MIX CHALLENGE - MC056 July 2019 - Winners announced

[vintage]

Hello,
Congratulations to the winners!
Can i know who are the disqualified people and why?
Best regards,
Patrick

I put it in the post

"There were two disqualifications in the top 9 (halfinhalfout didn't use the proper name structure and vintage had the track start playing again at the end of the export). Check those renders people!"

Ok, I just saw my problem (end of locator lost ...) However the file is complete and intended for mastering, I respect your decision but it is not a valid reason for me to disqualify a mix, this file does not is not supposed to be broadcast and is under construction with a little bit more in the end quickly resolved by the mastering engineer. This is my humble opinion and is binding only me. Very nice day
Patrick

[Chriswilson83]

I understand your point, but the band chose the top three not me. They commented on the track looping too as a reason why.

[vintage]

I understand your point, but the band chose the top three not me. They commented on the track looping too as a reason why.

I really have no problem with the choice of the group, it's up to them to see of course, no frustrations either :-) But a disqualification for this kind of problems is a little excessive, I find, as a rule, the technical problems were strongly brought to the fore in this challenge. At the replay of the 9 finalists none has arrived at a really perfect result (me including of course!) I often found a lack of thickness in terms of sound quality ... I do not speak of the choices of each one for mixing but good sound quality ... We still have to work hard for a better result. Thank you for the time spent on this challenge.

[Chriswilson83]

I understand your point, but the band chose the top three not me. They commented on the track looping too as a reason why.

I really have no problem with the choice of the group, it's up to them to see of course, no frustrations either :-) But a disqualification for this kind of problems is a little excessive, I find, as a rule, the technical problems were strongly brought to the fore in this challenge. At the replay of the 9 finalists none has arrived at a really perfect result (me including of course!) I often found a lack of thickness in terms of sound quality ... I do not speak of the choices of each one for mixing but good sound quality ... We still have to work hard for a better result. Thank you for the time spent on this challenge.

Rules are rules to me. When there's 70+ mixes to choose from we can't really be bending for every little thing or they'd never be a final selection, and I don't think it's fair on people who have followed them to the letter to let through people who didn't.

The amount of times I had to reconvert a file because it was given to me in the correct format in particular was frustrating. We should all be able to send files to the format we've been asked as a minimum.

[vintage]

I understand your point, but the band chose the top three not me. They commented on the track looping too as a reason why.

I really have no problem with the choice of the group, it's up to them to see of course, no frustrations either :-) But a disqualification for this kind of problems is a little excessive, I find, as a rule, the technical problems were strongly brought to the fore in this challenge. At the replay of the 9 finalists none has arrived at a really perfect result (me including of course!) I often found a lack of thickness in terms of sound quality ... I do not speak of the choices of each one for mixing but good sound quality ... We still have to work hard for a better result. Thank you for the time spent on this challenge.

Rules are rules to me. When there's 70+ mixes to choose from we can't really be bending for every little thing or they'd never be a final selection, and I don't think it's fair on people who have followed them to the letter to let through people who didn't.

The amount of times I had to reconvert a file because it was given to me in the correct format in particular was frustrating. We should all be able to send files to the format we've been asked as a minimum.

Let's be clear, I do not blame you, a simple debate or an exchange of ideas, see you soon for the next challenge!

[HalfinHalfOut]

Had some feedback, the final top three are as follows...

1 ShroomFeverish
2 Gloukin
3 marc Rapture

There were two disqualifications in the top 9 (halfinhalfout didn't use the proper name structure and vintage had the track start playing again at the end of the export). Check those renders people!

And congrats to the three :-)

Hey there!

Totally cool I made a mistake and own it, my fault and no sour grapes! Thanks for all the time and attention put into the review process.

That being said, I do want to make a recommendation for a rule change. @Mr Fox

I've worked with two mastering houses in the U.S. and they both put the sample rate and bit depth in the file name, one shows date and revision number as well. In my mind, if the goal of this process to is provide practice for a professional style work flow, those should be included in the file name, I personally like to include WAV/MP3 in there as well. Yes, I realize that most people will have file extensions enabled if they are working in the professional audio industry, however; I believe default for OSX is to have file extensions turned off now, I am not sure about Windows at this point, and depending on which mobile platform you may be using for car reference it's another place where it is quite possible not to be labeled.

A second recommendation, is assuming we are operating under the guise of a revisionary process, and eventually an artist actually wants to use these for a final master, picks a winner and needs a 13th final final mix revision (we've all been there), simply labeling something R2, probably doesn't suffice. I've seen some with a number and letter ex (16b), I personally use rev1/2/3/4... For my purposes, I can see some confusion arising when we go from no R marking to R2, and wondering where R0/1 is. It's possible I missed that on the initial instructions and should have been DQ'ed then! Not sure.

Congrats to the winners, was a great experience working with tracks I didn't record! I'm normally a one stop shop for all that kind of stuff!

[Mister Fox]

I've worked with two mastering houses in the U.S. and they both put the sample rate and bit depth in the file name, one shows date and revision number as well. In my mind, if the goal of this process to is provide practice for a professional style work flow, those should be included in the file name, I personally like to include WAV/MP3 in there as well. Yes, I realize that most people will have file extensions enabled if they are working in the professional audio industry, however; I believe default for OSX is to have file extensions turned off now, I am not sure about Windows at this point, and depending on which mobile platform you may be using for car reference it's another place where it is quite possible not to be labeled.

Actually a quite good and logical request. In cases if I work with video companies, I not only write down the sampling rate and bitrate (like I currently do with the ZIP files in form of 48-24 for example), also note down the LUFS value for the video engineer to adapt things at his own leisure (if I submit a requested -16LUFS mix, the video tech can then pull down to -24LUFS for example).

But I also understand Chris' standpoint. If you get a 48kHz 24bit production, why do you convert the WAV down to 44kHz? Even the rule mentions "provide at the same sampling rate or higher". Maybe that does need a refinement. Will think about it.

A second recommendation, is assuming we are operating under the guise of a revisionary process, and eventually an artist actually wants to use these for a final master, picks a winner and needs a 13th final final mix revision (we've all been there), simply labeling something R2, probably doesn't suffice. I've seen some with a number and letter ex (16b), I personally use rev1/2/3/4... For my purposes, I can see some confusion arising when we go from no R marking to R2, and wondering where R0/1 is. It's possible I missed that on the initial instructions and should have been DQ'ed then! Not sure.

The game only has two rounds.

The initial round is the main "mixing challenge". That is basically R1 or R0 (if you want to call it that). Then those that get into Round 2, simply have to distinguish their file in some shape or form. So either "Round 2" or "R2" if the filename would suffice.

Since the submissions are final, there are no revisions. The Songwriting Challenge is a different beast though.

Congrats to the winners, was a great experience working with tracks I didn't record! I'm normally a one stop shop for all that kind of stuff!

Great to read. Thank you.