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Old Mar 13, 2016, 02:46 PM
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Jazz Paladin Jazz Paladin is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Deciding whether to do Secret of Mana or Wild Arms for my next album
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Quote:
Originally Posted by docnano View Post
Thanks for the feedback. I'd be interested to hear your renditions of the FFIV soundtrack in the future. While the entire soundtrack has been remixed/remastered several times, including at least twice (that I know of) for official game remakes, I don't think any of them has successfully captured the atmosphere of the SNES OST. The ports of this battle theme have been particularly heinous, lacking the harmonic richness of the original and coming across as quite robotic despite "improved" samples.

The reverb problem you mention is one that I struggle with quite often. It is exactly as you say, challenging to find settings that sound equally good on high- and low-end setups. I tend to err on the side of too much reverb in my orchestral arrangements, in part to try and hide the imperfections in my sample library (and/or execution thereof). But it only goes so far.
Yeah, considering the number of remakes the game has had, I still like many of the originals better. I still enjoy the SNES version of Inside the Giant best, for example. That's one I hope to improve on someday, but I'm a bit tied up with a Castlevania anniversary project at the moment...but I do have a version of Illusionary World up on Spotify...

In general, I am finding that less is more with reverb. Perhaps the best results I've had are with convolution reverbs set to 100% wet as a send at a low return level, but also making sure to EQ out the high and low end of the reverb. Ends up being probably more natural than anything else I've tried...

I also find that if I use a smaller portion of reverb, even though it may initially seem inaudible, by the time you bring the RMS levels up during mastering and add maybe a small touch of compression, it actually brings the reverb tail up more noticably--the effect becomes much more pronounced as described earlier if you relied on reverb more extensively in mixing, and can end up standing out in a bad sort of way due to the compression and limiting that may end up affecting the signal.
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