MIX CHALLENGE - MC056 July 2019 - Winners announced

[3ee]

Chriswilson83 wow.. impressive work with the list, exemplary work as a client!
will try my best to better my entry for round two, thanks!

[bpackard]

I know for sure I manipulated too much on my entry. Meh, it was my first go at this sort of thing. I just hope the band liked it at least a little lol. I really do like the song. Congrats to everyone! This is fun!

[HalfinHalfOut]

Hey thanks for having me participate, it seems I made it to the next go around!

Appreciate the feed back, some learning curves on my end, need to sort out this metering thing a bit more it seems! Other notes will be addressed. As this is my first mix challenge I also need to read round two rules and the like.

Glad to put something together that you enjoyed! Will be pressing forward!

Dallas

[HalfinHalfOut]

Quick question... for me and anyone else whom may be deficient in comprehension of time zones and dates, I saw in the rules we have 5 days to submit revisions for round 2, given it's Tuesday around 6 p.m. my local time, should it be in before Sunday, or Saturday? Just trying to get a handle on my work schedule for the rest of the week and carving out time for the recall/revisions.

Thanks to everyone helping to put this on, it's a very useful experience, I could spend a tremendous amount of time simply pouring over the other mixes.

Dallas

[jonsubs]

Now that the first round is over I'd like to say something about the rules.

Where does it say the export format? This should be more clear. If there was a rule about exporting at a min of 24b/48khz seems a third of us missed that. This forum really needs to do a better job of simplifying the rules and make them clearer. Getting started with this mixing feels like filing tax forms, and even though I took the time to read it all and try to take it in, even going back to read it again I still don't see where the requirement for the export resolution is.

You also need to define "master". There are many definitions. I mix with plugins in the 2-bus because that's how I like to mix. I think it's mixing, because I'm doing it while mixing for mixing purposes. Someone can take a look at my session with 5 exit plugins and call it "mastering" and they'd be wrong but the rules are fuzzy on this, and since this contest disqualifies people on technicalities I think it should be more specific. Also there's feedback about the headroom. I mix to -14 LUFS for everyone's listening convenience but I'm not trying to master the track. Perhaps we should have an acceptable range and some clearer definitions. I'm happy to put a limiter at the end to provide any required headroom, but at this point I'm not sure that wouldn't disqualify me for "mastering".

[HalfinHalfOut]

Now that the first round is over I'd like to say something about the rules.

Where does it say the export format? This should be more clear. If there was a rule about exporting at a min of 24b/48khz seems a third of us missed that. This forum really needs to do a better job of simplifying the rules and make them clearer. Getting started with this mixing feels like filing tax forms, and even though I took the time to read it all and try to take it in, even going back to read it again I still don't see where the requirement for the export resolution is.

You also need to define "master". There are many definitions. I mix with plugins in the 2-bus because that's how I like to mix. I think it's mixing, because I'm doing it while mixing for mixing purposes. Someone can take a look at my session with 5 exit plugins and call it "mastering" and they'd be wrong but the rules are fuzzy on this, and since this contest disqualifies people on technicalities I think it should be more specific. Also there's feedback about the headroom. I mix to -14 LUFS for everyone's listening convenience but I'm not trying to master the track. Perhaps we should have an acceptable range and some clearer definitions. I'm happy to put a limiter at the end to provide any required headroom, but at this point I'm not sure that wouldn't disqualify me for "mastering".

It's my first time so I had to do a bit of digging, but half way down this page it lists a bunch of specific rules, I went in assuming I was going to get DQ'ed but lucked out haha. Scroll past the artist/submission requirements and it has a whole list of things such as format, naming conventions exclusions etc., in addition there's a special rules section listed at the front of this challenge too. As my first go around I really did my best not to botch it, but there were absolutely many mistakes I nearly evaded.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2

I completely agree with you on your second point! I was very concerned about this, one of my close friends and mentors mixes into a LARGE chain of analog gear, multiple outboard bus comps and hardware EQ's, but does it mostly for color of the sonic signature and I do much of the same since I sum to analog as well. I just did my best to utilize it for color and not for any significant amount of level reduction (very mild like .5db on the NUMU). Based on what I have seen and read, I'd avoid putting a limiter on mix-bus because they want an unlimited mix to send to mastering (in theory if it goes that far). I think what would be really confusing to me is if someone used one of the newer style algorithm based plugs like a Soothe or other multi-band EQ/Compression engines on the mix-bus. These reactive types of software to me are more "mastering" when on the mix-bus than just about anything else, because they are intelligently adjusting the mix for balance. iZotopes actual mastering software does a bunch of this kind of work, I can't attest to how Soothe would work on a mix bus as I don't own it, but merely was citing it for an example of the new generation of software.

It's all a bit of a grey area, and the same can be said for the mixing/producing barrier, where do reverb/delay/effects or interpretation of rhythmic and harmonic intent become producing and no longer mixing? I normally actively produce and mix (somewhat) with my clients present, so not having someone to say, no absolutely not that direction, or you've gone to far, is a new challenge for me as well (especially because it can DQ you in this instance).

I am actually impressed with the rules and the way it's been handled because there are a lot of psycho-acoustic issues when it comes to levels and preference of materials. It's well known that generally speaking, people find louder music and limited music more appealing It stems from the way we perceive loud sounds and the ear naturally compressing them. From what I can gather, when you hear a limited sound, even though it's at a lower actual loudness, we psychologically interpret it to be "higher energy" or more "exciting" simply because that's what our ears will actually do in the event of true loudness. I'm so thankful that the artist took the time to level match and listen on an even playing field. Somewhere I saw a test that was run where two identical mixes with the only difference being .1 db, were compared and listeners preferred the louder mix. In effect this competition could even become a loudness war of sorts where the artists judgement becomes impacted by variable out of their conscience control if they weren't so informed as this one was!

That post was a lot longer than I originally intended!

[White Punk OD]

congrats to the top 10!

Chris, big respect for great management, esp. about the fact sheet data!
Big thanks for that.

As we see, even when the input does not likely fulfill industry standards, the output will be judged by standard.
But as soon as the project exists, that's the job - respectfully support the artist as much as possible.
In reality I believe it becomes a matter of good communication and budget, about what can be done with a much more limited time constraint.
A top studio will perform all the complex tasks (materializing in the fact sheet, in many cases where some element was not treated sufficiently) in much shorter time, but also charge much more.
One of the factors is the cost of track cleaning and detailed time alignment.
Which part of the contract is it? The mix engineer does not really do it, when it is not contracted with a budget. He might turn down the job politely.
(We believe that for quality we have this and that work to do, but regret we couldn't agree on compensation etc..)

One issue that occurred to me, is the initially very low separation and depth in the overhead stereo.
Cheaply I used M/S enhancement and got caught. But then also, how far are the new AI plugins, that can fake a non-existent stereo width within mono compatibility, already becoming standard in low-cost studios? Phil Tan showing up here, is not very likely.
Perhaps for some folks in our challenge game, this might be an interesting thing to discuss, as some might be in a phase to start-up a business in audio, but have not yet.

I don't run my own business but occasionally give paid help to local musicians who want to create a recording and own good stuff already.
Coming from there, my message to the beginners would be, I deliberately worked only with software that I got legally for free, and came that far.

If I was good enough, perhaps only a very humble invest might help me to the top 3. OTOH when it is a game, I opted for testing an exotic approach, as in music history, it often happened, when crazy sounds came from the artist him/herself, it became a hit. I would have to discuss the idea with the artist beforehead.
So, everyone with good talent can get a leg in the door, and can bootstrap step by step. Expensive gear is not excluding talents any more. But of course, at the very top of the world, you have to own every device and tool that could have been used by any client or artist anywhere. Just to have the fastest solution at hand, to any issue at high quality.
Thanks for the very interesting mix tracks. I did my best to support them, but also to introduce a new aspect.

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I agree with the remarks by HalfinHalfOut, good and important stuff!
Digital has blurred the mix bus thing. We need to find the mastering engineer who works in harmony with what we do, and then deeply consider all his remarks and hints.
We had the 0.1 dB effect here ourselves. The engineer in version 2 mastered a track of the album 0.1 dB louder and we actually felt it was better this way. Great guy.
(I had to mount the null test to detect what he did He works at 96k and we had also a time-shift of half an 48k sample so this was confusing but eventually I detected this also. For our own learning, and for project stability, we documented everything that happened. And I said it's all good and we were happy with the outcome.)

Warren Huart has an episode where Brian Lucey explains his mastering chain. And then, when we listen to his portfolio, and he has a lot online or the artists are on Youtube and Spotify, just wow!
OTOH not everyone can afford Brian, and some studios apply some analog gear or emulation on their own, and thus also have much more control on the colorizing. As how things are, artists go to Brian exactly because he adds his particular and famous color to the sound (in many variants and dimensions), and it is also quite genre-dependent.

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I happened to know about the sample format requirements. What a pity for many beautiful mixes.
Perhaps the most frequent errors and misunderstandings might be stated at the beginning of the rules page in red?
However... !

[JamesMusic]

Thanks Chris! Great to hear I have made the top 10 and congratulations also to all of the others! I’ll get started on the amendments.
Cheers,
James

[vintage]

Hello,
Thank you for letting me go in the 2nd round. However, we are on vacation for most of us and we were only present at 04/08 ... Is it possible to have a longer period due to this holiday period (was already the case during a previous challenge ...) The result is extremely fast this time (it is not a reproach of course). Thank you for your understanding.
Best regards,
Patrick

[gloukin]

Thank you Chris for opportunity to be in round 2 and excellent and transparent approach to judging. Let the work begin.