MASTERING CHALLENGE - MastC003 April 2018 - Winners announced

[Olli H]

Sorry for my late response, I forgot to check this thread. (I don't receive any messages from this forum if it automatically sends any.)

I take the Acon Digital

[Olli H]

First of all - Congratulations to the winners! They were all great sounding masters.

@3ee - I'm certain it was a difficult contest to judge and you certainly have the right to choose according to your own standards. But I did notice that none of the winners hit the Maximum allowed digital peak: -1dBTP:
1. Olli-H: -0.90dbTP
.....
I also noticed that Olli-H submitted his .wav entry @ 24bit/4100Hz, which is not Redbook CD.

It seems to me that different meter's are giving different values. According to Reapers Loudness plugin that calculates directly from the file, the integrated value of my submission was -12.00 LUFS and true peak -1.0 dBTP. I checked mys submission afterwards with Tokyodawns Mastering Limiter that calculates from master buss while playing, and it gave integrated value as -12.3 LUFS and True Peak value as -1.3 dB FS. I have no idea if there's any software that officially gives the real and absolutely correct values. Furthermore, True Peak is probably a some sort of mathematical quess, that estimates where the true peak might end up in DA converters. But each DA converter is different, so it must be only an estimate.

I also noticed after I had sent my submission, that my wav version was 24-bit. So I sent the wrong file. Clear mistake, about which cd-pressing companies don't seem to care so much. But when evaluating any competition submissions, I suppose there are many many things to consider
- technical mistakess
- stylistic mistakes
- genre mistakes
- loudness mistakes
- bad taste mistakes
- age mistakes
- target audiance mistakes
- etc.

So, what mistake weighs more than other when it comes to artistic work? Luckily there's no correct answer, and each judge is hopefully free to choose his own evaluation principles and methods.

[Dodgingrain]

It seems to me that different meter's are giving different values.

Exactly. In theory they shouldn't but they do. I've noticed a difference in true peak between Cubase and Izotope both of which are respected professional tools. The difference there is about .1 or .2db so not a lot but still different and true peak should be easy. My only guess is one is doing intersample peaks and the other isn't?

[Dodgingrain]

I will select Nugen's Visualizer

[davemcisaac]

This conversation makes me think this could all be handled in two possible ways:

1. Strict adherence to a specific set of rules with no exceptions.

or...

2. Let the challenges be wide open for the contestants to mix and master (the only two challenges I have participated in) to the best of their ability with no restrictions (actual real-world scenario!) except specifics the song provider requests.

My personal preference is let the contestants do what they feel is appropriate (art does not fit in a box!) and let the song provider judge to their heart's content. KISS principle in action. That would be the end of these issues!

I apologize for any hurt feelings - not my intent. Also, when I do mastering I don't necessarily expect to hit or exceed the client's expectations on the first pass. That's why I send a DDP & player for them to audition the project prior to committing to the master. A "Round 2" in the Mastering Challenge shouldn't be out of the question, don't you think? (Just my opinion)

[Mister Fox]

I have already gotten the license requests - but I didn't respond to those yet (in fact, I put them on hold for a moment). Sorry about that.

Dave McIsaac has a couple of points that I can (and will) definitely agree on - and I'd like to get into that topic in detail the next days. I'm just very busy right now.

[Waleed Morris]

I take MuTools !!

[vintage]

Hello,
I'm glad it's great for you, but apparently not enough for the podium ... For compression I always aim for the portability of the song on different listening systems and reserves a greater dynamic to the acoustic music in general...
Thanks for listening
Patrick

[Mange]

My personal preference is let the contestants do what they feel is appropriate (art does not fit in a box!) and let the song provider judge to their heart's content.

Agree with this apart from one minor thing... imho mastering is zero about art, it´s all translation.

[Dodgingrain]

I would suggest that it's 50 percent record keeping and standards compliance. Which is why we should have specific measurables and a specific output media target. The rest is how it sounds.