The mixing on the pads and breaks is absolutely phenomenal. I would love to know what VST's and processing you use for both. You really nail the sense of space with the pads and the crisp, punchy break.
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Thanks for the feedback!
So for the pads, I didn't use a lot of processing in this project. I have four pads in the song, three of which are samples. I made two of these samples using a Rompler, combining some choire and string sounds. I played a chord with it and applied some effects (Reverb, pitch shifting, panning, low pass filter). This chord is then exported as a sample. Afterwards, I put these chord samples I generated into a sampler to pitch them to the desired notes. You can also do this with individual note samples and then play a chord made up from these, but that tends to sound a bit more modern I think.
Another Pad -the one in the beginning- comes from a sample pack. And then there is a pad later that is a detuned saw with a low pass filter adjusted by an lfo which I made in Vital, the free wavetable synth.
I then panned these sounds differently for the spacious effect.
And for the drums, they are top loop samples from the same sample pack as the one pad. I used Eq -> compressor -> Reverb. First I apply a bit of high pass and low pass filter, then compression since the dynamics were a bit drastic -though I think I overdid it- and then a tiny amount of reverb, which also spreads the loop out into left and right a bit. What really makes the drums punchy here is a bit of compression in the master chain.
So the main plugins used are MEqualizer, TDR Kotelnikov, Valhalla Supermassive and the Tx16Wx sampler, all of which you can get for free.
I hope this helps :)