Critique Requested 【UTAUカバー】It Was a Very Beautiful June【Tamaki Yuri -Stardust-】

lunari162

Defoko's Slaves
Defender of Defoko

(I was going to try making a PV for this, but since I never finished the last one, I figured there was no point in trying again.)

a.k.a. "Haichou tries to tune and adds about 100 unnecessary voice cracks"

Summary of the SoundCloud description, which was a mess:
- This wasn't the cover I was supposed to release today (June 22 which is technically yesterday now). The one I was planning to finish should be up soon!
- Yuri's -Stardust- append will probably be released around July 10. The final demo for it might be the cover I mentioned above.
- I'm always open to feedback, positive or negative! I experimented a lot this time around, especially with the art and tuning. I gave up on the mix, though, so I apologize for how bad it is.

Credits:
Original - Eight feat. Hatsune Miku - sm23770496
UST - @half a head
Tuning, mix, VB, art - Haichou
Flags - g+2H0C99F0
(There are at least two lyric errors that I forgot to fix ^^; sorry!)
 

Awaclus

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
I don't think the mix is bad, it's a lot better than a lot of stuff that I've heard. The vocal sounds really good and the balance is pretty comfortable. It sounds quite different from what I'd expect to hear in an average pop mix, but not really in a bad way or a good way, just a different way. I have two suggestions:

1) I can hear a lossy audio codec making the cymbals sound like ass in the high frequencies, I'm not sure if that's SoundCloud's doing or if you're just using a low quality instrumental but if it's the latter, try to mitigate that as much as you can (or maybe you already did and it's just beyond salvation) and in either case, make sure everything you render out at every step is always either FLAC or wav to keep the problem from getting worse. I have had some success making lossy files sound at least a little bit less horrible by filtering out some of the worst sounding highest frequencies and then using some tape/analog saturation emulation plugins to generate some high frequency content to partially replace the stuff that got removed.

2) I would do something to make the vocals a bit bigger for the choruses. If you have a stronger version of that voice available, I would use that, but otherwise you could try e.g. very subtly blending in a different stronger voice in addition to what you already have there and not telling anyone you did that (either your own human vocal performance or a different synth vocal sample library), using a doubler plugin, a subtle delay, just volume automation to turn it up for those parts, or anything else that you can come up with. It's not that there's a problem with how it is right now, but it's not as exciting as it could be.
 

lunari162

Defoko's Slaves
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
I'm glad it doesn't sound that bad! I thought the vocals were too loud, but I guess not? As for what you noticed in the cover, I've heard complaints that SoundCloud messes up mixes, but I don't know if that's what happened here. My hearing isn't the best ^^;

If I'm hearing the same cymbal issue that you are, that might be SoundCloud's fault. I used the official instrumental and changed nothing about it except for the volume, if that helps. I'm a newbie when it comes to mixing, so I don't know anything about plugins. I'm not even sure what tape/analog saturation emulation is; I'll have to look that up eventually.
There's also a really good chance I messed something up when exporting the final version as an MP3. I'm used to exporting covers as WAV files, but I was told MP3 is better. I have no idea if that's true or not...

I thought about using a stronger voice for the chorus, actually. The only reason I didn't is because this was (kind of) meant to be a demo for that specific voice type. I felt like using another vocal would make it... not a demo, if that makes sense. I hated how bland it sounded when I uploaded it, so I'll look into the suggestions you mentioned.

the fact that I use Audacity probably isn't helping with any of this, I've heard it's trash compared to other programs

Thank you for giving such detailed feedback! I really appreciate it. If I ever upload this to YouTube or somewhere else, I'll most likely redo the mix with the tips you gave. :smile:
 

Awaclus

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
The official instrumental that I got from your link is only a 160 kb/s mp3 which means that it totally has that problem built into it to begin with, but you're definitely making it worse by exporting the project as an mp3 again (especially if you didn't change Audacity's default bitrate setting for mp3s which, IIRC, is just 128 kb/s) and I assume SoundCloud then makes it even worse.

About formats: If you were told that mp3s are better than wavs, then you got pranked. Wavs are basically raw sound waves, so they are perfect in quality but pretty large in filesize. Lossless compression formats like FLAC find ways to optimize the way in which the data is presented so that the quality stays the exact same, but the filesize is slightly smaller, and lossy compression formats like mp3 find ways to present a close-ish approximation of the data so that the filesize is greatly reduced but the quality is also reduced, and this becomes especially apparent in the high frequencies — mp3 has specifically been designed to preserve the quality of a human voice as much as possible, but cymbals are higher than that so they get compromised.

When it comes to the quality of a lossy format, there are two extra things to take into account: what is the bitrate, and how many times has it been re-encoded into a lossy format. The higher the bitrate, the less quality you lose, and with something like 320 kb/s, most people won't be bothered by the loss in quality and can only tell the difference when there's a direct comparison and a good listening environment, but less than 200 kb/s gets pretty annoying to listen in my opinion. And every time you open an mp3 in Audacity and export it back into mp3, some more quality is lost, because you're not getting an approximation of the original raw data anymore, you're getting an approximation of a previous approximation. And if you have a low quality mp3 and you open it in Audacity and export as a wav, the result sounds the same as that low quality mp3 but it has the large filesize again, so it's pretty inefficient either way, so you should avoid using lossy files as any kind of source audio for a project if possible. In this case, it doesn't look like it's possible, so the wav-sized file that only really has mp3-quality audio in it is the lesser evil.

Tape and analog saturation happens when you have a tape machine or analog processing equipment and your input volume is pretty high so the sound starts to distort, but in small amounts, that distortion actually sounds really pleasant. And then there are software plugins that attempt to digitally emulate that sound, and even some freeware plugins like the ones developed by Variety Of Sound can achieve a pretty cool sound these days. Normally you would use them just to add a bit of color and analog feel to your mix, but they do create some higher harmonics so they also work for trying to replace the low quality mp3 high end with something else.

...and yeah, the fact that you're using Audacity definitely doesn't help with any of this. Audacity is not trash per say, but it's an audio editor, which means that it's designed for things like removing noise from noisy recordings, and not for mixing. Mixing on Audacity is like being unable to draw at the same time as your eyes are open so you have to alternate between drawing and looking, and only being able to use the eraser on the most recent line you drew so you have to do the whole thing again if there's something you did earlier that you want to change later. Digital audio workstations (DAWs) such as Reaper and Cakewalk don't have these problems, so you can be adjusting the first thing in the plugin chain and hearing those adjustments going through the entire plugin chain in real time if you want to.

Hope this helps a bit.
 
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lunari162

Defoko's Slaves
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
(late response, sorry)

All of this is really useful and interesting! Thank you for explaining all of that, especially the MP3/WAV issue. If I ever reupload/redo the cover, I'll keep what you said in mind. I'm also going to take a look at Reaper and Cakewalk, since this isn't the first time I've heard about them. I have LMMS, which is apparently a DAW, but I gave up trying to apply effects and plugins in it. I'll have to try that again.

I don't think the person who said "MP3s were better" knows about the quality loss, so I should probably tell them about that