I need help with the following:

• how to layer sounds better? How do I find the right sounds and what exactly should I do when “carving” out space for another synth?

• how to compress correctly lead synths and how much is too much? When do you know to start pulling back? Same for bass and everything else

• how do I process sounds effectively so when they’re layered and bussed they sound like a synth from a nexus preset? The nexus sounds are so compact and clean, how is this achieved?

My style is progressive like garrix/mattisse sadko and also a slight bit of big room but moreso in the style of KSHMR where it’s more progressivey.

• how do I use references better?

I am familiar with my software and compressors, saturators, EQ etc.

Thank you very much!

What I want is a way to sort and arrange batches of 128 or 256 single cycle waveforms by harmonic content from dullest (sines) to brightest (saws + noise) so that it will make sense when I scrub through the wavetables with envelopes and LFOs.

I was having limited success using Ableton's new Sound Similarity Search feature, but it's just not specific enough for this particular task.

Surely there's an application or synth that can handle this, right? Maybe a wavetable synth that can sort a folder? Or one of the wavetable librarian apps?

Thank you for your time,

Dylan aka ill.Gates

I'm new to this madness and I need some help identifying my mistakes on my track.

I'm talking about the metallic, bass-like vocal in Destroid - Annihilate buildup and most noticeably at the pre-drop at 1:32 where it says the phrase "You have been destroyed".
Destroid - Annihilate: Destroid - Annihilate - YouTube

And sorry if my English is not that great.

Hey everyone,

I’m running into a recurring issue with my kick and bass at the early stages of production – everything just sounds really boomy. It feels like I’m constantly having to roll off a lot of low end on both, even though a lot of tutorials say to only high-pass around 20-40Hz (or not touch it at all).

No matter what I try, that boominess just won’t go away. I’ve tried managing the lengths of my kicks versus bass notes and even working to pocket their fundamentals without EQ so they have space from the start. Still, that thick low-end is masking everything else.

Sometimes, I’ll try high-passing the kick, and while it does cut the boominess, it ends up sounding boxy instead, so I just go back and forth like crazy, trying to get it right.

Could this be more of an issue with my highs and mids? My reference tracks seem to have a compressed, dense feel, and maybe I’m overdoing it on the low-end tail. Ideally, I’d like to avoid making huge EQ cuts (like 6-9 dB) just to manage the low end.

Any tips on how to tackle this at the production stage? Would love some advice on what’s worked for you all!

P.S. I mix on premium headphones and great headphone amp so room being weird is out of question.

Are there any websites that people have used for serum / spire presets (apart from presetshare) and got great results?

I know there are tonnes of paid preset packs out there but I've somehow only ended up buying or coming across average ones. I produce mainly house and tech house

Now, I don't believe in purchasing many VSTs. As a noob producer I spent hundreds on plugins that I thought would give me some secret sauce, but in reality they were completely unnecessary and wasteful. There a myriad of incredibly effective FREE VSTs that do the job of paid ones as well or better. However, there are some plugins that are absolutely worth it and I'm glad I've purchased. For me, they'd be things like EffectRack and Shaperbox...

What Plug-ins are actually worth the money and should a producer look to snag on sale?

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads in this thread until the next one is created. Any threads made that should be a comment here will be removed.

Rules:

1. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. By doing so, you will find that others will be more likely to help you with your tracks.

2. Be specific when asking for help. Examples of specific questions: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's this mix?" "I need some help on this melody, the last measure comes off a little cheesy, any ideas?" etc.

3. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight certain parts.

4. Please link to the feedback comments you've left in your top-level comment. This will show others the feedback you've left, and you're more likely to get feedback yourself! Also, please notice those who are leaving a lot of feedback and give them some, too. This is a cooperative effort! Update: Any comments that do not follow this format will be automatically removed.

For example:

feedback for Esther: "link to feedback"

feedback for Fay: "link to feedback"

feedback for Minerva: "link to feedback"

Here's my track. I'm looking for ___

Full disclosure. I'm a classical musician… but I have a 10 year old who loves to create and wants to make electronic music. He's had some piano lessons and sits at the upright improvising regularly…. But he wants a beat and more! I have no idea what to get him to get started that won't break the bank. Any recommendations? We are in Victoria Australia so also wondering if there is some sort of course (online or otherwise) that might suit.

I made this acid drone siren rack for Ableton, for techno etc, it's a fairly simple oscillator set up with a couple of sinewaves, but it get it's character from shaping with a filter envelope and harmonic distortion, shaper/drive etc....

You can get the rack here: https://www.studiobrootle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/SB05-Synth-Acid-Sine-Drone.zip

There's a video explaining it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oedkKDigimA

Hope you can use it in your music, any questions let me know...

Is there any good mini meter plug ins that show like rekordboxes waveform ? Ones that show the correct hight of the waveform

Which has General MIDI like Windows Media Player(ability to automatically assign instruments to each channel).

But it should also let me view the notes in a piano roll like a DAW.

Just curious if anyone knows which synth VSTs was commonly used for this genre back then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2cq2vioW6U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4s6H4ku6ZY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihi_kJJj_8A

In "Born to be Wasted" by 009 Sound System at 2:00, 2:14, and 2:22 there is what sounds like alien language/gibberish on one of the tracks. How is this kind of affect achieved does anybody know?

I'm curious as to how. Is it that time of year or something. I'm not mad or anything. Far from it, I'm actually very excited!

I was playing in Cubase recording violin and ended up creating a short polyphony. I created a free pack including the track, stems and every stems cut as short samples. Here is the link to my website to get it (no registration or anything needed): https://nextale-audio.odoo.com/othercreations

Feel free to do whatever you want with it!

Hi all, Not production related question. But, hoping to get some answers!

I’m looking for labels to send my demos to. Recently, I’ve been making more electronica/cinematic downtempos like the sounds of anjunadeep. James & Jody, catching flies etc. I’m struggling to find homes for these. It seems like every labels expect for maybe Anjunadeep is looking for club tracks nowadays… which is understandable… I don’t know any other labels that’s not Anjunadeep or maybe All Day or Silk. Would even consider these. But these are hard to get on. I don’t think Anjuna even listen to unsolicited demos.

Anyway, any recommendations?

TIA.

I’ve been playing my tracks through my 3000s and keep noticing my wave forms don’t seem to be as high as the pro track waveforms

My kicks are sounding warm and punchy with compression and a touch of drum buss

I’m clipping the drum buss and saturating sounds and on the master I have a hard clipper & pro L and getting around -7.8 to -8.3 LUFS with around -2 gain reduction at times

Should I push the limiter further until I hear distortion then nudge it back a bit so there isn’t any ? How much gain reduction do you get from using a limiter?

Looking to collaborate with any producers in Madrid or just get a chance to sit in on a studio session. Studying at a business school here till December, and dying to run a studio sesh.

Hey everyone! I’m experimenting with parallel compression to make my drum group punchier, and I’d love some advice on best practices and any creative tips you might have.

My current setup in Ableton Live:

• I have a drum group with kick, percussion, and hi-hats, and I’ve duplicated it to apply heavy compression on the copy.
• I’m using Ableton’s Glue Compressor on the duplicate track, with a pretty low threshold and a high ratio to bring out the quieter details.
• I’m blending it back with the original drum track at a lower volume.

A couple of questions:

1. Compression Settings: Any specific attack and release times you’ve found work well for EDM and drum-and-bass drums? I want the transients to punch through without making things sound too squashed.
2. EQ on the Compressed Layer: Do you usually EQ the compressed layer separately to control unwanted frequencies, or do you leave it alone?
3. Volume Blending: Any rules of thumb for how loud to blend the compressed layer in? I don’t want it to overpower the original drum sound.

If anyone has other tricks for adding punch and weight to drums, or tips on avoiding phase issues when blending, I’d like to hear it.

edit: typo

Specify any genre, other ideas, and when you tend to work on your music. Post your level of experience and what level of experience you're looking to collab with. Post any other details you think are relevant. You don't have to be using the same DAW as the people you collaborate with, unless you specifically want to!

Here is what an example post could look like, but the format here is fairly open-ended:

​

Hi, I'm an intermediate-level producer with a background in chill-glitch-hop hardstyle fusion. I'm open to ideas, but I was thinking I'd like to collab on a deep house cover of an 80s soft rock song. I usually have time on Thu-Sun evening to discuss or work on music (my timezone is GMT+7). PM me if you're interested!

​

For reference, here are some loose rules of thumb for levels of experience:

• Beginner: Still sorting out compression from reverb.
• Intermediate: Still working on skills in some areas of production. You've got tracks that you're proud of.
• Advanced: Released something on a label, or could see yourself shopping your music around for labels soon.
• Pro: You've been regularly paid to produce for a non-trivial period of time.

Feel free to specify how many people you're looking for, but be careful of having too many cooks in the kitchen. All contact details and file transfers should be set up via PM (that is, don't post email addresses, dropboxes, etc. in this thread!). Please update your thread once you're done searching for collaborators. Let the mods know if this format works, or if you have any suggestions. And finally, have fun!

Got this email this morning from Soundtoys that they're giving away their PhaseMistress phaser plugin for free until Nov 15. Just wanted to share with those interested.

Only info needed is name, country and email to send the license to.

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads in this thread until the next one is created. Any threads made that should be a comment here will be removed.

Rules:

1. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. By doing so, you will find that others will be more likely to help you with your tracks.

2. Be specific when asking for help. Examples of specific questions: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's this mix?" "I need some help on this melody, the last measure comes off a little cheesy, any ideas?" etc.

3. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight certain parts.

4. Please link to the feedback comments you've left in your top-level comment. This will show others the feedback you've left, and you're more likely to get feedback yourself! Also, please notice those who are leaving a lot of feedback and give them some, too. This is a cooperative effort! Update: Any comments that do not follow this format will be automatically removed.

For example:

feedback for Esther: "link to feedback"

feedback for Fay: "link to feedback"

feedback for Minerva: "link to feedback"

Here's my track. I'm looking for ___

Hello guys,

Anyone here who can share with me Westend vocal Ableton rack ?

Thank you :)

I wanted to look for the vts or instruments plugins that were used in the tf2 soundtrack for fl studio, because of the fanmade songs they made, I searched and searched and nothing, only plugins for tf2, and nothing else, if anyone knows where they are, or where look it up, I would appreciate it :D

So I created synth presets on the standalone version of Vital. I am trying to access these presets on the DAW version of vital through Bitwig, but they are not appearing in my presets folder in the file browser. I made sure Vital is tacked in the Plug-in page under settings.

Is there anything else that needs to be done to make sure I can access my presets through Bitwig?

I know that this doesn’t exist for some reason. I’ve tried XO, Atlas, and Sononym on my laptop. Splice is obviously great too (although no drag and drop on iOS), but it seems like the only iOS option for even browsing is Sample Crate, let alone organization/tagging/similarity search.

It’s super tedious to build drum kits and browse for samples on my phone or iPad. This problem would be solved for me if I could just drag and drop from splice to logic or wherever in iOS, but alas you cannot.

I have a pretty solid background in ML and engineering, so I don’t think it would be that hard to fine tune the latest SOTA on samples and their metadata, or to even just embed the spectrogram and do a similarity search.

I have zero experience developing for iOS though, is it just that the compute for something like XO/Atlas is too intensive? Or more that it’s just annoying and hard to code that and nobody has yet?

I feel like if this option was available on the App Store I’d gladly shell out $25.

Am I missing something here or should I just make this.

I've heard it on a few tracks and cant find it anywhere. is this on splice or any other website?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nIWd-7BQ0o&ab_channel=MacStef-Topic

Edit: Specifically talking about the vocal

Looking for some general direction on how to design this sound that a lot of artists in the sable valley realm are using a lot currently, I don't 100% know whether to call it a lead or more of a riser but I'll link a few examples of songs that use it. I'm referring to the high pitched, sustained almost whistle-y sounding synths that are a tad bit more in the background of some of these songs but still carry a ton of the energy. Thanks in advance for any help/advice/tutorials etc on this!

https://soundcloud.com/controlfreakus/eyesonme (2:27)

https://soundcloud.com/joytimecollective/crazy-in-the-club?in=viperactive/sets/crazy-in-the-club-w-dimepiece (0:41)

https://soundcloud.com/marshmellomusic/in-the-cut?in=viperactive/sets/in-the-cut-w-marshmello (the main lead at 2:02)

I'm sick of Splice's scummy business tactics, and I think there needs to be a class action lawsuit against them.

The fact that unsubscribing from their platform deletes all the credits you already paid for is utterly fucked. And the longer you stay, the deeper you're in the hole with credits you don't want to lose. They're literally holding you hostage.

There has to be something illegal about this.