OK... Thanks... I don't see the other tracks, just the soundcloud logo...
 
I finally got to listen last night by going to the cakewalk soundcloud site instead of the blog...
 
As to selecting which I like best? My limited listening prevents me from making an honest decision... If I can listen again, I will but I need to do it at 3am due to limited web access... So not sure when I'll get a chance again...
 
Track 3 is by far the overall loudest and very present while track 4 breathes much better... Drums do get mangled a bit...
 
I am still a believer in the album format as I remember the 50's-60's period of singles glorification and the joy to experiencing AOR! It's still there for me....
 
I love individual songs for sure, but the album as an entity has far more to bring to the table... So much of this decision would be based on hearing this song in context with others on the album and see how the overall listening experience is to me...
 
The assorted versions simply remind me of things I would adjust in the mix and not try to correct after the fact...
 
Sorry for not voting.... yet?
 

Good point from Bitflipper, does Soundcloud add compression?  I vaguely remember reading something that said that the upload process does re-compress MP3s for optimal SC usage.  Perhaps I only dreamt this but it was years ago when I think I first saw this.
 
But, I also think that the reason that there is so much subjectivity here is that I think that the objective of "mastering" is not the same to all users hence we go with what we think sounds better (myself included).  On a very high level, I am not a fan of loudness and overly compressed sound (mastered or not), but that is just me.
 
So, what is your (the) objective/definition of mastering?  
 
Jim

When I went listen, was shuffled off to the unresponsive sound cloud after the first pause of each.
 
I liked 5. 2 was old school mastering. 3 has some pitch sifting going on and 6 was digital sounding and I think both were done in cake. Not sure about 4. 

A couple of thoughts......
 
1) A bit of onion in the mix -> soundcloud's own processing (maybe?).   
     a. We're listening to these files, mastered 41.1K 16bit WAVs presumably (maybe higher resolution?) and then comparing them to what soundcloud dishes out (128kbps streaming - yuk).... still, you can hear the variances between each track, so that's good.    Right?  Right?
     b. Were they pushed to SC as MP3?  If so, did SC reprocess the MP3 (again)?  Meh.  Don't know that it really matters, but it would be nice to know what was "touched" by the hosting site.  How many cooking contests chefs allow the organizing authority to tweak the recipe prior to presenting the meal to the judges?   Hmmmmmm..  Odd.
     c. There may be some additional sound file processing that soundcloud is doing (compression)- can anyone confirm?  I can tell ya (you may already know), that youtube destroys audio.  Yuk.
 
2) Also, how you are listening to it (computer / software) may make a difference.  I say this because my good ol' Govt machine has done some really weird stuff when I stream from SC.  So strange.  Was listening to one of my tunes that had a fade at the end..... my Govt machine, streaming my tune via SC, did not do the fade.  I could even see the fade in the SC wav profile, but the fade did not occur.  Not something I care to call the mega-Govt-IT department about, mind you.  I never trust anything I hear on this machine, as a result.  Same goes for my own MP3s that I email to myself.  No clue what it is about the Windows audio on this machine that is changing the sound, and I am afraid to ask.  (Windows 7 machine BTW).
 
3) So, I have an idea.  Gonna run an experiment tonight.  Will upload a file (probably a 320 MP3) to SC tonight.  I will record the streaming audio (not download my file from SC) and compare it (visually) to the original submission.  I'm curious to see if there are any glaring differences.  Anyone done this already?

If anything this is a good "real world" example.
 
Most sites that we upload music to stream in a compressed format. The idea was expressed that people who use sites such as these would be good candidates for LANDR. The common guy who never intends to splurge on mastering for his home made material or who doesn't intend to blanket the world with his or her recordings.. There are counter views to that one which I tend to side more favorably with. I hate to admit it but I'm probably that guy. If I can't do it myself it's probably not going to be done. I guess if you were going to market yourself to Sony you probably wouldn't be looking at LANDR. 
 
I believe the music should sound good mastered and streamed in a compressed format. A truly intelligent algorithm would make adjustments for compression right? I still don't like the idea of robotic mastering...just sayin'
 
What I really want is for Cakewalk or the pro mix to come out the winner here over all the others. I think this would nullify any supposed gains made by a robot. Yes I'm biased, maybe one day they'll need to send me to robot correction school to have me "LANDRED"

=================================
In the test, you'll find an original pre-master, and 6 masters:
1 mastered by a prominent mastering house/engineer in NYC;
2 mastered by different intensity settings in LANDR;
and 3 mastered by Cakewalk staff using various plug-in suites.
=================================
 
This is fun....  Ha.... too weird!! 
 
OK, here goes nothing! (seriously....you all are going to kill me for this!)
From a strictly UNSCIENTIFIC standpoint, I just noticed this after comparing screen grabs of the SC graphic Waveforms (yes, I went there):
 
1. Mastering blind test #2 and #4 have nearly the exact same graphical waveform. And, and, aaaaand, they are nearly identify to the pre-mastered version except for a slight boost in "amplification", if that's what is being represented by SC's waveform drawing (think so).  Ha!  Guessing these are the LANDR Tracks.
2. Mastering blind test #1, #3, #5, and #6 are VERY similar to each other, but have an overall significant amplitude increase from the pre-mastered baseline track.  They also have peaks which appear in places that the baseline track does not.
 
My Wild A$$ Guess:
#2 and #4 LANDR
#3, #5, #6 is the Cakewalk Staff
#1 is the NY Mixing Engineer (slight variances from #3, #5, #6) - very hard to tell.
 
Cheers!
 

Results are in! Here's the answer key:

 
It was a very tight race, but the clear winner was Track 3 (so there is definitely still plenty of room in this world for professional mastering houses ).
 
In 2nd place was Track 5, which was followed extremely narrowly by the LANDR masters, where Track 4 beat Track 2 by almost nothing. Track 6 was next, and Track 1 was last.
 
Note: These masters were intentionally not level-matched, as we believe that for a song of this style, the resultant level was part of the criteria for the quality of the masters. We will be doing another one of these tests in the future, wherein the levels will all be matched.
 
What do you think? Do these results surprise you? 
 
 

Joey Adams [Cakewalk]
Results are in! Here's the answer key:

 
What do you think? Do these results surprise you? 
 
 

Nope I voted for 3 and put a comment that #5 was a VERY close second for me.

What did I win?
 
Oh yeah, I can claim that I have golden ears.
 

berlymahn
 
My Wild A$$ Guess:
#2 and #4 LANDR
#3, #5, #6 is the Cakewalk Staff
#1 is the NY Mixing Engineer (slight variances from #3, #5, #6) - very hard to tell.
 
Cheers!
 

WRONG!!!!