Brad Stark

I believe that there was a lot of good work in this contest and I find it really surprising that the averages were so low for the top scores. That is all I am expressing.

I'd like to see the voting spreadsheet if could be possible. 5th place vote avg = 3.297 24th place vote avg = 2.351 That's a difference of 0.945 avg score. With a voting range of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, to have the 5th highest and 5th lowest average scores separated by less than 1 apart in average voting doesn't make much sense to me... I'm just hoping that I participated in a contest (which I spent many hours of work on) in good faith and that people voted reasonably and respectfully. Yes, there was a lot of subjectivity involved and it's just my opinion that the best scores definitely deserved a higher average... but I'm sure that there are many people here who agree with that sentiment. However, it was a competition and it would be dangerous to assume that everyone voted reasonably and fairly, unfortunately. Evidence that people did not vote objectively would be seen for the voters who mostly voted no 4's and mostly 3 and below.

My point is that the best tracks in this competition definitely deserved better scores than they got, and is there really anyone here who would debate that point? 3.4 average score for 3rd place makes no sense at all any way you slice it.

Yea I know, but the numbers don't lie. It looks like there were a lot of people spamming low votes which brought down the scores. If people were being "harsh" the voting would uniformly reflect low scores for everyone, but they do NOT. The lowest scores were only 1.7 average away from the top score. That is really absurd. Looking at the third place vote: Sole Signal - "Throne Reborn" (313 pts). With 91 voters that averages out to 3.4. For the third place track?? Kind of makes me feel better about my rediculous average score of 3.1. Whether it was a campagin of people trying to win or just a lot of composers spamming low votes for everyone else in the competition, it doesn't reflect too well on some people here. I'd be interested to see if there was a bunch of people voting a small number of 5's and no 4's and mostly 3's and 2's because that's what it sure looks like.

I thought the voting system was fine, but doesn't it seem reasonable that the consensus for the best track would reach a vote higher than 4? That's what is really surprising to me, it seems like there was some questionable voting. Myself, I gave out quite a lot of 4's and reserved a few 5's for what I felt were the best tracks. I don't mind subjective opinions, but I think it's best to be as objective as possible. One of the tracks I felt was the best wasn't in a style I particularly enjoyed.

Just my opinion, but I find it surprising that anyone would vote lower than 3 for my track (it got an average score just above 3). I got lots of great comments like "stunning" on soundcloud when I posted it there, in the end that's all that matters to me, that some people enjoyed my work. From the voting results it's clear there wasn't a lot of agreement in the voting as the top track got an average score of 3.7. A few of the higher voted tracks weren't even in my top 9 and had some (in my opinion, had significant) production issues and musical issues that placed them well down on my list of what I consider a well produced remix. "Harsh" voting doesn't really explain it if the lowest rank track was only 1.79 average score away from the best ranked track.

I've been making music for 20+ years. The main problem for beginners is that the ambition is more than the ability. Even the ears aren't as developed as someone who has been involved with music for a long time. As long as you have fun doing it and keep doing it, eventually you'll be able to make the music you want to. I wouldn't be too discouraged by the voting either... I'm not.

Lowest score average vote 1.98. Highest score vote 3.77. According to my calculations. Kind of interesting to see the scores so compressed like that. I would have expected the best track to have had a higher average vote and the lowest track to have a lower average vote. Represents some very diverse opinions there, I think. I find it more than a little surprising that the highest average score was below 4. If "harsh" voting was to blame, how to explain that the lowest track got an average vote of 2 (granted, the lowest score possible to vote was 1)? Pretty interesting results but the numbers are a little surprising. Taking a look at the third place result, it got an average vote of 3.4. Just wow. Seems like there was a lot of disagreement on the quality of the tracks and that seemed to be evident from reading some of the comments in the forums. I would have liked to have seen a better "consensus" in the results, though.

Congrats to the winners. It would be great to know which tracks were which though. Is it possible to label them with the track # of the competition? My favorites aside from my own were #3 and #17. I placed tied for 10th. My track was: FF6 Contest Track 8 (Gestahl Empire) AKA: "Gestahl's Ambition - Magic and Empire" if anyone wanted to know. http://soundcloud.com/bradstark/gestahl-empire-ocremix-version

Got 1 email, total. FYI: I did the voting all at once, I didn't have an uncompleted form.

Voting ends on the 14th, but when can we expect the results to be announced? Wondering how close the voting is, but with the 1-5 voting system it could compress (almost like audio compression!) the scores a bit.

After listening several times to some of the better tracks, I have my own top 3 tracks and I'm curious to see what the actual vote turns out to be. Some of the tracks definitely stand up to repeated listens better than others (i.e. variety of arrangement and development).... Posting "this is by far the best track" isn't too respectful to the voting process, I think. But personally, I wouldn't be affected by comments like that and it's clear that many have (wildly) different opinions. I guess that's public voting for you. Many probably don't even read the forums when they vote.

Like I said before would have done Locke theme but didn't have time. It was my original plan. Just too busy. Working on a new iPhone game atm.

Since I've never made an OCremix before, that isn't a problem for me. I think I figured out which one you did.

I don't mind people giving their opinions and I don't know about you, but someone telling me their opinions about which tracks they liked won't change my opinion. In fact, it has no bearing at all on my opinions. However, I agree that it's not really proper to discuss individual tracks and when I did mention a specific track, it was only in reference to what someone else said (who admitted a track was flawed and said it was the only one he gave a 5 to for some reason.) Probably shouldn't have commented on that though and if I offended anyone there, apologies. I just wanted also to say some really good talent showed up for this competition and really enjoyed listening to the tracks... and thanks again for putting on the competition. I have a couple that I really enjoyed.

I rated 9 of them good to very good (i.e. good enough to download and put on my iPhone to listen to--or 4-5 in score). The performance of no. 28 wasn't good enough to deserve a high rating in my opinion. It was a lot of music to listen to and I felt like there was quite a big difference in the level of the "higher level" tracks versus the lower quality tracks. Might have been a good idea to have an elimination stage to reduce the number of tracks to encourage people to listen and vote more decisively on the stronger produced tracks after eliminating some of the weaker ones. Another idea could have been to increase the ratings from 1-5 to 1-10 to encourage more nuanced voting, but it's hard to say how big a difference that might make.

I listened to them all and voted. I would have liked to have done a version of Locke's theme and I was really surprised that no one did. I would have if I had more time. Some general comments, I liked a few of the remixes. Some needed some work on their mix balances, instrumentation and variety of textures. There were more than "2" good ones in there. Everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess, but it's kind of "interesting" to leave a comment like that only minutes after they were posted up, seems a little disrespectful to the people who worked hard to make their remixes, even if they aren't professionals. I felt like at least one or two of the tracks deserved a "5" and I handed out a few 4's too. For the weaker ones, I felt that there needed to be improvements in the mixing (balance between instruments/melody, EQ, panning, etc), dynamic variety in the "performance" of the MIDI, variety in the instrumentation, variety in the rhythms and textures, a lot of things could be improved.

Any news on what is happening with the music? I'm looking forward to hearing the remixes.

That's a really thoughtful system and voting on every track is a really great idea to ensure fairness to those who worked hard on submitting a track! Thanks for the hard work putting this together.

Wow that is a lot of music, might be a problem to get voters to hear everything. But then again, never too much FF music.

Zircon, I did email and CC to your gmail account my submission last night but didn't see my name in your latest post on confirmed submitters. Could it be in your junk folder or you didn't see it yet? Edit: I resent the email with a new, final version of my remix (3PM PST). Could you confirm you got it?