Having trouble filling space!

I think there is a difference in the body of the staccato synth. Theirs has a much lower, warmer register. Yours is higher and bright. Yours also, I think, has more decay, so you have a much more pronounced transient then quieter sustain.

An impression of thickness also comes from detuned unison in the main synth. Not to much but enough to give movement and stereo spread. Detuned unison sounds thick. Single wave sounds sound thin. Very subtle effects like chorus, flangers, phasers can add that type of effect even if they aren't audible as effects themselves. Reverb, too, can be inaudible to most listeners but have a big effects on spread.

I think there's generally more in the lower ranges in their track too. Brights sounds often need to sit on a strong bass and mid-range to sound balanced. Imagine a diamond necklace sitting on a fat cushion.

I think you need to listen to the mid range sounds in the track. These are often easy to ignore because they don't usually do much musically, unlike the top end stuff which you perceive as the lead. Their track has a mid-range arpeggio that comes in too.
 
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MarcDHall said:
I think there is a difference in the body of the staccato synth. Theirs has a much lower, warmer register. Yours is higher and bright. Yours also, I think, has more decay, so you have a much more pronounced transient then quieter sustain.

An impression of thickness also comes from detuned unison in the main synth. Not to much but enough to give movement and stereo spread. Detuned unison sounds thick. Single wave sounds sound thin. Very subtle effects like chorus, flangers, phasers can add that type of effect even if they aren't audible as effects themselves. Reverb, too, can be inaudible to most listeners but have a big effects on spread.

I think there's generally more in the lower ranges in their track too. Brights sounds often need to sit on a strong bass and mid-range to sound balanced. Imagine a diamond necklace sitting on a fat cushion.

I think you need to listen to the mid range sounds in the track. These are often easy to ignore because they don't usually do much musically, unlike the top end stuff which you perceive as the lead. Their track has a mid-range arpeggio that comes in too.
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Thanks for the reply!
I'm going to try messing with the body of the synth then. I wasn't sure if I was missing an entire wave form like maybe white noise, but I'll give this a shot.
On the lower ranges point, I've been having a lot of difficulty with them on this track. Originally, the low ranges were pretty loud, but I toned them down because they drowned out the mid-high frequencies. Is this something mixing or compressing could fix?

I will listen to the mid range sounds! I checked out the synth in Maximus and there was very little mid range, so I'll figure out how to fill in that space today.
 
Low range can never drown out higher ranges, they can be out of balance. Low mids can sound boomy, so I think at first you want to remove them, but that range contributes a lot to the mix without it being obvious to someone listening to the music. Being to harsh removing them hollows out the sound.

This isn't just a mix issue... Its a writing/orchestration issue. I know you aren't writing orchestra but there is no non-orchestra word for it. You write music such that things fit together before the mix.

If a sound has a lot of low range a standard compressor cant help. A multiband one, maybe.

If you write a synth patch I have found that 90% of the time a high pass filter is needed. The lower fundamentals tend to pile up so a highpass of anything between 200 and 800 might be needed. If a particular sound is filling out the low mids then everything else can be roled off. So one thing might role off at say 500...something else maybe 1000. Even chopping off their fundamentals entirely (again, orchestras do this.) Higher frequencies don't pile up easily so just using highpass can get you 99% of the way there.


Anyway its easier to break things up. 1 high plinky patch, one warm round patch, one bass patch. You can fine tune without having to come up with mix fixes.
 
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Theirs def has some detuning in it that makes it sound fuller, that I do not detect in yours.

I'm hearing a few possibilities here:
1) The way their sound is created/designed also is allowing them to use a cutoff filter to eliminate a lot of the higher frequencies when it leads into the main melody of the sound, after the intro.

2) they are layering another synth with the main one that is accenting the main idea/melody, then they drop it out after the intro.

3) as the song fades out from the intro, the sustain on the synth patch is being turned up to change it from a "plucky" sound to a more sustained type synth string sound.

It's a little hard to distinguish exactly between those, because a lot is possible these days. Some VSTs, you cut the highs, you have a completely different sound, same with changing or automating sustain-over time.
 
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