. The guitar alone just doesn't quite cut it. Good lyrics, but the harmonies at the end are a little flat. Overall, a solid song by a good performer.

Yea right now it's hollow. When I fix it up for the album I'm going to add bass and drums. The "Don't believe me part" will be electric, too.

MC Minimum wrote:Sorry For being grumpy. I was tired and hungry and the playlist wasn't working as it should.

It's ok. So can we get a review?

Niveous wrote:

MC Minimum wrote:Sorry For being grumpy. I was tired and hungry and the playlist wasn't working as it should.

It's ok. So can we get a review?

You GOT a review. It's in my original post.

Thanks. I hadn't seen the edit. Gawd, you expect me to scroll backwards. Geez.

kill_me_sarah wrote:Ok, so now that I understand this to some extent, can anyone explain why negative decibles are louder than positive?

Ya, it's definitely confusing when you first run into it.

There are two measurement "scales" generally used in digital audio. One, the absolute scale, fixes its lower end-point at 0dB. The complete absence of sound is 0dB. (Someone who tells you that a "jet engine produces 150dB of sound" uses this scale.)

The other scale, generally called "full-scale" fixes its upper end-point at 0. This system is used because digital systems have a hard limitation on the loudest sound they can produce. A given system only has so many bits to represent the intensity of a sound, and once they're all turned "on", that's the loudest sound the system can deal with. We work with sound relative to this maximum level.

If a system tries to generate a sound above 0dB full-scale (or 0dBFS, as it's usually written) you'll hear what's known as "clipping." The system is out of bits with which to represent the extra volume, so you end up with a pop, click, or something else nasty.

Note too, that a decibel is a decibel in either measurement scale: Record two sounds one after another, the first with an absolute level of 50dB, and the second with a level of 40dB. Mix the first sound so that its full-scale peak is -10dB. The second sound, which was 10 decibels quieter, will peak at -20dB. They're 10 decibels apart in level, either way .. The scale (i.e. absolute or full scale) is just a matter of where you fix the end-point.

This might help some: http://www.jimprice.com/prosound/db.htm

Niveous wrote:Thanks. I hadn't seen the edit. Gawd, you expect me to scroll backwards. Geez.

You will scroll backwards, and you will LIKE it.