MASTERING CHALLENGE - MastC004 October 2018 - Winners announced (no winners)

[Piranha]

I tried as much as possible to gain match every processing step, so to only use plugins to enhance the sound, not to give more volume, and I always test a couple or more processors to do the same thing and chose the best for the particular application.
Mastering chain starts with UnfilteredAudio Dent 2 used as tape saturation because it was the best sounding between my tape sims, giving more openes, detail and changing a bit mids character.
Second in line is T-Rack 5 Opto Compressor, with a couple of db of gr and set as in the picture it's both giving glue and enhancing the transients.
Then there are a couple of TDR's Novas used to control peaks and resonances, in particular in bass and cymbals (mainly hi-hat).
Still I missed a bit of character in the mids so i used the Soundtoys Sie-Q for some mid bost.
Hats needed a little more care, expecially in the extreme high frequencies, so i tame those with just a bit of filtering with Arturia Mini-Filter.
Last in chain Ozone Elements with a bit of eq to make kick more present, clean low-mids and tame a bit of harshness, imager to open the stereo field and maximizer to reach -14LUFS, -1dbfs.
WAV
MP3

[MOA22]

Yes I read it , can help a lot !

[MOA22]

A picture showing how an expander can recover some DR.
The upper track is the original one (with some gain reduction), the second one is the expanded.
Peaks are no more hitting the "0 dbfs". It is no possible to recover all the range, but the waveform
is probably not far from the bounce of the mix.
Found it usefull.

(right clic on the link, open in a new window)

[SotosBakas]

Hello everyone!

What a great website and contest!Great tune to master as well!

Here is my entry: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BFsHA2 ... sp=sharing

Good luck to everyone! : )

[Mange]

Here´s my contribution to this challenge

mp3
wav

My signal chain

FabFilter Pro Q2 - Some initial eq moves. Mostly hipassing and lowpassing. All different in ms mode. Some minor dips and some subboost is also made here.

Waves F6 - Premiere usage. Used it on the topend, the hihats, crashes.

FabFilter Pro MB - General multiband compression. Slightly harder on the topend.

SPL Vitalizer - Another premiere. Adds some clarity. Also use the widener tool in this plugin. It´s not a regular sideboost, side doesn’t have that much information in this mix. Worked quite well.

FabFilter Pro Q2 - With the newly added sideinformation I used Pro Q2 in ms mode boosting some side mids and cutting some side highs and lows.

Slate Digital VTM - Used subtly to soften the highs and adding some vtm mojo.

Newfangled Audio Elevate - Premiere number three. Some very minor limiting, transient control and clipping!

FabFilter Pro L2 - Dithering and set as a second true peak limiter to catch those that slipped through the first one!


Now it´s going to be fun finally downloading the other masters. Great fun comparing. Good luck to you all.

[Mister Fox]

It is the 15th October 2018, 5:20am GMT+2/CEST - the Mastering Challenge has officially ended

If I didn't miscount, we have 16 participants this month!
There have been been 0 submission after the deadline. I've given 0 warnings to adhere to the rules.



I now open the field for everyone to give each other feedback (if you feel like doing so). This will be independent to the client feedback however.


Please watch this spot for the client feedback and the Winners Podium announcement.

Good luck to all participants.

[kevin gobin]

Hi everybody!

First of all I want to really thank all of you.
I know the time and efforts you spent, I have been there.

You have had to try to master something that is maybe impossible to salvage.
Those hihats and cymbals are far too piercing, the ugly muddy bass farts, the over compression begs for suicide, the lack of clarity wants me to burn my speakers and have an excuse to buy a pair of PSI A25, or look like Van Gogh after 1888.

So please, whatever rude words you main read about your submission, be aware that I consider myself as the initial responsible for the bad mixing.


I have downloaded everyone tracks, and already wrote initial impressions.
I will go further but will need a bit of time if you do not mind.

I also carefully measured the LUFS and peaks, the Red Book Wave format, checked the mp3 tagging and it appears that, rules wise, it is APOCALYPSE!!!

Some of you may remember that I have talked twice about rules and respect in the mix challenge forum.
I meant that some of us respect the rules, and to me it is disrespectful to them to let those who did not respect the rules have the same advantages.

So, as I have ethics principles, I will have to ask to the only contestants who properly tagged their mp3:

3ee
Arthur Labus
Jeffssoloband
Mange

Dear fellows, do you want me to strictly apply the rules and disqualify everyone but you because of the mp3 tagging?


EDIT: I have to admit that the rules are a bit difficult to understand properly, I already told Mr Fox about that. And I think I must have missed some of the rules about mp3 tagging myself in Mastering Challenges. Can't be more honest.

[Olli H]

What program do you use to read the metadata? They seem to give different results. And many of them can’t read metadata written by some other software. For example tags written with Hofa to wav file, are not readable by every program.

I downloaded my submission and checked with iTunes and online service www.get-metadata.com. According to those programs the tags are there. (I tried to attach a screen capture but couldn't find how to do it.)

[kevin gobin]

Good to know, thank you Olli H.

I will check further with other programs.
For now I have just clicked on "read informations", then on the "more info" on Mac OSX, because it works with commercial releases.

Any help is welcome on this point, and I prefer being wrong!

[3ee]

Dear fellows, do you want me to strictly apply the rules and disqualify everyone but you because of the mp3 tagging?

It's your call I'd say, I personally would allow all and judge only by how it sounds and don't mind tagging as much..

for anyone interested, here's a simple application to help with tagging, it's German so you know it's good!
https://www.mp3tag.de/en/

I don't usually tag so not sure of the 'standards' or what's the best and simple app to get atm.