One-Synth-Challenge: General discussion thread

[V'ger]

Strange but I seem to find something strange with Soundcloud every time I'm there recently. The latest is that I sometimes get a blank page after logging in, browser warnings about certificates and other things, so seems like there's some tech issues going on there. And if you see their new privacy policy, they are using 100 things to track and monitor you so maybe one of those has failed or been disable on your machine and that's the result? Try flushing everything from cookies, temp files and flash files to see if it helps.

[photonic]

I tried it on three different PC and laptops. All the same. So I think it is on the SC side. Not a big issue. I hope the next track will not have the problem again.

[photonic]

I tried it on three different PC and laptops. All the same. So I think it is on the SC side. Not a big issue. I hope the next track will not have the problem again.

Funny: I have not changed anything. But today the stats are visible on my last track. So the problem was for sure on the SC side.

[V'ger]

Rules Vote:

Let's do a vote of the points that have emerged lately to get a more accurate picture.

Vote here

Last day of voting will be 15th May KVR time

If you made a mistake or for some other reason want to change your vote, do it again, but add the word revote or similar to your name so it's clear which to keep.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Rules Vote:

Let's do a vote of the points that have emerged lately to get a more accurate picture.

Vote here

Last day of voting will be 15th May KVR time

If you made a mistake or for some other reason want to change your vote, do it again, but add the word revote or similar to your name so it's clear which to keep.

done...thanks

[V'ger]

Sorry guys, I forgot the name text box, can you please vote again..

[bjporter]

No commercial plugs +1

Sound cloud makes the contest soooo much more of a community

[IrionDaRonin]

Some doubts and comments about this.

Anonymous submissions?
How could we present our submissions without a name or title?
How could we have our precious comments and hearts in Soundcloud then?
I doubt people will listen to the track once again later at Soundcloud and set comments, hearts, downloads, plays, so this would mess up the Soundcloud affair.

Secret voting?
Still there will be people with late voting if this was the main problem.
How could be a secret voting? Voters sending a message with scores to V'ger? Or a Google voting like this one?
In my opinion, people with late voting they just do this because they don't have time. For example, me. Also my procrastination helps a bit too
But i don't like the fact people voting the last 15th day neither, specially for us who are counting votes and can be a bit confussing in the final scores.

Synths announced 1 month in advance?
1 month is too much. As much 5 - 7 days in advance.
In any case, we could make a list with people with time problems and send a message to them secretly, but again, this wouldn't be totally fair for others.
And the word "challenge" wouldn't be the same challenge for everyone.
I always thought, timeless or not, people who really wants to participate extract free time from nowhere to come each month. I did it many times.

Continue asking for the DR (dynamic range) number?
I never used it.
Firstly because i always render my tracks to MP3 directly and the DR needed to be done in 44,1 Khz/16bits in Wav if i remember well.
This is not a professional mastering contest with money involved or something so i prefer low sized files than the "maximum" quality ones in wave format.
Also, this doesn't work for votes or anything, there were tracks with red DR numbers and got votes, and tracks with green levels without votes.
I think people vote more for musical/feeling stuff (which is my case) and what can be done with the synth itself, than mastering stuff, which after all, it has nothing to do with the OSC spirit.

I still prefer the way OSC always was. So not many changes from my side.

Have a nice day

[bjporter]

I agree irion

I tried to vote like we had it

Although hidden voting is good since people can inflate their position in the vote easily

[IrionDaRonin]

I only said yes to the magware stuff. Would be nice to have a CM OSC someday and let Computer Music guys to know about this.

Have a nice day

[z.prime]

I only said yes to the magware stuff. Would be nice to have a CM OSC someday and let Computer Music guys to know about this.

Have a nice day

Ditto. Well, that and all freeware FX.

[V'ger]

Anonymous submissions?
How could we present our submissions without a name or title?

For example e-mailed to me, then I upload them with a number instead of name.

Secret voting?
Still there will be people with late voting if this was the main problem.
How could be a secret voting? Voters sending a message with scores to V'ger? Or a Google voting like this one?

Yes Google makes this very easy. The argument has been presented it's easier to prevent cheat voting, but I actually think it's the opposite; much more difficult when all can see the voter name and what was voted. Of course all will be revealed after voting end so there are small differences.. I voted yes to secret voting to prevent social influenced voting and also because it means less admin work.

Synths announced 1 month in advance?
1 month is too much. As much 5 - 7 days in advance.

Well I just upped the suggestions as they were presented, maybe a week or 2 would be a better option, but in my opinion the fairest is for everyone to have exactly the same time. That would be a bit lost if people are still working flat out for their regular monthly deadline and no chance to start the next synth, whereas others have dropped out of one competition and so effectively get more time on their entry than others..

Continue asking for the DR (dynamic range) number?
I never used it.
Firstly because i always render my tracks to MP3 directly and the DR needed to be done in 44,1 Khz/16bits in Wav if i remember well.
This is not a professional mastering contest with money involved or something so i prefer low sized files than the "maximum" quality ones in wave format.
Also, this doesn't work for votes or anything, there were tracks with red DR numbers and got votes, and tracks with green levels without votes.
I think people vote more for musical/feeling stuff (which is my case) and what can be done with the synth itself, than mastering stuff, which after all, it has nothing to do with the OSC spirit.

Well you can always render a second file to wav just to run through the DR meter.
Whether high DR affects voting is not really measurable, but for me there's little doubt that overall sound quality matters a lot to how people vote so I guess it counts a little bit, but the main point behind the DR push is just to make the overall listening experience more pleasurable by avoiding overly squashed mixes etc, but then they were rare even before DR entered the scene so...

[Mike777]

Secret listening/voting would be good, but I agree with IrionDaRonin's concern about losing comments in Soundcloud. If it suppresses comments, it's not worth it. Anything that promotes comments is good.

I do agree that when I see certain artist names, I think "ok this is going to be good". So what I do when listening to all entries is download the mp3 zip and listen one by one by dragging each mp3 to mp3 player by looking away and I don't see who is playing. I can then judge without prejudice.

[SuperNoise]

Synths announced 1 month in advance?
1 month is too much. As much 5 - 7 days in advance.
In any case, we could make a list with people with time problems and send a message to them secretly, but again, this wouldn't be totally fair for others.
And the word "challenge" wouldn't be the same challenge for everyone.
I always thought, timeless or not, people who really wants to participate extract free time from nowhere to come each month. I did it many times.

Hello Guys, Irion,
Actually I'm working with acoustic issues in my studio so no new tracks in OSC from my side but I still have a plan to do some OSC music.

I can't agree that the 2 months rule is not totally fair.
If you spend 2 months with one track, you lost the chance to win one challenge! This is enought fair, I think.
I have spent 5 full months composing tunes for OSC. Only once I managed to finish the track in time. Music is my hobby, not a job so I will definietly need more time to compose.

Only one disadvantage is related with the advance announcment. When people have two synths to choice, when they may drop one of them and focus on the more attractive one. So the differences in the frequency may be biger than now and may depend on popularity of the chosen synths.

Best regards,
SNoise

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

i think i voted for secret voting but not sure now...reason being that it will stop the reviewing aspect which is something i am learning (via music cafe comp) is really useful to aid in listening and evaluating, which in turn then benefits my own self-evaluation and critique