I've discovered a few new things when it comes to the music sequencer over in the LBP3 Beta. As most of you have already heard, They didn't add anything new for beta testers. However, StevenI himself did say that there will be more music features added. There will most likely be new instruments as well.

But... I have noticed a few upgrades ( upgrades in my opinion ) for musicians.

I imported my music and some music from other musicians over to LBP3 ( the music is only audible for PS3 users at this point ) and I've noticed a few differences. The instrument samples were EQed slightly better and they are at a higher bit rate. This means less compression, clearer sound, tighter bass, crisp treble and more focused mids. The independent sounds are much more audible in a heavily layered section. This sounds good but also presents a problem for many peoples music.

For me, this is great. I've always kept my volume balanced and avoided stacking sounds to make my music louder. For the musicians that stacked like crazy, they're in for a bit of bad news. The songs that are mixed very loudly sound... well.. extremely unbalanced. In LBP2, mixing loudly caused a lot of compression. But when things are at a higher bit rate, it's much harder to compress. Many tracks were mixed according to how they sounded. Well, now everything is going to sound a bit different.

Another thing that many musicians use is reverb from global audio tweakers. The audio tweakers in LBP3 have been reworked a bit. The reverbs seem to be much more exaggerated. One global reverb setting that many use is the underwater setting. It pushes bass and acts as a lowpass filter. Now the effect is almost double of whatever it was set to in LBP2. It made songs that used this setting WAAYY too loud.

For many of us planning on transferring our music over to LBP3, we will have to redo a whole lot of work. Keep this in mind when putting together new tracks or you may be extremely disappointed when you hear it on LBP3.

Thanks for letting us know. What I'm still hoping for in the full game:
- New instruments (I'd really like to hear an organ and a slapped bass)
- Effects
- Even more instruments to fit in one bar
- The fix that quiet notes, wich are getting louder, weren't played.

I'm still a bit confused. I don't really understand why they wouldn't have beta testers test new music features. Hopefully the game developers have some good people working on that.

If they had music testers, I would be in the Beta. -_-"

EDIT: not aimed at anybody, just thinking that I would have a higher chanche being in the Beta.

I watched an LBP3 Beta level on YouTube that has my music playing, I didn't notice any difference in sound at all, besides all the percussion was removed. I'll have another listen but turn up the volume and pay more attention.

Anyway, this is half the reason why I've lost all interest in the Beta. I was expecting something for musicians and I thought that's why Steven invited me, but nope. No instruments - let alone new ones - and no way to get them; just the sequencer. Ah well... They better blow my socks off with what Steven has promised. (The other half because it crashes constantly and I still can't get access to the official forums.)

Edit: WHY AM I SPECIAL?! OMG I FEEL LIKE ROYALTY!

good question

Hmm, maybe someone with musical smarts could write a conversion guide when the game releases.

I guess one thing that buddy mentioned. He didn't really notice much difference in the sound. This is something that I picked up using really good sound quality. A lot of what I said may seem a bit exaggerated to people if they're not using quality headphones. Also, buddy's music is mixed very well and is balanced. just something I thought i'd mention.

I'm a little confused what you mean by " conversation guide " . I'm assuming it means a guide on how to.. fix your music if you find that it doesn't sound right on lbp3. if that's the case then it sounds like a good idea.

Here's the first person.

Are you implying that neither me or buddy have any idea what we're talking about?

And, based on your comment " If they had music testers, I would be in the Beta. -_-" ", you come across as being awfully full of yourself. I'm tired of your passive aggressive nonsense Razer. You had absolutely no reason to show your rear end by making these comments ( never mind all the others you've made ) but you did anyways.

Sorry folks, but if it's apparently fine for Mr.friction here to keep attacking me in this manner, then I am going to say something. But at least i'm going to do it in a direct manner rather then little snooty comments here and there.

Sound Friction, please grow up.

What are you talking about? I wasn't aiming at you when I said "If they had music testers, I would be in the Beta -_-" ". I am not confident of being in the Beta if they had, but I maybe could have a higher chanche.

And with "here's the first person" I just mean 'Count me in'.

And if I'm 'attacking' you, I am not. Nothing in this topic is aimed to you, neither is it to Buddy.
Also, give me examples where I was meaning that you and Buddy don't know anything about music. I would like to see that.

If they add new guitars, new instruments, and remove the Instrument Limit, I might consider getting LBP3.

@Sound Friction If that's not what you meant by " here's the first person " then it was easy to misunderstand. and the reason I would think that is because I haven't forgotten some of the other comments made towards me. particularly ones made around the time that green bear posted that leak thread. I never said anything like some of the things that you said to me. and if I misunderstood your posts in this thread then I apologize for misunderstanding but I do not apologize for what I said.

however, i'm not one to hold a grudge. I don't have anything more to say about it.

I was frustrated that week, so I was really a biatch. Not bein in the Beta can also make you a d***, take a snickers.

That's right.

Take your example of the global reverb effect. One step in conversion might be to take the original value of global reverb from LBP2 and divide it in half for LBP3. I don't know much about music, so I don't know if it's mechanically that simple.

Maybe i'll take over some loudly mixed music and get started on that.

One note, do you talking about PS3 or PS4? since i suspect they will use better samples in PS4 as there more memory.

I don't really think that there will be much of a difference between PS3 and PS4 editions, and if there was, it wouldn't be noticeable. I'm sure that the PS3's version will at least be the equivalent of LBP2, and LBP2's sound quality isn't bad. It wouldn't make sense for them to make completely different samples for the two games, anyway, since that would be double the work and cause a whole lot of compatibility issues.

By higher quality i mean better resolution and sample rate

for the beta, the music sequencer doesn't even work for ps4. it's not something they were focused on having beta testers test . the only way I could get move pack instruments in was by importing it from lbp2. I suspect that things will be the same for sound quality when the game is released considering that the ps3 can already support great sound quality.

But the nice part is that there seems to be improvement already even though they didn't include new features. And it definitely sounds like higher sample rate for the music sequencer instruments.

Let's be le d***.

http://i0.wp.com/asidcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/PC-master-race-gif.gif?resize=356%2C200

It's a joke. K?

Okay. So I've tinkered around a bit more with more music imported over to the beta. I've basically confirmed what I've already mentioned about audio tweakers and compression. I should note that the built in music sequencer reverb is unchanged ( this is great news for people that avoid audio tweaker reverb ). And for audio tweakers, I've found that you basically need to turn down the amount of reverb, but this varies a lot from track to track.

One example, I was trying to balance out a song that was using the underwater reverb. It was originaly set to 20%. I tried a few lower settings and got it to sound close to normal at about 12%. in another tune, they had the cave reverb turned up to 25% and I had to take it down to about 10% to get it to sound ok ( I never got it to sound exactly right ) . This tells me that the global reverb has been reworked a lot.

The other issue was stacking and compression. As I said before, things wouldn't compress as easily as they did in LBP2. I tried out some very loudly mixed tracks and found that the stacked sounds could really overpower everything else. These tracks actually made use of the compression before. In LBP2, it would all balance out. In LBP3, it simply doesn't. it seems that bassy tones are some of the worst things to stack. They can be so overpowering that they cause other sounds to distort and basically sound like.. crud. This is even worse when paired with audio tweaker settings.

Now for " correcting " the songs. It can be different for each tune depending on how they were mixed. Basically, you have to find what sounds are overpowering and turn them down until your satisfied with the results. The same concept applies to audio tweaker settings. In some cases, peoples mixing relied on the compression. The very loud tones would make everything else go a bit quieter while they were playing and some people would actually use this for a fade in/out effect on certain instruments. This would be a bit of a challenge to actually correct.

I hope that this was somehow enlightening for the musicians that read this.It may prove difficult to go over your LBP2 work and make it sounds similar to what it was... But it can be done. I found that even some of the best tracks as far as mixing needed some reworking ( even some songs by people like buddydestruction needed some editing ). And if the issue is audio tweakers, it's not too hard to fix. You'll pretty much have to wait until the game comes out though to know what you'll have to do.

EDIT: Music seems to loop a lot better now. Great for people that like to make looping tracks.

Aww yiss! (This is really all I care about.)

Great indeed Mr. Buttarms.

YAY THEY AREN'T BRICKWALLING THE SH#% OUT OF IT ANYMORE

I'm keeping exceedingly low expectations on what will be included musically in LBP3. Good to hear there's less compression and "better EQing" but they should just let you EQ it yourself and actually learn something.

Why do so many people want to over complicate the music sequencer? ._. If I wanted to EQ and compress every single sound and spend ages mixing it, I'd just stick with irl music. The music sequencer is great because it's quick and fun, the simplicity is it's brilliance imo.

I like the simplicity ( I haven't tried professional software ) but I also like to push the boundaries and make it sound as good as possible . I personally would like to see more features though. And just to be clear, a lot of these people making music aren't compressing on purpose. They usually have poor sound or something like using the speakers from their TV . And because of that, they can't really hear certain tones well... so they stack to make it louder. Usually this is the case. Or they just like to make their music obnoxiously loud

Stacking sounds is one thing, but panning is very important, and a lot of lbp musicians didn't utilize it.
A bunch of my friends described my music as having a 3d sound, and I'm definitley ready to see what I can do with the lbp3 sequencer.

If the sounds are all better EQ'ed then that's just more work I don't have to do
But as I said, panning is VERY important, especially when you want certain instruments to stand out, or overpower others at certain times.

I do sometimes want to EQ my own sounds though on lbp2, so I would welcome this on LBP3, as this would fix most instruments, like the piano which sounded wayyyyy too toy-ish. Would love to eq my own kick and snare too.

One more thing that would be great is echoing before 1.0 second, for example echoing notes after 0.3 ms, then pretty much any time signature would be possible in any tempo. Soundscapes would be a breeze.

Here's the thing; I'm not sure whether it's simply because I'm listening to the music through my TV speakers, but every time I hear panning hard left, it gets an extremely wet and washy sound, while also barely audible. This doesn't happen every time, I remember I made a song with hard left panning, and it took until I published it in a level to start doing it.

If you're talking about panning things to 0% or 100%, I know what you mean.
I usually stick to 40%, and 60%, but if I wanna give things atmosphere I'll use 30%, and 70%.
The only thing I ever pan 0% - 100% is two basses at 20% volume, this gives the track a stereo feel, and a 3d wrapping sound.
I do this with drums sometimes too, as I try to never leave anything flat in the middle at 50%.

With skillful panning and minimal instrument volume, I've created some pretty sweet stuff if I do say so myself.
If anyone wants to hit me up on psn my id is Underoath_77

I can teach you some things, or we can collab

. invite me sometime man. show me dem tricks

Hell I'll get on right now.
I'd like to see what you have goin on as well.

Though I may be playing Freedom Wars for a little while... it's soooooooooooooooooooo good.

Ofcorse ps3 can do good sound, thing is song need to be composed in-game to memory most likely in PCM format which takes some space, so they could reduced it's output quality to fit in it.

Also i susppect PS4 didn't have sequencer working in betas, because as i heard PS3 game use SPE core for sound support.... if thats they case they mostlikely need to rewrite whole sequencer composer code and that was not ready