Sir_NutS

Definitely join discord.  The community is pretty active, and we have a workshop channel as well where we post resources and offer advice.

Definitely join discord.  The community is pretty active, and we have a workshop channel as well where we post resources and offer advice.

Definitely join discord.  The community is pretty active, and we have a workshop channel as well where we post resources and offer advice.

On another news the Judge Process thread has been updated thanks to @Nutritious.  I'll try to keep it updated again.
 

All of these people have bars.  Also Gamechops, tinywaves, etc.  They all have bars, they don't publish anything and everything that they get sent.  They just aren't as transparent about them, which is their prerogative.  

On another news the Judge Process thread has been updated thanks to @Nutritious.  I'll try to keep it updated again.
 

On another news the Judge Process thread has been updated thanks to @Nutritious.  I'll try to keep it updated again.
 

On another news the Judge Process thread has been updated thanks to @Nutritious.  I'll try to keep it updated again.
 

All of these people have bars.  Also Gamechops, tinywaves, etc.  They all have bars, they don't publish anything and everything that they get sent.  They just aren't as transparent about them, which is their prerogative.  

On the thought of communities who don't have bars, they do have coffee shops.

I'm part of a small community that is growing and attempting to establish itself.  It will remain unnamed.  I'm doing some arranging for them, but mostly just being a brass player recording for people (I guess that describes my involvement in many communities at the moment).  They have a bar, kind of, but it's really low.  
I was used to OCR and the way they did things, came to this new one, and recorded for a guy.  I knew I wasn't the only one recording, but what ended up happening in that track was just playing all the recordings as they were sent on top of each other.  It sounded very weird because one of them was recorded in a tiny room, and one in a much bigger room.  And those differences were really pronounced.  
There were a few tracks that were this level, and while it wasn't bad, it was very unrefined and unpolished.  On the other end, it still is kind of weird that there will be check ins on progress and for the most part, people won't start their tracks until a week or less before deadline, and the end result sounds like they threw it together last minute.  However, it will still be sent out.  The majority of this community is producing good, well polished content, but there is that lower end that just seems to be winging it constantly and still passing the bar.
OCR I don't see as a gated community tho.  I see it more as a community that wants to present well polished works of a certain variety.  It's not that you have to pass the bar to be considered good, it's more like there's a certain type of production that is wanted.

When I joined the panel, the wait time for a sub to appear on the queue was about a year and a half.  Yes, If you submitted your song today, the ETA for it to arrive at the queue would be around spring 2019.  This year around july / august, if you submitted your song there was a good chance it would get on the queue (and possibly out of it) that very same week.  So yeah, it's a bit faster now.
I took this process over from Larry because the thread has been a personal grudge for me for years, since it usually went without updates for months when the queue was ridiculously long.  I used to update it weekly or more often but since we had reached parity with the inbox (and I have too many responsibilities this year) I stopped updating it, since things are a bit slower now (the most recent mix on the queue is from around mid october) I'll try to update it again.  This thread is a pain in the ass to update though, takes a considerable amount of time, so yeah.
This has been a topic of discussion internally and is brought up a lot.  To make this process visible it requires a better submission process and integration with the site.  This is a major project which requires, you guessed it, a lot of time to implement, free time from the staff.  I know you're perfectly aware of all of this but a lot of people, perhaps understandably don't see the amount of time that is put on the site behind the scenes to keep it running, release projects, work on evaluations, implement forum features, organize panels, etc.  I personally would love to see this whole process to be updated, but it's not happening overnight with the current resources we have.
I was very surprised by this as well, I thought we were rejecting far more than we were passing.  But after thinking about it, it makes perfect sense.  The bar has been around the same place for about a decade now, and it has become increasingly easier to make good music.  I remember the FL compo mentioned by Larry, and at the time this compo was made, FL and most DAWs used to come with very poor quality samples and the tools they came with were pretty vanilla and basic (3xosc, i.e.).  Compare that to the current FL studio which comes with many more powerful tools out of the box, plus a more comprehensive sample library of better quality.  Same with other DAWs like Reason, Ableton etc.  You can get Reaper nowadays for free/cheap, grab a bunch of high quality free synths/effects/samples and get going without spending a dollar.  

Welcome to the Bitwig geek circle.

I love tracks like this, mellow, relaxing arrangement.  The first 2 minutes were a bit repetitive, but the arrangement picks up and is very varied.  I didn't like the interactions between the two leads at 2:08, they seemed to be overlapping each other somehow fighting for attention.  I think they would've been better off panned to each side and avoiding falling on the same melodies too often.  The trumpet was much nicer though.  I think the mix isn't too great, felt a bit muddy but not so much as to make the different elements unclear.

Nice Work.

YES

As much as I hate to admit it, if people are percieving that it's slowed down then there's something that we need to fix or address.
I can personally say it's considerably faster nowadays than it was a year ago (save for last month since as mentioned earlier an influx of projects slowed us down a bit - you can personally verify this, Rozovian :P), but if people can't tell this is the case then we need to do something about that. Updating the judging process thread is definitely one step toward that, which we've talked about here and will fix soon (if not someone else, I'll update it within the week). Of course, the problem with that is it's a manual process prone to staff just... not updating the thread. It's a lower priority item on the list of things to do, so it happens.
Anyone have any ideas of how to make people more aware of the pace of the judge's panel? I might share a few ideas behind the scenes on how to address this (that starts getting into the mechanics of the site, though, which I don't think I should share on here atm), but if people want to share some ideas I would be very much appreciative.
Interesting question, and while it's not the EXACT topic of the thread it's related. There's no official number on the rates of passes and rejections as of late (the numbers shown on the FAQ section of the site is not up-to-date), but I can give a pretty solid estimation based on what I've inboxed over the last year since I archive the tracks on my own hard drive. There will be some direct rejections that I didn't archive since those tracks were either soundcloud tracks without a D/L link, or the tracks were 404'd, so there's probably 20% more direct rejections than I'm giving credit for on here. Be aware.
Out of ~370 tracks I've inboxed over the last eleven months that I have on record:
22% are direct rejections (rejected via e-mail, the track doesn't make it to the panel).
8% are direct posts (passes on the spot, the track doesn't make it to the panel unless the judges object).
The rest (70%) are sent to the panel.
Of those panel'd, I can use my basic memory of what passed and what didn't pass and give a solid estimate of the panel's current pass rate. I could check everything on the site and get a 100% accurate number, but that would be incredibly time consuming - I hope y'all understand. Crunching the numbers, about 50% of what gets to the panel gets rejected.
...
Yeah, that number sounds unbelievable to me too, but that's what number crunching every track that I've panel'd comes up to. Since it's based on my memory of the tracks passing or being rejected it's a good idea to say that this is +/- 10%, so the worst case I can conceive of is that the panel's pass/rejection rate is 60/40 in one direction or another (probably 40% YES, 60% NO, which makes sense when you look in the Judges Decisions forum). That's surprisingly uplifting - I didn't expect that when I started crunching numbers. Based on that, of all the tracks submit in the inbox that I've handled over the last year about 40% ultimately passed on to the front page, with the most conservative estimates being closer to 30% (a far cry from the 10-15% mentioned in the FAQ).
Damn, we're a bunch of softies on the panel, what the hell. Do take these numbers with more than a grain of salt, though: this was a quick numbers-crunch from what I have access to, just to give the public an idea of how things are in the panel nowadays.

Way back, there was an FL-based compo with that specific format, i.e. only using what was out of the box. It resulted in one of my personal favorites here, Rellik's Zelda II mix, "Mirror and Transparent".

Ditto.  Also, usually an artist has his/her own stylistic vision for a song, and that's totally ok.  It's just not what OCR is looking for.  It's been said several times throughout the thread but OCR is not the end-all of videogame remixes.  In fact nowadays there are several ways to get your remixes out there regardless of stylistic vision or quality.  Not that I want to send anybody away at all, but OCR has had a quality and stylistic definition for what is an OCRemix for years and if you want your remix to be an OCRemix it just has to abide by that.
Regarding the bar, it hasn't changed in years and it's in a good place where it is, this is my opinion now and it was my opinion long before joining staff.  As an example to why I believe so, I didn't know about the "big bad koopa dubstep" remix posted in the first page until today.  That people reacted negatively to something they perceived was not up to OCR's quality is actually a great thing.  That means that people expect quality from us, and having the "bar" where it is has created a standard that people expect when opening a link featuring an OCR song.
Regarding judging speed/amount of judges, it's now a fact that more judges don't result on faster queue, on the contrary, when there has been a small team of people who have a good idea of where the bar sits, the queue moves faster.  The queue has been faster than it's ever been in years now.  Sadly, getting it faster is not as easy as saying it.  This is voluntary work, that people do it out of love for what the site represents, but voluntary still, which means that we all have other responsibilities besides judging, and as such we can't possibly have all songs evaluated as soon as they hit our inbox.  This will likely never happen on a system that has actual people reviewing the submitted work, nor here, nor anywhere else.  The current pace of "1 week to 2 months" to get a mix evaluated is, in my opinion, as good as it can realistically get.

Some remixes take longer because of split votes, because the judges are human and thus can't always agree on everything.  This is also very unlikely to change.

Scrutinizing YES votes even more than what we do now (we require 4 YES votes for a pass, only 3 for a NO) would make evaluation take even longer.  Complete counter to what we want.

I don't personally dismiss criticism on the process, and from what I see neither does the staff.  Otherwise we wouldn't be here, reading this.
On the whole PS1 era samples for a song etc, I think Gario summed up my views regarding this pretty well.  Plus, we don't require anyone to go out of their way and get the most expensive libraries out there.  Jorito already gave an example of his own, but I also can think of Rebecca Tripp, who I'm pretty sure doesn't have the most expensive libraries but manages to get on the front page quite consistently, with orchestral, folk and ambient remixes.  Outside of the symphonic realm, you can make ocremixes with free stuff, this is a fact, as I have at least a couple remixes on the site made 100% with completely free tools.  We really don't require perfect production at all.  

Regarding mixer's comments, like Gario I try to avoid them whenever possible because they get in the way of an unbiased evaluation.  Same with the other judges' votes, I try to just scroll all the way down and read them after I've written at least my initial thoughts (but before hitting submit).  Sometimes there's a good story behind the mix and I really appreciate that (this comes to mind) or the mixer's write up brings up some interesting points about how the track came to be or production techniques used, or the other judges have pointed out things that need more of my attention, etc.  All good stuff, but whether the mixer spent a year manually crafting the congas out of cow leather or if his intention was to make the song sound like an authentic Adlib Soundcard track without actually using an Adlib Soundcard has no bearing on whether it meets the expectations of being an OCRemix or not.  Not being an OCRemix doesn't automatically means it's bad or it's good, it's just not what OCR is looking for.
On the transparency side I'd be fine with that once (if ever) the process gets more automated on the submission side.  If at some point the process itself becomes something integrated properly with the website instead of being a manual process at all points (submission by email, separate upload, manual inboxing, manual creation of threads, etc.)  At this point it's a bit too messy to open it up and have it make much sense, IMO. It'll honestly be a lot of clutter plus probably more work for a staff that's already pretty busy.

Finally, I should really be working on the queue instead of writing a wall of text.

Ditto.  Also, usually an artist has his/her own stylistic vision for a song, and that's totally ok.  It's just not what OCR is looking for.  It's been said several times throughout the thread but OCR is not the end-all of videogame remixes.  In fact nowadays there are several ways to get your remixes out there regardless of stylistic vision or quality.  Not that I want to send anybody away at all, but OCR has had a quality and stylistic definition for what is an OCRemix for years and if you want your remix to be an OCRemix it just has to abide by that.
Regarding the bar, it hasn't changed in years and it's in a good place where it is, this is my opinion now and it was my opinion long before joining staff.  As an example to why I believe so, I didn't know about the "big bad koopa dubstep" remix posted in the first page until today.  That people reacted negatively to something they perceived was not up to OCR's quality is actually a great thing.  That means that people expect quality from us, and having the "bar" where it is has created a standard that people expect when opening a link featuring an OCR song.
Regarding judging speed/amount of judges, it's now a fact that more judges don't result on faster queue, on the contrary, when there has been a small team of people who have a good idea of where the bar sits, the queue moves faster.  The queue has been faster than it's ever been in years now.  Sadly, getting it faster is not as easy as saying it.  This is voluntary work, that people do it out of love for what the site represents, but voluntary still, which means that we all have other responsibilities besides judging, and as such we can't possibly have all songs evaluated as soon as they hit our inbox.  This will likely never happen on a system that has actual people reviewing the submitted work, nor here, nor anywhere else.  The current pace of "1 week to 2 months" to get a mix evaluated is, in my opinion, as good as it can realistically get.

Some remixes take longer because of split votes, because the judges are human and thus can't always agree on everything.  This is also very unlikely to change.

Scrutinizing YES votes even more than what we do now (we require 4 YES votes for a pass, only 3 for a NO) would make evaluation take even longer.  Complete counter to what we want.

I don't personally dismiss criticism on the process, and from what I see neither does the staff.  Otherwise we wouldn't be here, reading this.
On the whole PS1 era samples for a song etc, I think Gario summed up my views regarding this pretty well.  Plus, we don't require anyone to go out of their way and get the most expensive libraries out there.  Jorito already gave an example of his own, but I also can think of Rebecca Tripp, who I'm pretty sure doesn't have the most expensive libraries but manages to get on the front page quite consistently, with orchestral, folk and ambient remixes.  Outside of the symphonic realm, you can make ocremixes with free stuff, this is a fact, as I have at least a couple remixes on the site made 100% with completely free tools.  We really don't require perfect production at all.  

Regarding mixer's comments, like Gario I try to avoid them whenever possible because they get in the way of an unbiased evaluation.  Same with the other judges' votes, I try to just scroll all the way down and read them after I've written at least my initial thoughts (but before hitting submit).  Sometimes there's a good story behind the mix and I really appreciate that (this comes to mind) or the mixer's write up brings up some interesting points about how the track came to be or production techniques used, or the other judges have pointed out things that need more of my attention, etc.  All good stuff, but whether the mixer spent a year manually crafting the congas out of cow leather or if his intention was to make the song sound like an authentic Adlib Soundcard track without actually using an Adlib Soundcard has no bearing on whether it meets the expectations of being an OCRemix or not.  Not being an OCRemix doesn't automatically means it's bad or it's good, it's just not what OCR is looking for.
On the transparency side I'd be fine with that once (if ever) the process gets more automated on the submission side.  If at some point the process itself becomes something integrated properly with the website instead of being a manual process at all points (submission by email, separate upload, manual inboxing, manual creation of threads, etc.)  At this point it's a bit too messy to open it up and have it make much sense, IMO. It'll honestly be a lot of clutter plus probably more work for a staff that's already pretty busy.

Finally, I should really be working on the queue instead of writing a wall of text.

Ditto.  Also, usually an artist has his/her own stylistic vision for a song, and that's totally ok.  It's just not what OCR is looking for.  It's been said several times throughout the thread but OCR is not the end-all of videogame remixes.  In fact nowadays there are several ways to get your remixes out there regardless of stylistic vision or quality.  Not that I want to send anybody away at all, but OCR has had a quality and stylistic definition for what is an OCRemix for years and if you want your remix to be an OCRemix it just has to abide by that.
Regarding the bar, it hasn't changed in years and it's in a good place where it is, this is my opinion now and it was my opinion long before joining staff.  As an example to why I believe so, I didn't know about the "big bad koopa dubstep" remix posted in the first page until today.  That people reacted negatively to something they perceived was not up to OCR's quality is actually a great thing.  That means that people expect quality from us, and having the "bar" where it is has created a standard that people expect when opening a link featuring an OCR song.
Regarding judging speed/amount of judges, it's now a fact that more judges don't result on faster queue, on the contrary, when there has been a small team of people who have a good idea of where the bar sits, the queue moves faster.  The queue has been faster than it's ever been in years now.  Sadly, getting it faster is not as easy as saying it.  This is voluntary work, that people do it out of love for what the site represents, but voluntary still, which means that we all have other responsibilities besides judging, and as such we can't possibly have all songs evaluated as soon as they hit our inbox.  This will likely never happen on a system that has actual people reviewing the submitted work, nor here, nor anywhere else.  The current pace of "1 week to 2 months" to get a mix evaluated is, in my opinion, as good as it can realistically get.

Some remixes take longer because of split votes, because the judges are human and thus can't always agree on everything.  This is also very unlikely to change.

Scrutinizing YES votes even more than what we do now (we require 4 YES votes for a pass, only 3 for a NO) would make evaluation take even longer.  Complete counter to what we want.

I don't personally dismiss criticism on the process, and from what I see neither does the staff.  Otherwise we wouldn't be here, reading this.
On the whole PS1 era samples for a song etc, I think Gario summed up my views regarding this pretty well.  Plus, we don't require anyone to go out of their way and get the most expensive libraries out there.  Jorito already gave an example of his own, but I also can think of Rebecca Tripp, who I'm pretty sure doesn't have the most expensive libraries but manages to get on the front page quite consistently, with orchestral, folk and ambient remixes.  Outside of the symphonic realm, you can make ocremixes with free stuff, this is a fact, as I have at least a couple remixes on the site made 100% with completely free tools.  We really don't require perfect production at all.  

Regarding mixer's comments, like Gario I try to avoid them whenever possible because they get in the way of an unbiased evaluation.  Same with the other judges' votes, I try to just scroll all the way down and read them after I've written at least my initial thoughts (but before hitting submit).  Sometimes there's a good story behind the mix and I really appreciate that (this comes to mind) or the mixer's write up brings up some interesting points about how the track came to be or production techniques used, or the other judges have pointed out things that need more of my attention, etc.  All good stuff, but whether the mixer spent a year manually crafting the congas out of cow leather or if his intention was to make the song sound like an authentic Adlib Soundcard track without actually using an Adlib Soundcard has no bearing on whether it meets the expectations of being an OCRemix or not.  Not being an OCRemix doesn't automatically means it's bad or it's good, it's just not what OCR is looking for.
On the transparency side I'd be fine with that once (if ever) the process gets more automated on the submission side.  If at some point the process itself becomes something integrated properly with the website instead of being a manual process at all points (submission by email, separate upload, manual inboxing, manual creation of threads, etc.)  At this point it's a bit too messy to open it up and have it make much sense, IMO. It'll honestly be a lot of clutter plus probably more work for a staff that's already pretty busy.

Finally, I should really be working on the queue instead of writing a wall of text.

Ditto.  Also, usually an artist has his/her own stylistic vision for a song, and that's totally ok.  It's just not what OCR is looking for.  It's been said several times throughout the thread but OCR is not the end-all of videogame remixes.  In fact nowadays there are several ways to get your remixes out there regardless of stylistic vision or quality.  Not that I want to send anybody away at all, but OCR has had a quality and stylistic definition for what is an OCRemix for years and if you want your remix to be an OCRemix it just has to abide by that.
Regarding the bar, it hasn't changed in years and it's in a good place where it is, this is my opinion now and it was my opinion long before joining staff.  As an example to why I believe so, I didn't know about the "big bad koopa dubstep" remix posted in the first page until today.  That people reacted negatively to something they perceived was not up to OCR's quality is actually a great thing.  That means that people expect quality from us, and having the "bar" where it is has created a standard that people expect when opening a link featuring an OCR song.
Regarding judging speed/amount of judges, it's now a fact that more judges don't result on faster queue, on the contrary, when there has been a small team of people who have a good idea of where the bar sits, the queue moves faster.  The queue has been faster than it's ever been in years now.  Sadly, getting it faster is not as easy as saying it.  This is voluntary work, that people do it out of love for what the site represents, but voluntary still, which means that we all have other responsibilities besides judging, and as such we can't possibly have all songs evaluated as soon as they hit our inbox.  This will likely never happen on a system that has actual people reviewing the submitted work, nor here, nor anywhere else.  The current pace of "1 week to 2 months" to get a mix evaluated is, in my opinion, as good as it can realistically get.

Some remixes take longer because of split votes, because the judges are human and thus can't always agree on everything.  This is also very unlikely to change.

Scrutinizing YES votes even more than what we do now (we require 4 YES votes for a pass, only 3 for a NO) would make evaluation take even longer.  Complete counter to what we want.

I don't personally dismiss criticism on the process, and from what I see neither does the staff.  Otherwise we wouldn't be here, reading this.
On the whole PS1 era samples for a song etc, I think Gario summed up my views regarding this pretty well.  Plus, we don't require anyone to go out of their way and get the most expensive libraries out there.  Jorito already gave an example of his own, but I also can think of Rebecca Tripp, who I'm pretty sure doesn't have the most expensive libraries but manages to get on the front page quite consistently, with orchestral, folk and ambient remixes.  Outside of the symphonic realm, you can make ocremixes with free stuff, this is a fact, as I have at least a couple remixes on the site made 100% with completely free tools.  We really don't require perfect production at all.  

Regarding mixer's comments, like Gario I try to avoid them whenever possible because they get in the way of an unbiased evaluation.  Same with the other judges' votes, I try to just scroll all the way down and read them after I've written at least my initial thoughts (but before hitting submit).  Sometimes there's a good story behind the mix and I really appreciate that (this comes to mind) or the mixer's write up brings up some interesting points about how the track came to be or production techniques used, or the other judges have pointed out things that need more of my attention, etc.  All good stuff, but whether the mixer spent a year manually crafting the congas out of cow leather or if his intention was to make the song sound like an authentic Adlib Soundcard track without actually using an Adlib Soundcard has no bearing on whether it meets the expectations of being an OCRemix or not.  Not being an OCRemix doesn't automatically means it's bad or it's good, it's just not what OCR is looking for.
On the transparency side I'd be fine with that once (if ever) the process gets more automated on the submission side.  If at some point the process itself becomes something integrated properly with the website instead of being a manual process at all points (submission by email, separate upload, manual inboxing, manual creation of threads, etc.)  At this point it's a bit too messy to open it up and have it make much sense, IMO. It'll honestly be a lot of clutter plus probably more work for a staff that's already pretty busy.

Finally, I should really be working on the queue instead of writing a wall of text.

I was updating it at least 2-3 times a week for the past year or more.  But seems like people don't notice when things are working well  

I have a lot of responsibilities lately so I've slowed down with judging and updating that thread, I thought that since songs are judged quickly now, it wouldn't be an issue if that thread doesn't get updated much, so my bad.
 

FWIW, I rarely check remixer names before judging.  If I do, it's after I've written my evaluation or because it was very hard to miss in the post when I have to click the link.  I don't really care about who you are, and in fact I don't think the other judges do either.  Joel is my best buddy and if he has to say NO to one of my tracks, he does, as he should, and as he has.  I don't really care if it's djp himself sending a track in.  I'd actually say, when the remixer's name and past is considered, the panel is harder on established remixers because we expect them to be at a certain level.

FWIW, I rarely check remixer names before judging.  If I do, it's after I've written my evaluation or because it was very hard to miss in the post when I have to click the link.  I don't really care about who you are, and in fact I don't think the other judges do either.  Joel is my best buddy and if he has to say NO to one of my tracks, he does, as he should, and as he has.  I don't really care if it's djp himself sending a track in.  I'd actually say, when the remixer's name and past is considered, the panel is harder on established remixers because we expect them to be at a certain level.

Oh boy, this might be my first experience with being a jdgfgt on the forums. Almost makes me feel like I'm a legit judge now. I'm so happy this day has come.

Considering the circumstances, I would like a moment to address a few topics that came up on here. Wasn't able to do much yesterday other than snipe one or two points on the FB thread due to work, so consider this a more overarching response. I don't hand these walls of text out too often anymore, so enjoy!
First and foremost, OCR is most certainly not the end all, be all of video game remixes; the kind of music posted on here is clearly stated on DjP's mission statement. There is great music that can't be posted on OCR due to his personal vision for the site, so if someone says that something amazing didn't get posted on OCR I will absolutely believe you. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, either; it's his site, and great things certainly has come from it.
I feel sometimes people forget this point on both sides of the aisle; a few more passionate members sometimes say something isn't good if it doesn't pass OCR's muster while others state OCR judges hate good music when a song doesn't pass. Neither of these things are true, and on my word I can say I've known the current staff long enough to say they understand that, as well. At the risk of sounding like I'm strawmanning, if anyone makes these bad faith assumptions about the staff they should reconsider their opinion.
Okay, just wanted to get that out there on full display.
Second, I've seen a few posts on here upset at the time it takes to judge a track. While last month was admittedly slow likely due to more than one album being evaluated and posted on here (Sinphony and Candy Corn II, baby - we actually do have to judge every track on albums, which takes time), overall I'm a bit hurt that no one really acknowledges the process has sped up over the last year, with the topic of this thread being a great example. Y'all know that the time between submission (as in, he sent it to the inbox) and judgement was literally eight days at most, right? Like, he posted in the thread that he was submitting it soon on May 26th, and the judgment was completed on June 3rd, right?
I'm calling bologna on this complaint; I've personally worked my ass off to get the inbox and panel to the point that the wait for judgment is on average three months at the moment (again, slow down happened last month due to an influx of albums - it used to be closer to two months from submission to judgment on average, save for tough tracks on the panel), so I take particular offense to this blindness on the improved judgment speed, here. There's likely no better time to put your music on OCR to get more timely feedback, so please stop saying it takes over a year to get evaluated on average on here. Everything that was submitted in 2016 or earlier has been judged (with a single exception, for those astute enough to check). We're in a pretty good spot as far as inbox and judgment speed goes; it'd be nice for people to start recognizing that.
Thirdly, specifically on this submission... I can see why some may be upset at my judgment, but there's another half to the story that'd be missed if you didn't know I was personally involved in the WIP thread helping him out. Being that I act as both a judge and a somewhat active workshop evaluator (less so nowadays, much to Rozo's chagrin, I bet) I sometimes make reference to what I've said in my evaluation in my judgments. Whether or not that's bad practice is debatable (the confusion in this thread being a decent case against this), but in my view the artist is the most important one to understand the feedback; generally no one else has easy access to the music so no one else needs to understand it.
I've seen a complaint or two on this discussion saying that I shouldn't consider the flute at all in my judgment, and you're absolutely correct - I shouldn't. If you feel judges should never consider personal taste in music when judging something then be vindicated in the fact that you're correct! The catch is that I made absolutely clear in my WIP evaluation that this was personal taste and would in no way impact the judgment; Brynolf actually requested comments specifically on the flute, so I gave him my opinion on it. In the judgment I acknowledge that his track overall improved from when I eval'd it, even while teasing that he didn't make any changes to the flute. My vote had nothing to do with the flute in his track, and everything to do with the copy/paste of about a third of his track (which I missed when I eval'd it - that was a mistake on my part, and I still feel bad about that).
You can disagree that the copy/paste is a problem, but I stick by this decision. Anyone can feel free to argue this point either via PM, FB or Discord with me if they'd like since I don't want to crowd this thread too much on my reasoning (in fact I'd love to do that; there's some interesting reasoning behind why this is an issue). That's not to say I dislike that song at all - far from it. I personally really enjoyed this track in every other aspect, and still hope that he resubmits it with some minor changes made to address the issue as it would be a wonderful addition to OCR's front page. I can't drop the QC aspect of my judgments just because I like a track, though; it's one of the larger downsides of the job, to be honest.
Finally, on the consistency in judgment brought up in here... yeah, it can be a little inconsistent from time to time. That's because of two aspects: we're humans on the panel, and there's nine of us on there with varying experiences and opinions. On the first point, humans ain't perfect, and with anything that involves judgment of anything our imperfections will play into it. This applies to literally everything, not just OCR; for example, apparently you never want to be judged in court prior to lunch, because when everyone is hungry they're more likely to rush the verdict against the accused. To mitigate this aspect, there are many of us on there to cover one another's mistakes; more people means there's more chance that judges will catch each other's mistakes. Of course, this also means that different people will vote on different tracks, which unfortunately means there will be some variation in judgments due to different people voting on different tracks; that can't be helped.
Those are my $0.50 on the topic at hand; hopefully it's a somewhat informative wall o' text. No hate to Hoboka for the thread or anyone else involved, either - we coo'.

Liking the atmosphere of the intro.  Piano used sounds off, texture-wise, sort of dull, while still sounding brittle to me.  As important of a role as it plays, I would've liked it to feature a better tone.  Probably could soften the 2-4khz-ish range (it sounds like it's fighting other stuff in this range) and add a bit more highs to get it airy enough to still cut through.  Probably would need to tone down some of the highs on other elements to give it some space.
Mastering is a bit loud, but not overly-so.  Mixing is pretty clear between parts, but could be toned-down in the highs for some of the parts.  There are some piercing freqs in places, mainly caused by some backing stabby stuff - resonant backing part at 3:00 and strings/other stuff at 3:38.  Also, that last note at 4:21 - ouch.
When strings come in prominently, they're noticeably dry against reverbed/delayed other elements.  Also, that last note cut-off at 2:11, beyond being abrupt, left a bad impression, note-wise.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that "natural" instruments used in a dance setting don't have to be realistic sounding.  There could be an uncanny-valley, unhappy medium argument made in this case against that, I suppose, where you need to go more robo or more humanized.  I feel like I may have been ok with this if the piano didn't play such an integral part holding down the main melody, relative to sample quality/production.  It's close for me, and it wouldn't bother me if it had passed.  If I were Nuts, though (and I almost am! See what I did there?), I'd want another shot at this to tighten things up.
NO (borderline)

FWIW, I rarely check remixer names before judging.  If I do, it's after I've written my evaluation or because it was very hard to miss in the post when I have to click the link.  I don't really care about who you are, and in fact I don't think the other judges do either.  Joel is my best buddy and if he has to say NO to one of my tracks, he does, as he should, and as he has.  I don't really care if it's djp himself sending a track in.  I'd actually say, when the remixer's name and past is considered, the panel is harder on established remixers because we expect them to be at a certain level.

Not only you picked a legendary game/soundtrack, but also hey, this mix is pretty neat.  The synth funk tag caught my attention, and I think the mix delivers on the tag.  Gario gave pretty good feedback, but I'll also add to watch your lows and crowding on the bottom end.  I think the mix could be cleaner than it is, so mix clarity is an aspect that could benefit from work, specially around 2:50.  The eq in general could perhaps be slightly brighter, but that could be subjective.  The ending could've been a bit more memorable as well, another area to look into.  Overall this is pretty solid and you could do a few more passes to it, but I definitely suggest subbing it.
Good luck.