it’s really eating at me that I cant remember where #3 sample comes from.
Is it dragons dogma? or am I way off?
Firstly, for those of you that included super obvious gaming voice samples/references I salute you! You created some wonderful Gaming DNB!
This has been really hard to whittle down as the quality of both tunes and production was so high. I also loved that there was a mix of DNB infused Arcade, Arcade infused DNB (they’re different!) and some remarkably chilled/different approaches.
I’m going to go,
#1. 08 - “Seeeeegaaaaa”…booming bass moves, nice drum kit, great energy and plenty of interest throughout with a massive nod to the classic Sega sample.
#2. 13 - Like DNB at a late night jazz club. Stood out with it’s different feel and nicely produce lofi vibes.
#3. 14 - Atmospheric and edgy…could easily have made a Halloween short list too! Lovely vocal sample and chiptune elements.
I could literally gush about all the submissions but to stop this going on for too long let me just give honourable mentions to 01 for the Mortal Kombat (?) inspire madness, 05 & 09 for dishing up something more meditational and to 18 which, once it got going I fell right into that wonderful groove…Oh and 03…wonderfully different…and…and…[BLKrbbt slowly turns down microphone].
There were quite a range in volumes in the final mixes. I thought I’d done a better job of getting this right but still ended up in the lower 50% volume wise. How do people target the right volume of their master mix?
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i recogonize a bomberman song in #13
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I don’t have a horse in this race. All great tracks.
I get to choose 5 right? 
1 nailed the brief - also sf2 bonus points
2 that lead line in the first half is fucking amazing.
7 is a dirty dirty banger
8 SEEEEEGAAAA - pure dirt - banger
14 has to win. such a well put together track.
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This is without a doubt the hardest challenge I’ve ever had to judge which is why I have 3 honourable mentions. I just can’t get my head around how good some of these tracks are. I worked really hard on my track, but some of these are just next level good.
7 - Is my top pick. If you told me it was Squarepusher I’d believe you. Absolutely superb
8 - The Seeeeegaaaa is just inspired and I love the ring percussion, the gating and the urgency of the beat
16 - Incredible ambience and sense of space, the sound quality and vibe is inspiring, I just want to get lost in it.
HM 3 - Love they gamey vibes and the filthy bass
HM 10 - for the use of monkey island samples
HM 15 - Fully embraces the chip tune vibe and is just an absolute banger
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Only votes that I need from now are:
And doing a rough count… it can still go to a large group here… it is real close!
I had to give a second listen tonight. If I have to pick three, for me it’s:
#7 - That break @ 1:32 nailed it.
#16 - The ambient pad is mixed well with that bass for a laid laid back feel that I really enjoyed.
#6 - The filter squelch and distortion clearing around the 1 minute mark was a great transition.
On #8, I also loved the Sega intro usage too.
Surprisingly, I’m not sure I could guess the game choices for many of them if I was quizzed. Great job to all that participated!
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Thank you for getting the vote in! I know people are excited for the reveal.
One left! There is too many ties left to settle.
Well personally I keep everything at unity per track in Ableton and use a utility plug in on each channel to adjust volumes up and or down for the rough mix while I’m composing and arranging, once that’s all done I start the more serious business of adjusting levels and panning elements to get more space in the mix, one I’m overall happy with things I pop Abletons master chain device on the master and use the macros to do some final EQ and compression and limiting… I normally do two or three bounces to audio during the process to eliminate problem areas by cross checking the mix on cheap Bluetooth ear buds and the car and a crappy Bluetooth speaker, if it sounds halfway decent on all three that’s good enough for me… I’m no engineer btw, it’s all trial and error…
Oh and the one thing I always do to try and avoid a muddy mix is to EQ all the sub bass frequency out of any track that isn’t actually a sub bass, you’d be surprised what frequency’s are lurking in loops and samples that can play havoc with a mix…
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Im thinking about going back to fix my mix. Will use these tips!
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If you do send it to me so I can update the playlist on SoundCloud.
I want to keep them up so the thread has them as an archive for anyone to listen to later.
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My mixdown was also pretty civilised in the first round, so this time I listened to more contemporary references. I came to realise that this is the way:
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Hahaha that’s excellent 
Oh my holy fuck, just found in my computer an old FLStudio project of mine: Zelda drum’n’bass remix… almost nothing inside, but good starting point… 
will post it here if one day I manage to work on it
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And here are my votes:
- 8
- 15
- 16
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@BLKrbbt
Regarding the next DnB challenge I don’t think you should worry too much about syncing it with the Hip Hop challenge as that’s running until next week and given voting and setting up a new challenge etc if you wanted to leave a gap you might not be able to kick another one off until the end of Feb which seems a shame.
I think people are probably going to do one or the other.
So, in Logic Pro I should select the ‘Spinal Tap’ amp and be turning it up to 11, yeah? 
If that doesn’t work, try setting Logic‘s Adaptive Limiter to ‚Divide by Zero‘.
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Or both, I swore off doing another Hip Hop battle in favour of dnb for a bit but I couldn’t resist the urge… that’s it for me though two beats a month is more than enough time in front of a screen…