This my first BGM/AFX/Foley mix… used Ardour 2.8.16 on Ubuntu Studio 12.04.2.
My review is like, it is a loud one and the reverb could have been a little less… 
Please let us know your comments.
Decent first shot. Easily on par with my student’s first shot often times.
Subtlety is key in sound effects, if they are to loud they are distracting from everything else that does on, and I think you hit that here. Pull back on your ambient sounds, things that set the scene can be far less in the foreground than the sounds you want to draw attention to. Particularly once you set the scene they can fade into the background, maybe even out depending on the situations. Also you could use some motion in your sounds, tracking camera movements or positions on screen a bit more.
Didn’t even notice the reverb really.
Seabladethanks for the comments…
if they are to loud they are distracting from everything else that does on
did you mean that it was too loud to distract from the video or that was ok?
I have used some panning while the box falls from sky and then when the box is off the scene on the left (i panned the sound from box to left)… was this panning noticeable? you were referring the panning by motion in sound?
did you mean that it was too loud to distract from the video or that was ok?
In a way they were distracting from each other. You obviously had certain sounds you wanted to draw focus, but the other sounds (Ambience) going on were so loud they were distracting from those sounds.
Related to this is the second part of my response…
I have used some panning while the box falls from sky and then when the box is off the scene on the left (i panned the sound from box to left).. was this panning noticeable? you were referring the panning by motion in sound?
Yes motion in sound in this case. For instance, because your ambient sound was so much in the foreground, the lack of movement in it as the camera moved was very noticable. Think of what would happen when you turn your head in a field of crickets/insects at night, or as you moved. You would hear those sources move in relation to your position. So if your ambient sound is so much in the forefront, you should aim to match that so that it seems realistic, and the camera represents the audience moving through your space.
Likewise panning on the sounds of the squirrel as it falls down the balancing board, or whatever that is called(Is it sad I can’t remember the name of that thing?) is another point where some would be needed. And in this case I don’t know the panning on the box unlocking on screen was strong enough, it still ‘feels’ centered. When it is off screen the panning may be a bit to strong, on screen not strong enough. Make sense?
And yea listening to it again I certainly don’t really notice reverb, as much as a lack of feeling like the elements are all in the same space. Now this likely does come down to verb, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t necessarily that it is to strong or weak overall, but that it isn’t quite balanced on the various sounds. Also think about what happens to sound in the distance vs up front, not only from a reverb perspective but also an EQ perspective as well.
SeabladeNow am clear on these… the placement tips are really afresh to me and i would strongly follow them… i will remix it and will share it… thanks a lot for the feedback…
You could make your panning more obvious by using a stereo reverb with 2 inputs, so if you send to the left, you only get reverb on the left, and send to the right reverb on the right.
Not sure how you would do it in ardour, but with mixing desks that have stereo aux’s with pan you can pan you aux sends, usually used with in ear monitors so you can send to say Mix 1/2 and then you have a pan control. Can also be used with reverbs, so you can pan the effect easily with just 1 control under your aux send rather than having to work 2 auxes as the same time.
im sure there will be some way of panning a reverb .
Or the easy option is just bring back the ambience so that its not overtaking the dry signal.
sometimes with reverbs you have to be carefull, particularly with predelay aswell, more predelay can make things sound further way or more in the back of the mix.
I didnt notice those so much until i had some real play time with predelays along with vocals and the difference between 0ms and 50ms while suttle does have the effect of moving the focus of the sound.
Reverbs can be tricky, im really picky about reverbs, i love big spatious reverbs, but they dont all work. Im still not happy with calf reverbs, good sounding reverbs but still not quite what i want.
Tal reverbs are very good, tall II seems to work very well for me with acoustics using large reverbs, but can be a bit sparkley and add weird notes ontop of things.
hybrid reverb is excelent though i had issues with gui performance and having to spend too much time fiddling with the presets that too much time was being spent trying to find what i wanted.
I heard the panning from right to centre, but not really anything from centre to left, and not really could tell any reverb.
Nice work, i certainly could not have even started a project like that never mined followed throw and finished it.
I would say that the sound FX sound a bit disconnected, but im no FX mixer.
Im a live sound engineer with some studio work thrown in .
Nice job