I see a lot of upset contestants, and I had to offer my two cents. I feel that I am an unbiased party because although I submitted an entry, I never expected to be even considered for top 16.
First, I would not expect any one person to listen to the same mix thousands of times, especially considering some of the absolutely lame entries I heard. I would have expected a team to narrow it down for
the expert. However, they made it sound like the guy would listen to every entry, which obviously didn't happen.
Second, I see quite a lot of people saying "my mix is better than that" and I listened to some of those and heard fundamental flaws in your mixes. Sit back down, and show some humility.
Third, quite a few people seem to have high level degrees and incredible hardware/software collections, and I thought that this was a home studio environment?
Fourth, the top 2 mixes are very very good. No, I won't say that they should be benchmark, but this was, as I've said, a home-studio environment. If I could have my home studio sound like that, I would be soooo happy.
Finally, there is merit to some of the complaints. Some of the winning submissions did not follow the rules (mainly description). The staff was obviously looking for artistic producer decisions, but some of the winning submissions went obviously overboard and sound harsh. Many winning mixes made amateur mistakes. One of the things I've noticed is this:
The kick track sounded pretty gnarly (as in, wtf, you put this here to mess with us and give us a challenge). All of the winners did a very good job cleaning up the sound of that kick. However, most of them turned around and made the kick absolutely overpowering in the mix, as if to say "Look, LOOK! I fixed it! I fixed the bloody kick!" This does not make for a good mix and is a very very amateur mistake, something I was very cautious of.
So, overall, yes: There were some bad decisions and unprofessionalism. No: Your mix isn't better, go sit in the corner and think about what you've done (there will obviously be some exceptions to this rule, but most of them will have the humility to not go around waving their mix about. They'll realize that they weren't selected for a reason, at least this is my hope).