Well it's kind of cinematic. I've seen some composers write music over movie clips. I was just thinking music that's less oriented toward looping/ambiance and had more of a narrative structure.

Since games have many cinematic sequences, would it be a good portfolio item to do that (put your own music over someone else's film)?

Anyway, the part that I'm having problems with in this track are some of the loud horn parts. In the past I've used a brickwall limiter but it doesn't seem to make a difference when I add it and I'm not seeing the levels go up to red in the mix console anyway. The track sounded fine with headphones but horrible when I listened later through a surround system (I guess I always need to test this out before calling out good), like toward the end with loud horns blasts the static.

So . . . I don't seem to know what to do to get rid of this noise this time. (other times the limiter was the solution).

I noticed the portfolio section but it looks like it's all about visual art, not sound/music. I saw someone put a pic in there with a link . . . is that the best we can do here?

@jon1

at the 3-minute mark to the end

(sorry, I thought “toward the end with loud horns blasts the static” was enough of a hint but apparently not)

What if you mute all the other parts and only play the horns? Do they still sound bad?

Can you render out 10 seconds of just the horn section? Does it still have the problem?

Can you show the signal chain – what's your channel settings, grouping/bussing, in addition to master out?

@hplus0603

Ah, thanks for the thought and this will be some homework for me to mixdown just the horns and upload it to YouTube (but of course that's the right thing to do). That's because I don't hear it so well until I mix it, upload it to YouTube, and play it on surround. But again I think that will be worth doing.

hplus0603 said:

Can you show the signal chain – what's your channel settings, grouping/bussing, in addition to master out?

I must not know my stuff well enough to know what you're asking, but thanks for your thoughts. Can you help me understand what I'm looking for here (to the question)?

That screen shot is actually pretty good! (Funny coincidence: I've been a Cubase user since 1991 :-D)

There's no busses ("group" or “FX” tracks in Cubase) which makes it easier to debug. (But I recommend looking ot them – they're handy!)

If you use the same reverb on all of the tracks, you might consider adding an FX track for the reverb, and sending a bit of each track to that reverb track using a Send. The reverb should at that point be in “100% wet” setting, whereas now with the insert configuration, I imagine it's more like “20% wet?”

All of the channels are running pretty hot. You could try putting a Brickwall Limiter on each of the channels, and on the master output, to see whether the source of harshness is clipping. You could also turn down each channel by -6 dB and see if the mix translates better. But, if there's no red-clippy-warning in the mixer, that's probably not the actual problem.

Also, it all sounds fine-ish to me, so maybe there's some problem in your YouTube receiver/decoder system? There's what might be a bit of crackling in the left channel, maybe? That might be encoder problems? You could try EQ-ing out super low bass and super high treble. Add a low cut that takes out anything < 50 Hz, and a high cut that takes out anything > 16 kHz, and see if it encodes better. (I know, you'll want that sizzle and oomph, but mastering is … compromises.)

When I got home, I auditioned this on the reference Genelecs with the Emotiva decoder, and it sounds pretty much the same as with the headphones. Maybe the tympany roll right before the final horn stabs had a little more presence (subwoofers tend to do that ;-) but my guess is, if you're hearing something radically different, it's quite possibly a decoder problem for whatever you use for surround monitoring.

@hplus0603 Thanks for doing that – that's a huge favor.

Yes, I had actually tried using a brickwall limiter too. I'd had to do that for a horn that was going into the red on a different track years ago, but this one wasn't doing that and the limiter didn't seem to make a difference.

I was looking at it through YouTube on my TV's app, where other tracks (like the other one with the horn) sounded fine. I just have a 5.1 system with a sound bar. I don't know that I understand it, but if someone else isn't hearing noise from that horn at the end then I guess it might just be a fluke on my end.