JakobePaulobe's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ra Bliss - Project 13 (INSTR) (DEMO)]

I love the raw, grimy sound you got going on here.

It's a little repetitive, but I don't necessarily view that as a bad thing. It has a kind of hypnotic quality that can help build up momentum throughout the song with the right vocals.

Only complaints I can really think of (in terms of mixing) is:

- The kick-drum sounds like it was panned slightly-right of center, which kind of takes away some of the oomph.
- Some of the drums have huge discrepancies in reverberation (one snare sounds like someone repeatedly hitting the wall with a lead pipe a few rooms over, while the other one doesn't sound like it has any reverb at all, which kind of isolates it from the acoustic atmosphere created by most of the rest of the drums in the mix.
- Some of the higher frequencies on the hi-hat and cymbal seem a tad harsh and overly-present compared to the rest of the mix (mostly just the cymbal really.) Adding a little reverb or tweaking the eq would help smooth it out a little, but honestly, it's really a matter of preference, and might not be necessary depending on the how it sounds once vocals have been added.

Overall, the mix makes it sound like:
- you are sitting in the drummer's seat with your head tilted/offset slightly to the left, ( in relation to the drum set) with the snare drum, hi-hat, cymbal, and kick drum positioned in front of you in a semi-circular shape.
-- the guitarist and bassist are isolated in a different room, but they are plugged in to amplifiers that were placed in the same room as you and the drum-set
--- the amplifiers are positioned with their backs up against the wall (because you only hear direct sound, and not really any reverb/early reflections) roughly 6-10 feet away from you
---- the bass amp is positioned directly in front of you and the drum-set, with the guitar amp sitting about 1-2 ft directly left of it,
----- the guitar is dead center in the mix, while the drums and bass are slightly offset to the right, which makes it seem your head is tilted left of the drum-set & bass amp (because you are staring directly at the guitar amp)
------ there is an open door behind you leading to a larger room with cinder-block walls and a hard floor, and some dude from maintenance repeatedly smashing a lead-pipe into the wall at steady pace. He actually sounded pretty good though, so ya'll just decided to let him have at it and keep going as you continued to record your fire-y jams.

Seems like it could use some dynamic range compression too, but I'm guessing you're saving that for the mastering stage or once the vocals have been added.

I think with some slight tweaking to the mix and some nice, dynamic vocals, this has the potential to be a really epic song or cypher.

[CLAB - Jar vs Pachillis]

It's tough to vote on this because I'm honestly a fan of both of your styles, but I feel like Pachillis took this one. His bars were more creative, his flow was the better of the two (the sloppy double-timing at the end of Jar's second verse hurt him much more than it helped him), and overall Pachillis was the most entertaining in a battle chock full of punches. And based on the fact that rapping and hip-hop more-or-less exist for the reason of entertaining the listener, being more entertaining than your opponent holds a good amount of weight to me in a battle.

Pachillis takes this, but great job by both of you.

(P.S., "splinton" is clearly an alt account made by either Jar or someone in his crew because his only activity on the site is voting on Jar's battles)

[Clab - Pigpen Vs Vinstigator]

It doesn't feel like PiGPEN really tried at all in his verses, but then again I can never tell if he's trying or just trolling everyone with some of his battles. I feel like Vinstigator won this one, he came more personal and had a much wider range of punches. My advice would be to stop saying "motherfucking" so often though. Usually sounds corny like Butsaay said, and it just unnecessarily takes up space.

PiGPEN was entertaining though, don't get me wrong. I just think Vinstigator earned the win here and put more time into it.

[CLAB - Phonix vs Prometheus]

Phonix's verses were just too sloppy and amateur sounding to even really listen to. I don't dare go back and listen more closely to Phonix's verses to vote based on bars without getting black-out drunk first so I'm just going to say this pretty easily goes to Prometheus just for sounding like the clearly better rapper

[CLAB - Sonic vs Wolfie]

Both had some decent bars and punches, Sonic had the flips, Wolfie had the better flow and style. I think I'm going to have to give it to Wolfie based on the fact that he was much more consistently on-beat. Its not pleasant to listen to someone talk off-beat for their 16s and honestly it makes it sound more like an argument/debate that occasionally rhymes than a rap battle. This is a rap battle tournament, I want to hear rapping in future rounds. Wolfie to advance

[Paradox vs WS Tiebreaker]

Warspawn for sure on this one. Not even close.

[Want It With Us]

Dope track. You guys would have been pretty sick as a group, you flowed really well together.

glitchs2d responds:

Thanks bro. But I think so too but shit happens.

[(7) Fat Beats vs (2) RJA]

I have to give this Richard. His delivery and flow just feels much more suitable for battle rap. Fatbeats had good lyrics for the most part, but his punches didn't seem to hit as hard as Richards did.

[(1) Eq vs (8) DC]

DQ came way more personal and I actually enjoyed his verses more because of that. EQ had flow and delivery but that was it. I wasn't feeling his punches as much.