WWAYM Loudness competition

[4tune]

Entry sent.

[9b0]

The competition is closed now.

Good luck for everyone!

[AnaMark]

Some remarks on this (Sorry for the late answer. When I wanted to post last week, the website was "down" due to maintenance reasons or something like that...)


First something about the competition rules, then some words about "good compression".


About the competition

There were some critics on the competition rules. I don't want to discuss, whether the critics are justifiable or not. But I think, your reaction was not professional.

See it from the customer's point of view: What you did here is giving an example of your company poplitics. And if I imagine, that you react the same way (aka "If you don't like the competition, you are not forced to participate, but don't annoy us with your critics"), when a customer tells you about a bug in your plug or something like that (aka "If you don't like our plug, you are not forced to use it, but don't annoy us with you wishlists/bugreports/etc.")...

You could have avoided easily all critics by changing the rules, so that you

- first announce the winner
- _afterwards_, he/she tells you the effect chain
- _then_ you try to achieve a comparable result.

In this way, the competition (and you a s a company) would have considered much more trustworthy. Even if this change would have been done as a correction of your first posted rules.

Ask yourself, why you didn't do that correction. And then ask someone else who does not know you; a potential customer e.g.. I'm almost sure, that the answers will differ. But the sales of your plug do not depend on _your_ opinion, but on that of all the potential customers out there.


About "good compression"

Now something about your know-how of "good" compression. As a company which creates and sells compressor plugs, I expect that you know something about this topic. I even expect, that you know more than your customers. I'm sorry, but after reading this thread, I believe the opposite (please note: This is just my personal and subjective impression after reading what you've written. I may be wrong here.). I explain, why:

In your first post, you wrote:

You get a mixdown. You have to show your mastering skills by optimizing it to 0 dB. The result must be as loud as possible but with taste. Quality is your goal.

And a little bit later:

Anyway... even now CD is the leading medium in the music business, it's not over with it yet.

You are contradictory here. "optimizing to 0dB" and "quality" do not fit together, even less when you state that you consider the CD as the reference medium. This is not because of taste, but because of mathematics and standards.

In the world of HiFi and CD, the standard says, that all components have to be able to deal with levels up to 0dB. What happens beyond this limit, is undefined. And normally, when you exceed this limit, the sound will get distorted more or less - depending on the HiFi equipment you're using. When the digital song data goes through the D/A converter of a CD player, a level of 0dB will in almost all cases result in a level of >0dB (up to +3dB to give you an upper limit). Some HiFi components will be able to reproduce it nevertheless, and some will fail and give you a distorted sound, because your sound exceeds the HiFi standard. And it is something else, but in no case is it qualitative work to optimize a song to 0dB.

There are several papers about the math behind this topic and how to avoid those problems, e.g.:

From a german magazine: Jenseits von 0dBFS

English paper: 0dBFS+ Levels in Digital Mastering

- Mark Henning

[9b0]

Thanks for your comments/suggestions AnaMark, i try to answer them all.

But I think, your reaction was not professional.

I'm sorry, that you see it this way.

See it from the customer's point of view: What you did here is giving an example of your company poplitics. And if I imagine, that you react the same way (aka "If you don't like the competition, you are not forced to participate, but don't annoy us with your critics"), when a customer tells you about a bug in your plug or something like that (aka "If you don't like our plug, you are not forced to use it, but don't annoy us with you wishlists/bugreports/etc.")...

There's a difference between critics and attacks. Nuffink wanted to destroy this topic and he also agreed with it:

I'll tell you what. You stop calling it a competition and I'll stop posting.

We listen to critics. We listened to them also as we released our free EQ, NWEQ. People asked us to make it more CPU efficient: we made it, people asked us to implement the A/B button: we made it. We think, that user feedback/critics are one of the most important things by the development of a software.

We dont want to avoid critics as you said. The case was much more agressive.

You could have avoided easily all critics by changing the rules, so that you

- first announce the winner
- _afterwards_, he/she tells you the effect chain
- _then_ you try to achieve a comparable result.

In this way, the competition (and you a s a company) would have considered much more trustworthy. Even if this change would have been done as a correction of your first posted rules.

I don't think this would solve all the problems. We still could receive attacks, because the winner could be one of our friends. If someone wants to attack us, he would do it even after we would change the rules. If we would do it the way you say it, then no one would care about the whole thing after the winner gets announced and just the reason why we started this competition would die (to show people, that Dynamix is usable... if you checked it out, you must know, that it's a new concept, not comparable with other products directly).

Ask yourself, why you didn't do that correction. And then ask someone else who does not know you; a potential customer e.g.. I'm almost sure, that the answers will differ. But the sales of your plug do not depend on _your_ opinion, but on that of all the potential customers out there.

We will do it elseway. We will make it possible to download all entrys (but from a slower server only, because we dont have that much space).

About CD quality and 0 dB. You are right in what you say and i totally agree with you. But we did not ask people to master the track for CD's, we asked them to master it to 0dB. Why i mentioned the CD quality is this:

This 0dB-fashion must come to an end, -12dB at 24bit resolution I consider as worth to listen to.
0dB saturates the nerves quite fast and leads to pulling down the listening volume or switch finally off. Soft compression for a better mix is ok, but 0dB limiting is a senseless competition nowadays.
(my personal opinion + of some of the few audiophiles out there).

I don't want to say that the CD quality standard is 16bit, 44.1Khz and optimized to 0 dB, i just tried to figure out that CD quality's bit depth is 16 bit and it's still the most common medium for music publishing (even if lots of CD's are mastered to 0dB).

Thanks again for your comments and the constuctive critics. We try to handle this things better in the future.

Best regards:
9b0 / WWAYM

[AnaMark]

See it from the customer's point of view: What you did here is giving an example of your company poplitics. And if I imagine, that you react the same way (aka "If you don't like the competition, you are not forced to participate, but don't annoy us with your critics"), when a customer tells you about a bug in your plug or something like that (aka "If you don't like our plug, you are not forced to use it, but don't annoy us with you wishlists/bugreports/etc.")...

There's a difference between critics and attacks.

I agree with you. But IIRC Nuffink was not alone. What about the other posters? Your posting also addresses them (if intended or not), because they told the same point of critics, just in other words. And if your words are true to Nuffink, they are also true to all others who also thought critically about the competition rules.

And about Nuffink: As far as I can see, his aggressive reactions came after the point of critics was mentioned several times, without an (in Nuffink's eyes) adequate reaction from you. So I don't see Nuffink as someone who's primary aim was to attack you (even if it sounds like this later in this thread).

We listen to critics. We listened to them also as we released our free EQ, NWEQ. [...]

I didn't say, that you don't. What I said about the customers point of view should be taken as a setting (which - in my eyes - is rather likely). It's just a "think about it, and perhaps, consider it next time". It is not meant personally, so you don't need to justify yourself here.

You could have avoided easily all critics by changing the rules[...]

I don't think this would solve all the problems.

Of course. It will not solve the problem of hungry people in africa.

But it would solve the problem addressed here in this thread.

We still could receive attacks, because the winner could be one of our friends.

That's right, although this would most likely be discovered within a few days.

There's always a possibility, that a car may explode due to a technical defect. But that's no justification to use dynamite as fuel.

If we would do it the way you say it, then no one would care about the whole thing after the winner gets announced and just the reason why we started this competition would die (to show people, that Dynamix is usable... [...]

And exactly this sticking to your marketing intention makes people suspicious of you. Again from an imho likely customer's point of view: If you make the rules obeying to your marketing interests - why not the selection of the winner too?

What you said above about "If someone wants to find a point for critics, he always _will_ find one." is also valid here: I could tell you whatever modification of the rules could solve the problem, you will (if you want) always find a reason to tell me, why my idea is not good.

About CD quality and 0 dB. You are right in what you say and i totally agree with you. But we did not ask people to master the track for CD's, we asked them to master it to 0dB.

What I said about CD players and other HiFi components is valid in the same way for each computer audio equipment, such as soundcards.

Or do you want to tell me, that you don't asked them to master it for playback on computer sound equipment? Now, this is interesting: How will you check/listen to the competition contributions then?

By telling the people to optimize it to 0dB and without telling the people about your computer sound equipment, the judgement of the sent masters is random and not within the influence sphere of the participant.

A better way would have been: "Optimize the song to -3dB and make it as loud as possible". Then you would avoid overdrive artefacts.

The point is: Someone who knows about the 0dB-problem will avoid mastering the song to 0dB, because he wants to do qualitative work (as you asked for). Someone who knows not about the problem, will master the piece up to 0dB (as you asked for), and there may be numerous sound systems, where the song sounds like crap. But the latter one will most likely win, because his song is much louder (assumed that your sound hardware supports good sound beyond the 0dB limit).

Thanks again for your comments and the constuctive critics. We try to handle this things better in the future.

Thank you too for your kind answer. Just wanted to give some hints, and I'm glad, that this intention arrived at you.

- Mark Henning

[9b0]

Thanks again!

[tERMoBLUe]

the engages and what this one is like now stood?...

[9b0]

The competition result are here:

http://www.wwaym.com/loudness_competition_result.html

Thanks for everyone who entered it and congratulations to the winners![/url]

[bmanic]

Whee! I totally missed this, just noticed it today. Well, what can I say? Aleksey should be considered the winner, it's the elephant that did most of the work. I've had some time checking out dynamix and the supplied presets that recreate my master. Wow, I have to say that I'm quite impressed! It sure is a versatile tool which takes a lot of getting used to before one can squeeze everything out of it. Thanks for the presets 9b0!

Cheers!
bManic

[4tune]

Congrats bmanic, Altern8 and tERMoBLUe!

[bmanic]

Thanks!

[dharmawan]

out of the top 3 entries on there the bmanic one wins hands down. very loud & still no distortion and tight bass

[Sascha Franck]

Cheers dude.
How is the synth?

[bmanic]

The synth is VERY good. Together with FabFilter One it's the best sounding 'wannabe analogue like' VSTi. It's rather heavy on CPU though.

- bManic