![[FFF] Witch Craft Works - 02 [C259F06D].mkv_snapshot_02.38_[2015.04.14_17.45.16].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BNKMNUl.jpg "[FFF] Witch Craft Works - 02 [C259F06D].mkv_snapshot_02.38_[2015.04.14_17.45.16].jpg")
I've been trying to peg down what's so wrong with this show for two episodes. It's not the writing, even though it's bad. it's not the animation, even though it's mediocre. It's not the acting, even though it's just alright.
It's the sound design, mixing, and music. That's what's so weird about this anime. The sound design makes no sense. Everything sounds like garbage and none of the sounds fit the visuals. The footstep sounds aren't even synched with the feet WHEN IT CUTS TO A SHOT OF JUST THE FEET WALKING, which it does A LOT.
The music suffers from the same problem. The beat structure is fucking mystifying and the whole layout makes no sense. This show is actually a really good example of how sound design can make or break an anime.
>>124035823
You can even hear it in the OP. The syllable breaks and even lyrics in the song make no musical sense and the mixing is dreadful. The vocals are muffled and flat and sit behind the instrumental instead of in front.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMHFUvMMXzg
It's like they just had the janitor do the sound and music for this show.
I don't remember if the sound was shit or not, but this was a pretty fun Magical Girlfriend series.
>>124035950
and the strangest part is, for most people, this stuff is just kind of subconscious and it lowers the perceived quality of the show without the viewer really being able to understand why they feel the way they feel.
>>124035823
I remember everything being wrong aside from Timpopo-chang.
>>124035950
Yeah, okay. That's awful. I still liked the characters though.
It really worked in making me fall asleep
>>124036101
Does anyone like this OP? I'm a sound designer for western animation and music internationally. I could TRY and fix it if anyone really cares.
>>124036163
In fact, I might do an entire episode, just to show what a difference good sound design makes in making things not feel boring. The sound design is a big contributor to the fall asleep factor in this show.
>>124036203
Why don't you try it for Parasyte instead?
>>124036293
I've yet to see it. Is the sound bad?
>>124036203
Do it OP. Would be super interesting to hear the difference.
>>124035950
I can't even remember even watching the OP. Guess I skipped the fuck out of it every time after the first episode, this shit sounds atrocious.
>>124036310
It's trash.
>>124036163
Haven't watched the show but I like some of the remixes played at the monthly Anison Matrix at MOGRA. This is my first time hearing the TV version though and it's bad.
one of the best EDs in years and i listen to bad end every few weeks still.
but i think you have problems anyway. why are you wasting time on something you know you don't like? you aren't getting paid
OP here, remastering the OP for fun I guess.
The retard that mixed this left the master reverb track on for the vocal track, so the reverb is doubled. Holy shit, this is criminally incompetent.
>>124036573
HOLY SHIT THIS RECORDING IS ONE TAKE
WHOEVER IS SINGING THIS IS A BEAST
>>124036609
how do you know
>>124035950
I still love fhana's stuff.
>>124036638
In the vocal only stem you can hear her breathing. You can also hear the master reverb, which means this mixer had no idea what they were doing.
Check it out:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0FYAMCGd3lO
>after this, there's a segment with no reverb that has no background instruments, but as soon as the reverb is turned up on the voice, the background instruments come in again.
This is literally high school sound guy tier. it's like he's using only one reverb for the entire song and controlling the decay with a controller
>>124036830
>after this, there's a segment with no reverb that has no background instruments, but as soon as the reverb is turned up on the voice, the background instruments come in again.
The aforementioned segment:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1Y4OwNSBswG
I'm laughing. I don't know how many of you guys will get how bad this is, but it's so funny.
>>124036830
>You can also hear the master reverb, which means this mixer had no idea what they were doing.
So you're not supposed to hear any of the instrumental when isolating the vocals if the vocal track was done correctly? I've tried making a few acapellas in Ableton and I can't ever get the vocals by themselves without some of the instrumental, best I can do is some EQing to get rid of as much as possible. Don't know if that's incompetence on my part of the sound engineers'.
I do remember stuff like the explosion sounds being horribly overdriven.
>>124037071
Unrelated. This isn't from improper isolation, this is from doing the master reverb twice. The actual vocal track is clean and was recorded probably on a different day entirely from the instrumental.
It'd be excusable if these tracks were recorded together, but they weren't. They were recorded separately on different days in different rooms and are only muddled together through sheer incompetence. This bleeding only happens when the reverb is turned on.
>>124037097
This was the only thing I really had a problem with. I'm sure if someone could make fire come out of nowhere, it might make a sound like that, but it just didn't sound good. I think I usually tuned out during the OP, but only because it wasn't really that great.
Besides that though, I guess I didn't notice all the bad sound quality. Probably a good thing, since I really enjoyed the rest of the show, besides the last 2 or 3 episodes.
>>124037291
I think you guys are gonna be pretty amazed how different the OP is with proper mixing.
>>124037639
I always skipped the OP, but this interests me.
>>124037639
So am I.
I'm surprised these guys were so incompetent though
Hey OP, are you from /prod/ on /mu/ by any chance?
They spent their whole sound budget on the ED obviously.
I do remember watching the OP thinking there was something horribly wrong with it. A lot of the sounds felt sort of cheap too.
Fucking love that Ed though.
Not every episode is like this.
I remember thinking my headphones were broken, or my audio jack was broken, so I tested everything.
Nothing was broken so I gave up and just dealt with shitty audio.
Somewhere past half way through the season, the OP doesn't sound like shit, but if I remember correctly it goes back to sounding like shit a few episodes later.
>>124038090
Used to go years ago, why?
>>124036609
>THIS RECORDING IS ONE TAKE
That's pretty standard for anime. Not just songs, they'll do whole scenes in one take with the whole cast recording at once.
>>124038423
Just wondering
![TayZonday_YouTube_1[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/jFQwL4w.jpg "TayZonday_YouTube_1[1].jpg")
>>124036830
Why doesn't she move away from the mic to breathe?
OP here. Man, this is harder than I thought. a lot of this is pretty unsalvageable. Posting a preview soon.
>>124035950
I never actually watch anime op's in most cases. The only time I watched the outro is with tokyo ghoul's s2.
>>124035950
I think this is the result of trying to have the same generic anime OP but changing it a little so it's unique each time. After so many iterations it's going to sound really bad.
Basically they kept trying to come up with a generic song that sounded unique, and tried to tweak things in all places besides the core of the song it so the end result is really bad.
Interesting, OP.
As someone who liked the anime but skipped the Opening every time after the first time I heard it, I'd like to hear a salvaged version.
The ED is still fantastic though.
Non-audiophile here, what exactly is reverb/what are you doing to fix this?
this is interesting stuff
>>124039882
>reverb
That slight echo intentionally placed on most songs during recording. It makes the song feel more like a performance than a recording of someone singing in a room when executed well, but can also feel really plastic and amateurish like in the OP. Of course, some styles of music can benefit from a more raw recording.
That aside, I don't really know how OP is handling this.
hey OP, how are you even remixing it? Do you sync voiced and karaoke version and invert phase of the karaoke version to get somewhat clean vocal track (I mean you still hear backing track because of different EQ-ing and loudness war style compression/distortion) and then re-EQ everything with some noise gate/noise reduction and proper reverb on vocals? My guess is you don't have the original multitrack .
>>124036909
>>124036830
Holy shit, can't unhear!
Thanks for the analysis, OP! This explains so much why I can't stand to listen to what I think would be such a good song!
>>124040209
i think he's taking the original mix and the instrumental, phase cancelling them together, and layering the newly-established DIY acapella with the instrumental again so he's able to process the vocals separately without tampering with the other instruments (at least too much - the vocaroo posted earlier indicated there is some bleed in his acapella, so there might be potential for SLIGHT phasing? will be interesting to see how he tackles this)
>>124040362
There's no phasing. The dude actually mixed parts of the instrumental and master reverb into the vocal track, I swear. That's REALLY what's happening. I double checked the phase several times. Even the samples practically line up, and there's no variance from track beginning to track end.
Here's a sample of the original:
http://a.pomf.se/zftppw.mp3
And here's what I could salvage:
http://a.pomf.se/zkcmwh.mp3
This is really hard. The original is overcompressed AND ducked AT THE SAME TIME so it sounds devoid of dynamics AND quiet. I can't imagine whoever mixed this does this regularly.
>>124040629
>http://a.pomf.se/zkcmwh.mp3
even with the setbacks, coming along nicely
>>124035823
>jc staff
>blaming the source material
>>124040629
>The dude actually mixed parts of the instrumental and master reverb into the vocal track, I swear.
is it possible that the original mix and instrumental were limited/compressed separately, which would cause there to be discrepancies in the waveform (leading to the bleed in your DIY acapella)?
>>124040629
Well, I was a fan of the show, and yeah, audio was one of those things that it seems they skimped on.
It made the OP completely unwatchable for me, for one.
I guess they had to cut something, since they kept with the source material almost 100% and managed to stay honest even with the more nutty character designs.
Maybe I was more willing to forgive it because I'm a huge fan of the manga, but even JC Staff expected it to do horribly, so they had to slack somewhere
>>124040848
There's some of that on the high end, but otherwise no. Listen closely. The instrumental bleeding through is the REVERB BUS, not the original sound. This means that the reverb send for the instrumental was rendered into the vocal stem and then mixed in twice.
It's hilarious.
>>124040917
or to break it down more, the instrumental is leaking in two ways. One of them is from what you were suggesting (actually, compressor sidechaining, not separate compression), but that's only in the high end. The rest of it is from the reverb bus.
>>124040917
>The instrumental bleeding through is the REVERB BUS, not the original sound.
another hypothetical scenario: could it be that both versions are different exports (and not just track stems pieced together post-production), and the reverb bleed would be a result of the actual plugin? (this would be assuming that something like a convolution reverb, which uses static impulse samples is not used)
>>124041093
Regardless of the cause, the point is that instrumental reverb is ending up in the vocal track, which is wrong no matter how you square it.
>>124041165
And the reason I know it's incompetence and not some technical fuckup is that it seems as though he's using one reverb plug for the entire song, seeing as he turns the reverb off for the whole song when he wants the vocal to be clearer and up when he wants it to be more colored. You can actually hear this in the unaltered track.
Nice attention-whoring thread.
>>124041289
i'll allow attention whoring (if you could even call it that) in exchange for some intelligent conversation
I still think the writing was worst.
This show is a fucking mess.
Too bad because the imouto was delicious.
I watched it, but all I remember is the ED.
