MIX CHALLENGE - MC073 February 2021 - Winners announced

[Ollio]

Loudness is an endless discussion and I understand what I think Stefanos is trying to say; in a real world situation there's not usually much fuss about levels before mastering, at least with when you're working with just the artist and the mix isn't clipping. However, if you're working with TV, movies, audio books or video games the loudness and peak level values can be very strict and you have to keep to it, or you're fired.

However for this case most of all: you entered a competition with a certain set of parameters, that were clearly stated in advance. Whether you agree that it is good practice or not is up to you, but by entering a competition you agree to its rules and it was clearly stated in advance, failing to follow the rules will result in a disqualification. I think the right thing to do here would be to give this feedback to Mister Fox in another more suitable thread, if you genuinely want to give feedback and make the competition better in the future. If you're just trying to get your result overturned, please don't. The rules are there to give an even playing field for all competitors and to guarantee a mix with healthy parameters for the client. And by particiapating, you agree. Now I'd love to see some healthy mix feedbacks from pariciapants, not rule feedback here. I'll definitely join in when I have time to listen to your mixes more thoroughly!

Good luck to y'all!

[stefanos]

alright dude you got it

[stefanos]

Dont want to argue for my mix to pass, i dont care.
The point and the facts also is, that i dont compress things and the loudness goes up, also when we talk about a track that is guitars mainly and programmed drums there are no dynamics there much anyway, except if you want the transients all over the place.
Anyway beliveving those rules are ok is not my thing, and yes u are right its my problemm i dont agree with the rules. so be it.

[m_tree]

@stefanos
I really can't understand why it's so hard to read and respect the rules. It's my third MC here and none of my mixes were disqualified.

Apart from the loudness you asked and discussed why you should make a documentation, but didn't made any documentation. Which is another reason for disqualification.

[Mister Fox]

I'm stepping in for a minute to clear some open ended questions.

Hello, I'd really like to understand why I got disqualified. If I insert the wav file in my DAW (Cakewalk) it shows that it peaks at -1.00 dB, while on your sheet it says -0.70dBTP, which is out of the range.

What tool do you do your measurements with And overall what should I have done, set the peaks at -2.00 dB

This can be easily explained
Decibel Full Scale max (aka dBFS) vs Decibel True Peak max (dBTP max).

While your track might have peaked at -1dBFS (and Wavelab 10 confirms this), chances are that you're still having ISP (Intersample Peaks) that exceed -1dBFS, because either your metering tool doesn't read sample-accurate and/or isn't over-sampled, or your safety limiter (clipping off peaks) is not ISP save.

I am measuring with Wavelab 10, in fact, Wavelab 10's Batch Analyzer as written in the PDFs and the posts above. Wavelab is a host with it's original function being "mastering and finalizing files", creating CDs, Podcasts, etc. The analysis features are as close as it can get to, for example, Nugen Audio's analysis tools (which are the most accurate on the market). But this host offers me a spread sheet output with plenty of data as output.

I am measuring the following:
LUFS Integrated (ILk), dB True Peak (dBTP, Wavelab calls this "Exact" peaks, while "Digital" peaks are dBFS), file length, sampling rate and bitrate. This is exactly what you see in the PDFs... the color codes and layout, is done manually.



How to confirm the readouts:
I can highly recommend Nugen Audio's tools VisLM or MasterCheck. But that might be out of financial reach for a lot of people. The IMHO best freeware alternative is Youlean Loudness Meter 2 (Free), set up to ITU-R BS.1770-4 mode. The "Pro" version even offers offline analysis through drag and drop. Highly recommended, updated on a regular basis (adhering to constant shifts in loudness standards), and the Pro version is fair priced.


:arrow What could have been done to prevent this:
Your entry brought up two issues -- the first one being that the Integrated Loudness (ILk) was at -15,3 LUFS ILk, the second being that your "True Peak" value exceeded -1dBTP. That is sadly even out of range for allowed tolerances. The easiest solution would have been, to pull back the output signal strength a bit -- read, your stereo mix (sum). By about -1dB as starting point. Either with a gain plugin on the summing bus, or a safety(!!!) limiter set up to "clip away" peaks at -1dBTP and the input gain pulled back by 1dB. Else, no further treatment of the signal.


I am sorry that you ran into this, but we have to have strict and fair rules for everyone.
I hope this explains what was going on.

lol my track was too hot to pass??ok... probably whoever decides that is not even engeneer.

I am an Audio Engineer, and I decided on the values of -16LUFS ILk absolute max (unlike broadcast, no +-1LU range allowed) and -1dBTP absolute max for a reason. That being, that this is a mixing challenge, and I even made even clear in the second post, that "Edit/Mix in such a way, that barely any after-touches other than loudness adjustments and final limiting is needed in a possible follow-up mastering step.". (also see post #7).

So yes, you can go absolutely bonkers with your tools, as long as you do not exceed these given values. Which you sadly did.
Your LUFS ILk value is -11,4 LUFS ILk, and your dBTP max value is +0,20dBTP.

That is way out of defined specs, therefore a violation of established rules, which sadly results your entry being disqualified. It is really that simple. And technically yes, your follow-up documentation is also a bit lackluster IMHO, but you did comment on your mix (what you did), but this is a global topic for the whole game, not just your entry alone.


There is just no arguing as it happened a couple of times already with the "real world situations" comment, if the actual real world is also: "material too loud, not enough headroom to continue working, do again!" or even "you've not done your job right, I'm looking for somebody else". I've been there, multiple times -- which is why these rules exist, which is especially beneficial for novice audio people trying to get a foot into the field (knowledge I wish I could have acquired during my early engineering days). Focus on the important part: creating a good mix that barely(!) needs any treatment later, at a certain maximum loudness.



Which brings me to this:

anyway i dont care about the competition, bat its totaly bonkers cheers to moderator..

If you don't care about "the competition", and it's "totally bonkers" anyway... then why make such a big deal out of it? By joining the game, even just for fun, you still adhere to established rules and confirm this by posting in the corresponding game threads. Arguing later and then saying "this is bonkers" (aka: absolutely idiotic) doesn't lead to anywhere and is only disruptive behavior ( and as both host of this place and admin, I now kindly ask you to stop doing that)

If you want to still participate for fun, but be out of competition in the future, then please just mention that right from the start. In the first paragraph, or below your download link. Then your entry will still be analyzed as part of the statistics process and your entry counts as "submitted within the deadline". But you forfeit your chance to maybe get more feedback, and go into Mix Round 2. The choice is yours.

[stefanos]

When i partitipate in the competition i didnt know really the rules , so yes thats my mistake.
I will not change the way i mix because of some rules.
You are an engeneer as i am so i guess u understand ballance.So really tell me if u ballance a song with no dynamics right will you have dynamic range?

[Ollio]

When i partitipate in the competition i didnt know really the rules , so yes thats my mistake.
I will not change the way i mix because of some rules.
You are an engeneer as i am so i guess u understand ballance.So really tell me if u ballance a song with no dynamics right will you have dynamic range?

Unless the song is pure sine waves and/or white noise from start to finish, it will have a dynamic range. What does that have to do with the topic? Referring to your earlier post about not compressing; You can control your peak and loudness values without compression too, you have faders everywhere and gain pots in almost every plugin.

[stefanos]

And thats the reason why i make it a big deal , because of all of these misconception all those novice guys have.There are people here for sure willing to learn and with that kind of thinking they will not.

[Ollio]

And thats the reason why i make it a big deal , because of all of these misconception all those novice guys have.There are people here for sure willing to learn and with that kind of thinking they will not.

Sorry, I'm not quite following anymore. Can you be more specific about what you think the misconception is and what is the wrong thing to learn?

[m_tree]

So really tell me if u ballance a song with no dynamics right will you have dynamic range?

Why do you think this song has no dynamics?

And even if there aren't any dynamics: You can balance the tracks for sure and use any kind of gain on the masterbus to level your mix to the target average loudness.

And even if there are plenty of dynamics (which is - for example - the case on the verse solo guitar here): of course dynamics and a lack of content in the upper (especially upper mid) frequency range can hinder achieving a certain loudness level. But as an engineer you got your tools (compressors, limiters, equalizers, volume-automation and so on ...) exactly for this task.

So again: Where's the problem?

And by the way ... if you doubt my mixing skills -> here's the URL to my mix again: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qknmszredr8f9 ... e.wav?dl=0