It is hard picking a winner after listening to all the mixes and realizing -at least in estimation- how much time you all have put into this. But it has to be done. And for better or worse, this is the one part where you can’t avoid pitting each mix against the others. So let’s jump head-straight into it:
The first thing you notice when doing this is the different spectral curves make it very easy to sort the mixes, the dullish / wooly / bass heavy mixes get sent to the back row, as do the somewhat harsh / tiring / overly bright. The next important point, at least for me (and I did mention this earlier in the thread) is dynamics and openness. Here is where impact also plays a part because there needs to be a balance between openness and impact. So I am rearranging my mixing board as I listen. Then I make loops of each section and pit the mixes against each other, here individualities start to shine, like the snare on JonasLasse’s Verse; the overall texture in Henrik’s Verse, or the balance in InHim’s Verse. Also, the qualities that seemed to be cool in the beginning wear off and let the foundational aspects gain importance, this turns out to be a negative point in a couple of mixes such as Dr.Acula's and Marc Clement's and they lose a few points. After doing this with the most important section of the track which is the Main Riff and the following Verse section, the lineup looked like this (from left to right; best to good):
Let me remind you this is difficult, punch is very important and when the track goes into the Verse you want it to lay back, but not to lose tightness or get stale. Again I will mention Jonas’ mix, I think he really nailed this aspect.
Then, the Chorus,
I continued rearranging the tracks for this and a new lineup came up, Octo’s magnificent mix dropped a few points because of some lower mid resonances I identified on the guitars when comparing it against the other mixes. This section lets Henrik’s mix shine, and it’s the one I liked the most. The mixing board, after the chorus section looked like this:
Now the Speed and Half-Time sections:
Impact regains it’s status. When I was reviewing this section I felt it was unfair as some of you took a long time focusing on details, but impact is so elusive you either get it or you don’t. What let me be at ease is I know I took care of judging the details mix by mix earlier, so in the end I felt I had done justice to that. On to the mix war: After rearranging my mixing board, the picture looked like this:
Now on to the solo.
Before going on with this, let me say, all these mixes are stellar, if you drop the needle randomly on one, you would be hard pressed to find anything wrong, and in fact you'd be grooving along happily ( or angrily, whichever way you like). It is only when comparing side by side that you can lull yourself into making a decision. So, after going through the Solo and the Riff section after it, the mixing board looked like this:
Back to the Main Riff, Chorus and Outro.
This is the final third of the song, it’s important for the Chorus to bring closure and the way to get to the Chorus has to be satisfying. Spectral balance is again very important as well as punch and all, but at this juncture the entries sort themselves out rather quickly. The mixing board at the end of the song looks like this (again, from left to right; most accomplished to adequate):
So, doing some math we get the following point summary: 13 places, 5 sections, each place gets a diminishing number of points from 13 to 1, and we repeat this for each section:
1st. Mork
63 points
2nd. Henrik Hjortnaes
55 points
3rd. Rogro
52 points
4th.Coiled Ear
49 points
5th. Jack(qhtrvw425)
45 points
6th. inHim
41 points
7th. OctoOnFire
36 points
8th. JonasLasse
34 points
9th. Wizzo
29 points
10th. Dr.Acula
20 points
11th. Franz
13 points
12th. Leo Kreshmer
9 points
13th. Marc Clement
8 points
So one more listen to our Top 5 just to see if I empirically agree with the score and I can say that I do. Mork and Henrik delivered the best mixes, both very dynamic with very nice tones, awesome balance and a clear understanding of where the song wanted to go. Rogro delivered the most brutal and raw sounding one, your mix is the same from Round 1 so considering you didn’t even review it and you got to the Top 3 that was a hell of an amazing job. Coiled Ear delivered a pretty nice mix, with great tones, and great groove. qhtrvw425 delivered the mix that placed #5, there are some resonances that are easily discernible when comparing to the other Top 5 entries and the balance is not as spot on, at times it approaches the brutality level of Rogro’s mix but it’s not as raw, so I would say you are almost there, but you are lacking consistency, and there is a little taste of either over-compression or over-saturation that ultimately made my shy away from your mix. But a hell of a great job nevertheless.
In the end I have to use taste as the final yardstick but isn’t really necessary, Mork made the most points and my taste agrees. I would have been more than happy to know about you guys 10 years ago. Excellent job everyone! And congratulations Mork for kicking ass!
I hope this challenge has been useful to each one of the mixers who took part in it, if you are interested in following my deliberation process you can just follow along this last post listening to the mixes as I did.
Thank you very much everyone, I hope you enjoyed working on this track.
-Leo
