GearFest Mixing Contest
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Synonym Music
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You know I gotta say, the winners of the Zelab Mixing Contest were light years ahead of these. That's an example of a contest done right. In fact, everyone should listen to those right now and tell me they couldn't go on a record this very moment. I'd be honored to lose to 'em!
(I'm serious, do it and come back).
At the end of the day I want to hear a great mix and there's really nothing to be had in this top sixteen. I'd much rather lose and learn, yet the winners are offering very little to absorb.
(I'm serious, do it and come back).
At the end of the day I want to hear a great mix and there's really nothing to be had in this top sixteen. I'd much rather lose and learn, yet the winners are offering very little to absorb.
faderjockey
New member
Where are the winners even posted?
Never mind I found them at GS..
Never mind I found them at GS..
killengage
New member
Congrats to the winners....
Winning or being one of the winners is a bit difficult. Im a homerecording engineer with a small studio. I have to do everything with plugins because i cant effort good hardware. I dont have descent monitors (saving for it) so i had to do my entire mix on the headphones. What bothers me is the fact as soon there are big prices to win even the big studios with a solid client base attend these contest. What bothers me too is that during this contest before the first of June i saw allot mixes getting changed and re-upload. I refused to this because in my opinion its the first mix that counts for everybody. Hopefully next contest they lock the first mix.
I had a great time mixing this. Unfortunately i cant say i learned allot from this because of the lack of comments
I saw some strange comments like (nice, good, awesome a.s.o) which gave me the feeling these comments were only for getting the mix on top of the page.
Again Congrats to the winners.
Winning or being one of the winners is a bit difficult. Im a homerecording engineer with a small studio. I have to do everything with plugins because i cant effort good hardware. I dont have descent monitors (saving for it) so i had to do my entire mix on the headphones. What bothers me is the fact as soon there are big prices to win even the big studios with a solid client base attend these contest. What bothers me too is that during this contest before the first of June i saw allot mixes getting changed and re-upload. I refused to this because in my opinion its the first mix that counts for everybody. Hopefully next contest they lock the first mix.
I had a great time mixing this. Unfortunately i cant say i learned allot from this because of the lack of comments
I saw some strange comments like (nice, good, awesome a.s.o) which gave me the feeling these comments were only for getting the mix on top of the page.
Again Congrats to the winners.
Well, congratulations to the winners of this contest. I don't want to ruin their moment of glory. So that being said, If you are one of the winners reading this, please do not continue reading.
It's not that I think these mixes are horrible. Far from it. I just don't see out of so many of the amazing mixes on soundcloud, these were the puremix winners? It's kind of baffling. I spent such a great deal of time listening to other mixes and referencing them with my own. I thought I was getting a good feel for what seperated the novice mixes from the professional ones. I listened on bad speakers, good speakers, bad rooms and great rooms. I had a pretty good idea of what myself and so many others were up against. I just expected that among the amazing mixes I heard in this contest, the winners would be at least of that caliber. Guess not. Im by no means saying that my mix was best or that it should have even placed. Im just surprised at the outcome.
Anyway, the contest was a learning experience and hopefully we're all a little better at what we do because of it. Gear or no gear.
It's not that I think these mixes are horrible. Far from it. I just don't see out of so many of the amazing mixes on soundcloud, these were the puremix winners? It's kind of baffling. I spent such a great deal of time listening to other mixes and referencing them with my own. I thought I was getting a good feel for what seperated the novice mixes from the professional ones. I listened on bad speakers, good speakers, bad rooms and great rooms. I had a pretty good idea of what myself and so many others were up against. I just expected that among the amazing mixes I heard in this contest, the winners would be at least of that caliber. Guess not. Im by no means saying that my mix was best or that it should have even placed. Im just surprised at the outcome.
Anyway, the contest was a learning experience and hopefully we're all a little better at what we do because of it. Gear or no gear.
To put it that way first: It was an interesting experience doing this mix and it has been a great opportunity to try out something new. In the end a mix is not something you could measure mathematically. It's a piece of art and as such, the results may vary depending on the taste of the listener etc.etc.etc.
In the end, I expected that there would end up some mixes being on the first places, that I would enjoy and that would sound like a record. At least to me, that unfortunately isn't the case. Probably because it's me having a weird taste or there is something wrong with my ears after years of being exposed to rock music. I can't tell...
There is another point that has been quite interesting to me: I really enjoy Fab's work and I have bought some records he made, just because they had such a great sound to them. But once I listen to one of his mixing workshops, I can't find that greatness any more. Probably because he is trying to stick with some of the UA plug-ins, which just aren't that great as some other stuff he is using in his studio... I don't know. It doesn't actually matter... However, what really made me wonder when watching the videos of the recording of liza colby was that he had chosen a mic that was clearly not capable of dealing with a bass drum. In the end he got around that issue by totally tearing apart the drum its self. Luckily the drummer seemed like a cool guy and had no problem with totally changing his drum sound. Fair enough... If the producer thinks the song needs a bass drum sound with no front head - fine. why not? If the mic wouldn't still distort, that would be totally fine with me. But then you listen to the winning mix and what you hear is a perfect resemblance of a bass drum with a front head. Why would you want to do that? Just get a B52 (or a D112 for gods sake) and put it in front of the bass drum and be happy with it, if that's the sound your after.
I just don't get it.... Probably that has just been an attempt to make the sponsors happy... at least it doesn't make sense to me.
In the end, I expected that there would end up some mixes being on the first places, that I would enjoy and that would sound like a record. At least to me, that unfortunately isn't the case. Probably because it's me having a weird taste or there is something wrong with my ears after years of being exposed to rock music. I can't tell...
There is another point that has been quite interesting to me: I really enjoy Fab's work and I have bought some records he made, just because they had such a great sound to them. But once I listen to one of his mixing workshops, I can't find that greatness any more. Probably because he is trying to stick with some of the UA plug-ins, which just aren't that great as some other stuff he is using in his studio... I don't know. It doesn't actually matter... However, what really made me wonder when watching the videos of the recording of liza colby was that he had chosen a mic that was clearly not capable of dealing with a bass drum. In the end he got around that issue by totally tearing apart the drum its self. Luckily the drummer seemed like a cool guy and had no problem with totally changing his drum sound. Fair enough... If the producer thinks the song needs a bass drum sound with no front head - fine. why not? If the mic wouldn't still distort, that would be totally fine with me. But then you listen to the winning mix and what you hear is a perfect resemblance of a bass drum with a front head. Why would you want to do that? Just get a B52 (or a D112 for gods sake) and put it in front of the bass drum and be happy with it, if that's the sound your after.
I just don't get it.... Probably that has just been an attempt to make the sponsors happy... at least it doesn't make sense to me.
Point me to any top tier world class mixing/mastering engineer who's not a passionate audiotech and an in born perfectionist.
Good luck
Better yet, point me to one that actually buys and listens to music when they aren't working
When you do something for a living, you become somewhat desensitised and removed from what normal people are in tune with, and after all music production is for the masses.My point is that if you ask a musician or a tech about a production, the answer they give you is based on their own agenda - like on how they could do it better and so forth. Ask Joe Schmo on the street and you'll get the real goods.
When I'm mixing FOH, if someone comes up to me and proclaims themselves as a tech, musician or one of the musician's family members, girlfriend etc, I immediately take whatever they have to say with a big old grain of salt as they have an agenda which will slant their opinion on the mix. For example, the guitar player's mother will allways think that the guitar isn't loud enough in the mix, that sort of thing.
Someone who mixes audio has a similar agenda, as they tend to want to hear things as they feel they should be mixed. This is no more evident in than in some of the reations to the responses to the contest results.
Firstly.... congratulations to all the winners.
I've been following this forum as the competition progressed - but didn't want to comment until I read a post from a fellow new member Futuristic which basically says it all :
"Puremix lost total credibility with me on this decision. If that's a first place mix, then it's a sad day for skilled mixing engineers around the world".
Guys / Girls... be happy for the winners. Don't feel the winning mixes reflect the very best of this competition. There were some absolutely killer mixes which stuck to the contest technical brief (and rules) - but had very few plays. Did the judges get sloppy, and in a time saving exercise not really listen to everything ? Sure it would have been really easy to have done a cull of 1500 mixes really quickly... and lets face it, many of us could have done just that.
I really wanted to have my socks knocked off with the winning mixes and have a benchmark to aim for - and to see credit given to those who really did deserve it. I'm disappointed in PureMix more than anything else.
I've been following this forum as the competition progressed - but didn't want to comment until I read a post from a fellow new member Futuristic which basically says it all :
"Puremix lost total credibility with me on this decision. If that's a first place mix, then it's a sad day for skilled mixing engineers around the world".
Guys / Girls... be happy for the winners. Don't feel the winning mixes reflect the very best of this competition. There were some absolutely killer mixes which stuck to the contest technical brief (and rules) - but had very few plays. Did the judges get sloppy, and in a time saving exercise not really listen to everything ? Sure it would have been really easy to have done a cull of 1500 mixes really quickly... and lets face it, many of us could have done just that.
I really wanted to have my socks knocked off with the winning mixes and have a benchmark to aim for - and to see credit given to those who really did deserve it. I'm disappointed in PureMix more than anything else.
Futuristic
New member
I think I figured out what's happened here. Allow me to speculate.
Fab stated that he would rather die then listen to all those mixes. Ok, so we know right there that whatever 16 mixes he DOES hear, have been given to him by someone else that deems them "the best." So in actuality, Fab isn't picking the 16 best, some other mystery dude is... Fab is basically picking the order of those 16 best... Haha! That's a lot more funny now that I type it out. It's no wonder we have the results we do.
So now we got this "team" doing all the dirty work of going through 2800 and some odd mixes. They are overwhelmed. They didn't expect this. So much so that they can't even follow their own rules for the contest entry as mentioned in a previous post. They don't have the time for this many mixes. It wasn't planned for. I'm guessing they had to download all those files manually as well, or they wouldn't have needed you to enable downloads on it if they had some back door access from Soundcloud to download all files with the tag "gearfestpuremixcontest" with one click. That probably took several hours right there alone. The person downloading them starts getting lazy and doesn't read the descriptions. There's no time for that, there's too many mixes of this mediocre song. They know they can't critically listen to all these mixes properly AND read the description. That would take triple the time. Obvious bad mixes and mixes with bad decision or missing the download button can be weeded out easily, but they are still left with 500-1000 some odd mixes to rifle through, I'm guessing.
The person/people doing the critical listening aren't really the greatest ear and haven't been properly trained in critical listening and they start cutting corners. They listen to too many mixes too quickly as they have built up some sort of method where they pick a certain spot in the song and quickly decide in a short period of time whether it's worthy or not and toss it out. They were doing this for hours. They skip right past a lot of the great mixes because they had been listening for too long and too fast to very short sections and completely forgetting what they were actually looking or listening for after awhile. Focused on some minute aspect or detail of the mix that they thought they needed to hear or as if it was something that was important. This went on for hours. So fried and tired from listening to all these variations of the same song, they can't really discern what's good anymore... Total mind meltdown. And we basically end up with these kind of results.
Fab stated that he would rather die then listen to all those mixes. Ok, so we know right there that whatever 16 mixes he DOES hear, have been given to him by someone else that deems them "the best." So in actuality, Fab isn't picking the 16 best, some other mystery dude is... Fab is basically picking the order of those 16 best... Haha! That's a lot more funny now that I type it out. It's no wonder we have the results we do.
So now we got this "team" doing all the dirty work of going through 2800 and some odd mixes. They are overwhelmed. They didn't expect this. So much so that they can't even follow their own rules for the contest entry as mentioned in a previous post. They don't have the time for this many mixes. It wasn't planned for. I'm guessing they had to download all those files manually as well, or they wouldn't have needed you to enable downloads on it if they had some back door access from Soundcloud to download all files with the tag "gearfestpuremixcontest" with one click. That probably took several hours right there alone. The person downloading them starts getting lazy and doesn't read the descriptions. There's no time for that, there's too many mixes of this mediocre song. They know they can't critically listen to all these mixes properly AND read the description. That would take triple the time. Obvious bad mixes and mixes with bad decision or missing the download button can be weeded out easily, but they are still left with 500-1000 some odd mixes to rifle through, I'm guessing.
The person/people doing the critical listening aren't really the greatest ear and haven't been properly trained in critical listening and they start cutting corners. They listen to too many mixes too quickly as they have built up some sort of method where they pick a certain spot in the song and quickly decide in a short period of time whether it's worthy or not and toss it out. They were doing this for hours. They skip right past a lot of the great mixes because they had been listening for too long and too fast to very short sections and completely forgetting what they were actually looking or listening for after awhile. Focused on some minute aspect or detail of the mix that they thought they needed to hear or as if it was something that was important. This went on for hours. So fried and tired from listening to all these variations of the same song, they can't really discern what's good anymore... Total mind meltdown. And we basically end up with these kind of results.
I assume they teamed up with soundcloud. It's a win win situation: Soundclouds ends up with new users (free marketing) and puremix ends up with a convenient way to store and download all the songs. Anything else would have been totally insane.
Futuristic
New member
I kinda assumed they teamed up with them as well, but I didn't understand why they needed you to enable downloads on your mix. So I guess I kinda leaned towards the idea that they had downloaded them one at a time. But now that you mention it... that would just be stupid. That's probably the very reason they had you add "gearfestpuremixcontest" to your title.. So they could download all the versions of this song with that in the name with one search compliments of their alliance with Soundcloud. The downloads and the description were just for the other participants to read and learn from.
eyeswideshut242
New member
Hello everyone!
I too am feeling very trolled by puremix and the quality of the winners. I have a BFA in Sound Design and have been taught by some great mixers and recording engineers and I think all of the winners I've listened to sounded very amateur compared to some of the brilliant mixes I heard.
SO I have a request for all of you guys. My Oh Baby mix is in the signature. How do you guys think it measures up to the winners? Is it better, worse, or the same? Please let me know what you think, I'm trying to find out if I'm arrogant or puremix really dropped it.
I too am feeling very trolled by puremix and the quality of the winners. I have a BFA in Sound Design and have been taught by some great mixers and recording engineers and I think all of the winners I've listened to sounded very amateur compared to some of the brilliant mixes I heard.
SO I have a request for all of you guys. My Oh Baby mix is in the signature. How do you guys think it measures up to the winners? Is it better, worse, or the same? Please let me know what you think, I'm trying to find out if I'm arrogant or puremix really dropped it.
soupiraille
New member
audio fidelity
New member
This competition is a joke. Sure you always learn something by doing something...right!? But really a competitive mixing world is a sad one.
Go out and make some music people.
Go out and make some music people.
Simple. By enabling the download you agree that they download your song. So, if they would just pull all the songs with the tag in them they might end up with songs they aren't allowed to have. By simply querying for the tag and the download option everything would be legally fine. Well, but that is still just a guess into the wild. I have no insight into their process.
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eyeswideshut242
New member
wow wtf! me either!! that explains a lot. did they just forego some tracks? That's completely ludicrous. I want to send a letter to whoever was in charge and express my disappointment...
aarvin1000
New member
I guess this thread pretty much sums it up ?
gearslutz/board/moan-zone/842603-puremix-gearfest-competition-starting-feel-like-good-joke
But the winning mix is pleasant to the ears, and honestly a good mix.
But is it a SPECTACULAR mix which one should have as a benchmark ? I don't think so.
I also ask myself when I was mixing, if someone would pay me to do this, would my mix be worth $4000 ? Sadly no, had only 3 days to make the mix and there are still things i'd like to improve
But is the top mix worth $4000 ? you tell me
gearslutz/board/moan-zone/842603-puremix-gearfest-competition-starting-feel-like-good-joke
But the winning mix is pleasant to the ears, and honestly a good mix.
But is it a SPECTACULAR mix which one should have as a benchmark ? I don't think so.
I also ask myself when I was mixing, if someone would pay me to do this, would my mix be worth $4000 ? Sadly no, had only 3 days to make the mix and there are still things i'd like to improve
But is the top mix worth $4000 ? you tell me
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