Poly - Shocked System - Would love your feeback!

https://soundcloud.com/polytrixer/shocked-system-master-1

Hi Everyone,

You've probably seen me banging on about this one. I've put months of work into this and have been determined to get it right.

Your feedback has already helped a lot. This is my attempt at a self-mastered finished track..I'm close to considering it finished

Cheers as always.

Good stuff poly, interesting arrangement and it got more enjoyable for me as it went along.. though mastering-wise it sounds like you cut a lot of low end which could be there? I'd probably pull back the hi pass filter a bit.. then look at getting some of the high frequency stuff wider - are you using mid/side eq in mastering?

Hey dude. Thanks for your reply. Really appreciate it. I've just made a few slight edits actually to the arrangement and changed the automation on some of the acid transitions which were creating harsh transient pop things. Boosted the volume of the bass parts a little so that might come through better now. The acid seemed quite hidden to me when listening back in my car so I've worked on that too.

This is what it sounds like now (I haven't changed much mastering chain wise though):

https://soundcloud.com/polytrixer/shocked-system-master-2

I think I might have been too savage with cutting lows in the mixing process and consequently it might lack bass as you say. I suppose I was determined to get the kick punching through all the other melodic stuff.

I really don't know what I'm doing mastering wise beyond using Ableton's built in Mastering audio effect rack and tweaking master EQ there. What you are hearing is actually including a boost on the bass/mid/highs to a max of 1.77 db so that was my attempt at brightening and boosting bass.

No, not using mid side eq. I don't think I fully know how to use it/understand it.

Thanks a million again. Really proud of this.

I like it. Has nice progression :)

Thank you very much :)

https://soundcloud.com/polytrixer/shocked-system-final-master

Yo, this is my third and final master. Lost the will now so i think I'll leave it at that!

Cheers all.

this kind of fine-tuning is somewhat foreign to me, i don't use eq that often, but i can hear the improvement

the little textural things were interesting

you did make the kick come through without cutting out other stuff, so that's good i guess, but plain 4/4 kicks always feel lazy to me and make the song feel cliche after 30 seconds of repetition

Well cheers for feedback all the same :) Yeah, I might avoid 4/4 for my next tune. Know what you mean.

Been recommended this book to help with mixing/mastering:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Audio-Science-Bob-Katz/dp/0240808371?ie=UTF8&qid=1466581376&ref_=la_B001K8LIMU_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

seems like i've been beaten to the punch-- this track is really good except it's just too light on the low end. the kick is fixed but yeah, something sounds weird to me in the area between 80 and 300. the culprit may be the reverb, try messing with it. that being said, it's not in the category of "distracting" but rather within the range of taste, so if you like it this way you can certainly stick with it.

Thank you very much again!

I'm going to go about my EQ mixing differently next time. I kinda feel as though I cut too many lows on each element in an attempt to help the kick come through before actually listening to it in context and thus overall it lacks bass. My room is untreated and lacks bass too so I need to use headphones more to check this part of my production. I'll be moving to Sheffield soon for my masters and into a crappy box room student accommodation so I can't see my acoustics improving for a few years...

Thanks mammal - yup, I probably overused reverb in places with too much decay and that's the mud build up - saying that, I was careful on the frequency range affected by the verb so I'm not totally sure.