Welcome!
In Episode 4 of our Cyberpunk UTOPIA Journey, we shift gears and put the pedal down. Delivering to you one of the hardest mixes to date. As always you ain't just gonna get one flavor of music from me, but an experience. And this mix is the perfect example of that. Some of the soundscapes we'll be exploring are metal step, dark electro, and dark clubbing but we'll also mellow things out just a little with some synth-wave 80s vibes and a few surprises along the way.
Even though the mix is overall heavier, I'm always firstly looking for emotion and creative quality over anything else. To allow from the aggressive moments, more beautiful emotional experiences that only add to the overall statement for when those big moments do come.
One aspect I'm proud of is the overall balance and dynamics in this episode. The softer moments are gentle and the big moments just speak volumes. Perfectly engineered to take advantage of Youtube's LUFS levels, maximizing the dynamic range available. So what you'll experience is YouTube normalization and slight digital streaming compression but little sacrifice of the low-end frequencies due to the lower LUFS levels.
An overall LUFS level around -14 is pretty good, considering that Dubstep for example has been known to play in the range of -5 LUFS which frankly is just insane. At that level, your low-end frequencies are just mud - for lack of a better name. Sure, experienced engineers can find clever ways to re-introduce these aspects but it's never going to be the purest form. Adding additional harmonies is one thing, but re-introducing them is gonna work, but it;s not the same. And I'm grateful we are over the "loudness wars" and that many creators are starting to understand and appreciate the importance of audio fidelity.
That being said, I hope the original creators of the music in this episode showed some restraint in "loudness" but some of those metal step songs - it's a bit of a grey area.
Much Love,
Valarijex
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