One Synth Challenge #72: Eclipsis by VSTZONE (Richard Semper Wins!)

[esteband]

I voted. Here's my response to the OSC exit poll:

I didn't think it was that hard. But then again, I didn't stress too much about having a 'system' in place, either. I listened to each track several times over the course of a few days (all the way through, of course - no skipping around). Then, I simply ranked all of the tracks holistically, according to how they impressed me.

What ended up impressing me was a number of things: how well the track held my interest with regard to composition, its sound design, mix, novelty, etc. As far as weight goes, I'd say compositional interest was the most important, but after that, all other factors were probably equal. Once I had them grouped by 5's, 4's, 3's and so on, I reevaluated each track and asked myself "does it belong in this group with all of these other tracks?"

My votes were mostly distributed among the 4 and 3 categories. 5's were reserved for especially remarkable tracks, of which there were indeed a few. Unfortunately, there were a couple of 1s and 2s as well. Please don't hate the new guy.

-Steve

[sfiks]

voted

[doctorbob]

@esteband ... Steve, don't beat yourself up about how you voted. Everyone has their own way to do it and yours seems just fine.

I listen to the tracks as they come in (when I can) and usually drop in a comment or two - usually noting the bits of the tracks I like and am immediately impressed by. I start to form opinions of what's going on in the challenge.

I then group mostly 3 and 4, then listen over and over to see which of the 4's are 5's ... (for me usually 5 or so). I then re-evaluate if some 3's should be 4's and 4's down to 3 (there will be some). If I have some 2's, then I also see if they were more likely to be 3 or whether some 3's should join them.

So, my voting usually highlights the few tracks which to me were outstanding in the context of the challenge, and then the rest are spread, to at least give some finesse to the overall marks.

Good luck, a nice track of yours I must say.

dB

[mehum]

But then again, I didn't stress too much about having a 'system' in place, either. I listened to each track several times over the course of a few days (all the way through, of course - no skipping around). Then, I simply ranked all of the tracks holistically, according to how they impressed me.

To me, the system helped to make my decisions easier rather than harder. I evaluated my choices a bit afterwards but I think it was pretty close to what I'd have chosen if I'd approached it more holistically instead. It also made me listen to the tracks in a different way, a bit more detached from my own musical preferences.

More 5`s than 4`s and more 4`s than 3`s. If you don`t like it, just fire me, but that was my honesty opinion

Haha, I think it's ok

But I do have some thoughts regarding only giving the higher ratings...
Bear with me a while, this is going to be a rant... And in no way is it criticism of how any one places their votes. Being a boardgamer and programmer I tend to think a bit about how games work (ludology) and the more theoretical parts of a game system...

First of all, I don't think anyone here is voting strategically, this being a friendly competition more focused on the process and developing new skills (at least to me ). In a more cynical view the votes being public also helps to weed out any strategic voters.
However, if this was a "pure" competitive game it would be a viable strategy (as long as not everybody does it of course...). Looking at the scores for some previous contests, the playing field is quite leveled so a runner up could potentially gain at least one position by giving what one guess as favorites as 1:s instead of 4:s or 5:s.

Consider then the extreme case, where someone loves all songs and put them as 5:s. This voter has zero impact on the final result. It's the same as giving only 1:s. By limiting yourself to only a subset of the voting options your impact on the final result is lower and essentially would give more power to a strategic voter (since a pure strategist would use the 1:s for perceived favorites).

Of course, this is very "gamy" and theoretical...

Now, off to daycare to pick up my oldest...

[fese]

voted. Thank god there's not always over seventy entries as last time... I like OSC but frankly I could do w/o the voting.

[z.prime]

voted. Thank god there's not always over seventy entries as last time... I like OSC but frankly I could do w/o the voting.

That _is_ sorta part of the point... to determine a winner each month.

[SoundGoddess]

I'm gonna pass on the March OSC, because the free version of Synthmaster doesn't have the kind of presets that I want to work with, and I really don't want to shell out any cash for the big boy version. But if you're interested to hear more, check back in April - I should have an entry for OSC74.

I encourage you to take a look at the community preset pack I helped put together to see if they are more to your liking...OSC participants contributed 192 brand new presets and I had KV331 encode them so that they now work with the free player.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 5#p6070710

Also if you've participated in 3 challenges you will get the full player with 600 sounds instead of 200. Add that to the 192 and you've got almost 800 sounds to work with.

[bjporter]

voted. Thank god there's not always over seventy entries as last time... I like OSC but frankly I could do w/o the voting.

It is time consuming, if one listens to 70 tracks, that's about 1.62% of 15 days or 360 hours. Kinda crazy! Or 25% of a whole day.

It's a bit more manageable if you are willing to do 4-5 tracks per day, for 15 days.

[esteband]

I encourage you to take a look at the community preset pack I helped put together to see if they are more to your liking...OSC participants contributed 192 brand new presets and I had KV331 encode them so that they now work with the free player.

Thanks for the recommendation, SoundGoddess. I will check out the extra presets. It's a little late to get started, but who knows... I might just find some inspiration.

[bjporter]

I encourage you to take a look at the community preset pack I helped put together to see if they are more to your liking...OSC participants contributed 192 brand new presets and I had KV331 encode them so that they now work with the free player.

Thanks for the recommendation, SoundGoddess. I will check out the extra presets. It's a little late to get started, but who knows... I might just find some inspiration.

Don't worry you're still very early to get started!

[animehaus]

Voted.

[z.prime]

Voted.

Took a while for me to vote this month... ended up listening to each track each at least 3 times, some very enjoyable ones for me in there. Eclipsis was a tricky beast thanks to the relatively high CPU usage and lack of traditional envelopes but some very good sounds were in there.

Anyway, good luck to everyone! As always, if anyone wants constructive criticism from me, feel free to PM.

[wagtunes]

Is anybody else getting an expired security certificate message when trying to go to onesynthchallenge.org. I've already voted a while ago but this could present a problem for the upcoming month. An unsecured server could be a potentially dangerous. Somebody should really look into this.

[z.prime]

You can just go to http://onesynthchallenge.org

[RichardSemper]

Voted!
Lots of great entries again this month - and an interesting variety of ideas and styles