berlymahn
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 15:59:10
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☄ Helpfulby bapu 2016/03/28 16:14:26
Whelp..... I got the LANDRs!!  #5 was my pick in the survey, BTW. A good tune!
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bapu
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jbow
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 16:04:13
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I didn't read any of the responses before I listened. I went from track to track at the same point in the song on two different sets of phones, K-240s and M-40s. The M-40s are a LOT louder. (My monitors are put away right now).
So. I did think the pre-master sounded good but for the mastered tracks I was torn between 3 and 6. After a lot of back and forth I chose 3 with 6 a close second, 5 after that. I didn't like 2 or 4 simply because they were too quiet using an Octa-Capture and the K-240s. I had the Main Output on the OC set to 3:00 using the K-240 but had to back off to 12:00/1:00 using the M-40s.
Comparing quiet passages and loud passages I just thought everything sounded better, by a hair, on 3.
My hearing is rolling off on the high end too... and my feet are cold.
J
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jbow
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 16:22:30
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Dang... I was late to the party but since I didn't read the thread I guess it is sort of like time travel. Hmmm. Interesting! I'll be looking forward to a test with level matching. Perhaps I will have my monitors back out by then.
J
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brconflict
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 16:32:48
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Woohoo! I picked #3! With that said........I still would like to try mastering the raw track myself. Can I? Can I? Please??
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Dave76
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 17:38:07
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Any chance we can get more details on what the Cakewalk staffers used?
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bapu
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 17:43:13
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I'd rather know the who, Social Security # and bank account #.
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brconflict
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 17:54:24
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☄ Helpfulby bapu 2016/03/28 18:18:26
bapu
I'd rather know the who, Social Security # and bank account #.
You'll have to wait for Analytics to be deployed in the next Sonar version. 
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brconflict
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 17:55:21
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☄ Helpfulby bapu 2016/03/28 18:18:29
Obviously, I'm joking there. ;)
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Soundwise
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 17:56:55
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Joey Adams [Cakewalk]
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?
I was sure, 2 & 4 are Landr masters. Now I wonder, what particular plugin suites were used for A, B and C?
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olemon
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 19:42:57
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☄ Helpfulby jbow 2016/03/29 14:33:52
Good to know. Please leave these masters available for a while, won't you? I'd like to listen a few more times.
I certainly had no inkling as to which were or which were not LANDR'd or Pro Mastered. I only knew that 2 and 4 were very similar and the others were in a second group of similar sounding tracks. I remained neutral on the loudness war.
What I keyed on were the first lyrics, those first consonants and the smoothness of the vocal. Masters 2 and 4 seemed to preserve the original vocal while the others added a grit or edginess that didn't sound natural to me. I figured it was the result of compression and/or limiting, but to my ears, for this song, it was too much.
Thanks for doing this, Cakewalk Staff! A valuable exercise.
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bapu
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 19:48:18
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All I care about is that I voted for what I thought was the professional mastering job and I was right.
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panup
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 19:54:30
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> we believe that for a song of this style, the resultant level was part of the criteria for the quality of the masters.
True.
That's why I rejected all loudest masters and made my choice between the two most silent ones.
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konradh
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 21:34:32
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As I said above, I had voted online for #3, and the drum sound was one of the main factors.
I am surprised there were not more comments about the drums, and the snare in particular (although it is possible I overlooked some).
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WallyG
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 22:02:37
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☄ Helpfulby jbow 2016/03/29 14:34:48
bapu
All I care about is that I voted for what I thought was the professional mastering job and I was right.
I also picked #3 early in the game, and even though I recently had a hearing test that indicated I had high frequency loss, either my mastering ears are still working, or the Pro Mastering Engineer suffers the same loss. 
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stevec
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 22:11:31
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konradh
As I said above, I had voted online for #3, and the drum sound was one of the main factors.
I am surprised there were not more comments about the drums, and the snare in particular (although it is possible I overlooked some).
Yup, that was a big one for me too - the snare had more "snap" in # 3, something I felt was important for the song/genre.
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TerraSin
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 22:25:57
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I don't know. I hated pretty much all these masters. The problem to me being that I felt that many of them had good attributes but also contained things I would have changed. Some of them had some nice punch yet removed all dynamic appeal. Others sounded good but were so quiet compared to everything else and lacked the benefit of having that nice punchy feel. One thing that really got under my skin is that 4 of these tracks had their soundstage setup in a way that made the main vocals sound like she was singing into a tube.
All in all, I am torn. I like 2 and 4 the best because they hold on to the general feel of the style and have more dynamics where everything else just kind of feels like a hot mess trying to compete in the loudness war with EDM style punchy-kicks. A little goes a long way. There isn't an on/off switch that gives you only two options. Tone it down a bit.
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bitflipper
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 22:33:32
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Because #0 was not an option, I chose #4 because it was the closest to the original. Conclusion: LANDR on its gentlest setting is almost as good as no mastering at all. I'm actually impressed.
 All else is in doubt, so this is the truth I cling to. My Stuff
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rtucker55
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/28 22:39:35
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It would be interesting to hear more about what the Cakewalk guys used in their mastering chains. I thought they did a Great job and were using the Sonar plug-in suites.
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jb101
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/29 04:24:38
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☄ Helpfulby bapu 2016/03/29 15:18:52
bapu
All I care about is that I voted for what I thought was the professional mastering job and I was right.
Well done!
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ramscapri
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/29 05:16:59
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I chose "5" (for me it was pretty close to "3" but "5" sounded a tad bit better to my ears that "3") and good to know that it was a Cakewalk member with a suite of plugs that did that one. Makes me feel good that it could be achieved within Sonar. But so I assume (should be unlikely that a Cakewalk member would have used something other than Sonar and plugs that are not part of Sonar  ). Would like to know for sure what the plugin suites A, B and C are, the order of the plugs within the suites, settings maybe to actually know whether they were done with what we have (at least covered in Platinum). Bring the details on Cake folks ! Good show 
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Starise
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/29 14:29:47
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The eagle has LANDRED... and in third place.
I'm a bit insecure. I was actually concerned there was a chance the robot had better ears. I should have known better. If #3 had been LANDR , I would have had to reconsider my approach.
I think the Cake team did very well with their own secret sauce! Congrats!
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jbow
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/29 14:30:26
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Hi Joey. I wonder if it would be possible to do a master with Landr using the "high" setting. It would be interesting, I think, to hear that to compare with all the others. I'd also be interested in hearing them with matching levels even though it is no longer a blind test, it would be interesting, at least to me.
Thanks,
Julien
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Andrew Rossa
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/29 14:41:19
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Starise
The eagle has LANDRED... and in third place.
I'm a bit insecure. I was actually concerned there was a chance the robot had better ears. I should have known better. If #3 had been LANDR , I would have had to reconsider my approach.
I think the Cake team did very well with their own secret sauce! Congrats!
It was actually Jimmy Landry who did the mastering taste test.
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frragnarsson
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/29 15:53:29
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Glad that I found 3 best. Somehow reassuring that my judgement is fine.
I only listened to portions of the song.
I wrote off 2 immediately and was sure it was LANDR. Not a human unless it was the same bloke that remastered "The Four Horsemen" on Soundcloud.
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Starise
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/30 11:52:03
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OK guys can we still pick a winner after a winner is picked? C'mon...you know now. Andrew I wondered if this was a LANDR initiated idea, mainly because the LANDR emblem is on the tracks. Cake had a hand in a few tracks. I think they did a nice job.Thanks.
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jude77
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/30 13:43:39
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This was fun, and I appreciate the Cakewalk staff doing it, I hope more will follow. What impressed me were the different reasons that people gave for their choice. Most were well thought-out. Thanks to everyone who posted.
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tenfoot
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/31 03:32:02
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☄ Helpfulby WallyG 2016/03/31 11:39:16
Andrew Rossa [Cakewalk]
Starise
The eagle has LANDRED... and in third place.
I'm a bit insecure. I was actually concerned there was a chance the robot had better ears. I should have known better. If #3 had been LANDR , I would have had to reconsider my approach.
I think the Cake team did very well with their own secret sauce! Congrats!
It was actually Jimmy Landry who did the mastering taste test.
Any chance of finding out what mastering suite was used on #5 by Jimmy? Would love to know. The blind test was a great idea with more than a few surprised LandR voters I'm sure!
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Karyn
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/31 06:32:22
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☄ Helpfulby jbow 2016/03/31 13:52:35
stevec
konradh
As I said above, I had voted online for #3, and the drum sound was one of the main factors.
I am surprised there were not more comments about the drums, and the snare in particular (although it is possible I overlooked some).
Yup, that was a big one for me too - the snare had more "snap" in # 3, something I felt was important for the song/genre.
This is the issue I have with modern "mastering". Had the producer also felt that it was important for the snare to have more "snap" then they would have given it more snap during mixing. The "mastering" engineer has taken it on himself to make an artistic decision that changes the way the track sounds. To me, that is wrong. It's the difference between cleaning an old painting to let the original colours shine through or saying "It would look better if... " and getting out your paint pots.
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petec
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Re: Take Our Blind Mastering "Taste-Test"
2016/03/31 07:42:12
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A fun test to do, and a very pleasant song to listen to.
It wasn't 'objective' nor had criteria other than 'favorite' or 'best' (IIRC)
#3 seemed the obvious choice for 'the market' - it was the clearest of all the 'loud' versions. Though it did bring an image of a face pressed as close to the window as possible. They certainly met the current market needs/demands.
Karyn has a point about artistic decisions - the gap between the original and the Pro are significant. Though IMO the mastering engineer may well be under instruction from whoever is paying the bill.
The question is raised as to whether the Pro version could be described as the 'best'... answers would be entirely in the realm of opinion - dependent on musical/mixing/mastering preferences, age group, income expectation etc etc (ad infinitum)
I actually went for #4. Yes it was quieter, weaker in overall oomph! (easily turned up) But there was a pleasant overall balance between the backing and the vocals - and I could hear what was being sung much more clearly. And there was a lot of words to listen to.
Thanks Cakewalk for an interesting exercise.
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