Mick Gordon unlikely to work on another Doom game after Eternal’s OST release

[Man of Doom]

Ok, so this thread does provide a few good counterpoints:

 

Hopefully we should see some more clarification of what’s going on in the next few days. And yes, people are already suggesting that the Instagram DM is faked (apparently it’s surprisingly easy to do that).
 

Honestly, I do find the lack of a proper source for that Instagram DM to be fairly suspect. 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Man of Doom

[Caffeine Freak]

10 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Did you forget who Quasar is? 

 

Apparently so. It's difficult to keep track of the backstories of the many, many members here and their involvement with different projects.

 

Btw, apologies to Quasar, I did genuinely forget this.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Caffeine Freak

[Caffeine Freak]

@Man of Doom I was actually about to say something similar. It's not unreasonable to question the authenticity of this supposed DM, given how easy it is to fake something like that and throw it into the ether to stir up some online chaos.

[D88M3R]

This is just awful, specailyl for Mick. I bet this has more to do with Bethesda than with ID, but who knows. This also explain why the music was not as memorable (except some stuff), it was because they were arguing about something, probably.

[Kronecker–Capelli]

Hmmmm, so this is why soundtrack in DE different, and I can say even better, than in D16. Because its actually trying to be a soundtrack, not Mick showing off that he know, and like, Meshuggah band.
Interesting, its because id/Bethesda realized that this soundtrack sounds too much alike or because they wants to save some money.

[MFG38]

I always had the feeling Bethesda would tamper with Doom Eternal in some way - and something tells me this is the result of their involvement, not something with id themselves. But no one here can say anything conclusive as of yet. Until either Mick or Bethesda says something on the matter, everything we throw out is just speculation.

 

29 minutes ago, Kronecker–Capelli said:

Hmmmm, so this is why soundtrack in DE different, and I can say even better, than in D16. Because its actually trying to be a soundtrack, not Mick showing off that he know, and like, Meshuggah band.
Interesting, its because id/Bethesda realized that this soundtrack sounds too much alike or because they wants to save some money.

 

I have extreme trouble agreeing with this statement. First off, Mick still composed at least most, if not all, of the music for Doom Eternal - it was only the mixing that was handed over to Chad, judging by the evidence in this thread. As for why that was the case, it's not necessarily an issue of it sounding too close to DOOM '16 or money. You can speculate all you want, but ultimately, you know just as little as the rest of us do.

 

Second, Doom Eternal's OST is fundamentally an expansion of DOOM '16's. Mick employed many of the same techniques and methods for the former that he did for the latter, in particular the synth stuff. So claiming that Mick was only "showing off" with his work on DOOM '16 and that Doom Eternal's OST is "actually trying to be a soundtrack" is a massive contradiction.

[NoXion]

While I'm sure that the sordid details will come out later (maybe in a few years), I think it's pretty obvious that the production of the soundtrack wasn't as smooth as it could have been. Why else would the track listing be all over the place in relation to the in-game chronology? "Soul Extraction" as the fourth track? Really?!

If this really does mean no more collaboration between id Software and Mick Gordon, then that will be sorely disappointing.

[Mattatsu]

6 hours ago, Man of Doom said:

Ok, so this thread does provide a few good counterpoints:

 

(Img)

Hopefully we should see some more clarification of what’s going on in the next few days. And yes, people are already suggesting that the Instagram DM is faked (apparently it’s surprisingly easy to do that).
 

Honestly, I do find the lack of a proper source for that Instagram DM to be fairly suspect. 

 

I kinda think that DM screenshot is suspect now. I saw the message he sent to the YouTuber to please take down the game rips and put up the proper OST now that’s out. He didn’t seem too bitter about it (actually seemed excited about it) and it threw me off when I read that in context with this DM in mind.

 

edit: here’s a Reddit link to his email for those interested:

 

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Mattatsu

[The Nate]

I'm just hoping the E3 version of Gladiator gets released at some point since that's the only reason I was interested in the official release anyways.

[Eurisko]

I downloaded my collectors edition Soundtrack yesterday and I was wondering who the fuck this chad guy is. 

 

This seriously sucks in my opinion. Yes, the Doom games have all had good music of their respective producers but Mick........... Mick brought the fucking meat of the metal to the table in ways none of us expected. His music blasting in your ears while mashing up demons has an effect on your senses. 

Seldom does this happen in the gaming world much these days especially with this style of music.

 

Why not have him mix HIS tunes? This dude creates fucking musical porn, let the man work.

 

Bottom line.

Bethesda or ID or whoever has pissed him off should take on board what they've done here. You're gonna feel the detriment to this down the road. 

Fuck sake.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Eurisko

[Koko Ricky]

I've been wondering why in the world anyone would think Mick couldn't just do this all on his own. He knows how to mix his own fucking work. 

[seed]

3 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

I've been wondering why in the world anyone would think Mick couldn't just do this all on his own. He knows how to mix his own fucking work. 

 

You're not the only one, I mean, that's kind of his job, isn't it? Can't understand what led to this interference, and whatever the reason is, will probably bite them in the ass in the future.

[AtimZarr1]

A comment by Mick from PCGamer

 

"I take a lot of pride in my work," Gordon told me. "It’s all I do, it’s all I have and I pour my heart and soul into it." He added that he's still trying to understand the situation himself and has no further comments at this time.

[NoXion]

2 minutes ago, AtimZarr1 said:

A comment by Mick from PCGamer

 

"I take a lot of pride in my work," Gordon told me. "It’s all I do, it’s all I have and I pour my heart and soul into it." He added that he's still trying to understand the situation himself and has no further comments at this time.

Must say that I don't like the sound of that. Bethesda fuckery would be my first guess.

[BluePineapple72]

29 minutes ago, NoXion said:

Must say that I don't like the sound of that. Bethesda fuckery would be my first guess.

I was wondering when they would reel their ugly head again

[Noiser]

1 hour ago, GoatLord said:

I've been wondering why in the world anyone would think Mick couldn't just do this all on his own. He knows how to mix his own fucking work. 

Just making a poor assumption here, but Mick's compositions are pretty unusual with lots of details, effects and time signature changes. Maybe they wanted something more clean and traditional, which can be done by mixing the "right" instruments and muting the extra flair. That or they just wanted to increase the volume with compression. That's pretty shitty in any case.

It would be great to see a direct comparsion between the tracks mixed by him and by other people.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Noiser

[Koko Ricky]

14 minutes ago, Noiser said:

Just making a poor assumption here, but Mick's compositions are pretty unusual with lots of details, effects and time signature changes. Maybe they wanted something more clean and traditional, which can be done by mixing the "right" instruments and muting the extra flair. That or they just wanted to increase the volume with compression. 

It would be great to see a direct comparsion between the tracks mixed by him and by other people.

This comparison between 2016/2020 versions of "BFG Division" demonstrate that someone wanted a dynamic-less mix, with the brick-walled waveform on the right being very typical of modern production, especially for metal. Mick has the sense to create a more dynamically-ranged mix (as seen on the left) and I guess some moron at Bethesda thought a flatter, duller mix was somehow better merely because it artificially loudens the signal, at the expense of amplitude variance. You can see the wavs being squared off constantly on the right-hand image; from a production perspective, it's disgusting to look at.

Edited April 20, 2020 by GoatLord

[Mr. Freeze]

Just when I thought I escaped the Loudness Wars, they pull me back in. 

[Breezeep]

Bethesda is literally shooting themselves in the foot by screwing with Mick's work like that. What a damn shame.

[NoXion]

35 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

This comparison between 2016/2020 versions of "BFG Division" demonstrate that someone wanted a dynamic-less mix, with the brick-walled waveform on the right being very typical of modern production, especially for metal. Mick has the sense to create a more dynamically-ranged mix (as seen on the left) and I guess some moron at Bethesda thought a flatter, duller mix was somehow better merely because it artificially loudens the signal, at the expense of amplitude variance. You can see the wavs being squared off constantly on the right-hand image; from a production perspective, it's disgusting to look at.

I'm not an audio guy, but isn't clipping supposed to be a bad thing? Why would anyone want something like this done to a Doom soundtrack? It's not as if this shit is going to be played on the radio.

[Koko Ricky]

11 minutes ago, NoXion said:

I'm not an audio guy, but isn't clipping supposed to be a bad thing? Why would anyone want something like this done to a Doom soundtrack? It's not as if this shit is going to be played on the radio.

Clipping in audio typically occurs either because the original signal was clipped during recording—such as turning the input too high for recording a guitar track—or because the master track has been compressed, which results in unavoidable clipping. The latter is a necessary step that keeps a mix from spiking, and when applied moderately isn't noticeable, particularly if the compresser/limiter can round off the tips of the peaks rather than completely cut them off. There's also a third type of clipping that occurs from an unfortunately worded phenomenon known as "ear rape," in which a signal is purposely pushed past the highest decibel level that can be digitally processed, resulting in an extremely distorted, blown-out sound.

 

In this case, it's the second form of clipping, but applied way too liberally. You end up cutting off the peaks of most of the waves, which keeps the signal in a very small range of amplitudes. Engineers who don't understand the subtleties of dynamic range will do this in a naive attempt to make the overall signal louder.

Edited April 20, 2020 by GoatLord

[NoXion]

6 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

Clipping in audio typically occurs either because the original signal was clipped during recording—such as turning the input too high for recording a guitar track—or because the master track has been compressed, which results in unavoidable clipping. The latter is a necessary step that keeps a mix from spiking, and when applied moderately isn't noticeable, particularly if the compresser/limiter can round off the tips of the peaks rather than completely cut them off. There's also a third type of clipping that occurs from an unfortunately worded phenomenon known as "ear rape," in which a signal is purposely pushed past the highest decibel level that can be digitally processed, resulting in an extremely distorted, blown-out sound.

 

In this case, it's the second form of clipping, but applied way too liberally. You end up cutting off the peaks of most of the waves, which keeps the signal in a very small range of amplitudes. Engineers who don't understand the subtleties of dynamic range will do this in a naive attempt to make the overall signal louder.

Thanks, that was informative. What is "spiking"?

And do you have any ideas as to why it's been clipped so badly? Mistake or design?

[Noiser]

On 4/20/2020 at 2:20 PM, NoXion said:

I'm not an audio guy, but isn't clipping supposed to be a bad thing? Why would anyone want something like this done to a Doom soundtrack? It's not as if this shit is going to be played on the radio.

Maybe they thought louder would be better because it's a "metal" soundtrack, which is a very dumb way of thinking as dynamics can be used for a much more agressive music and with an actual contrast for the louder moments. I gave a listen to some tracks and some of them really sound rushed or raw in a bad way. Man, that's really sad.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Noiser

[Caleb13]

Damn, this is bad news. The music is pretty good in DE, even though I overally don't like the game that much.

[Koko Ricky]

Spiking is a way of describing the absolute highest peaks of a signal. If you don't compress the mix, then those spikes will have to be no louder than 0db, because anything louder than 0db will distort, as there's no more room to raise the signal. So in that situation you'd get a fairly quiet mix with a few sections that suddenly jump to the decibel ceiling. That would be an example of too much dynamic range, while with these brickwalled mixes you get too little range. 

 

As to why this was done, I suspect someone at Bethesda was concerned that, given Doom's extremely busy sound design, the music would be drowned out by the sound effects, and had someone push the mix way over the edge. You end up cutting off peaks constantly, and it results in a claustrophobic, boxed-in sound.

Edited April 20, 2020 by GoatLord

[Mr. Freeze]

24 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

You end up cutting off peaks constantly, and it results in a claustrophobic, boxed-in sound.

 

You know now that I think about it, DE had a lot of moments for me where I just couldn't hear the music compared to 2016. Sure it's there in-game, my volume is fine and all, but the overcompression just muffles everything to the point where I can't pick the music out. Sharp contrast to 2016 where it was extremely clear. 

[NoXion]

4 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

 

You know now that I think about it, DE had a lot of moments for me where I just couldn't hear the music compared to 2016. Sure it's there in-game, my volume is fine and all, but the overcompression just muffles everything to the point where I can't pick the music out. Sharp contrast to 2016 where it was extremely clear. 

I said something very similar when I gave my reaction after playing the game for the very first time. I can't find the post because the search is broken, but it's in one of the initial reaction threads. I have the music volume set to maximum, yet the music definitely doesn't make its presence felt as much as it did in D16.

Which is a shame, because the music itself is fucking ace. It's just let down by terrible audio dynamics.

[Gifty]

I spent some time sorting my way through all the screaming manbabies on reddit, and I think I have a basic understanding of what's probably happening:

 

First, Mick produced an unbelievably dense amount of work on this game. He's already mentioned what a stressful project it was for him, and how glad he was to see it finished. Naturally, this makes the album release an enormous undertaking because, A) mixing+mastering is harder than most people understand. Much, much harder. Mixing 3+ hours of music is even several degrees harder than that. And B) much of the music in Doom Eternal exists as discrete loops and one-off cues, meaning Mick still had to arrange them into "songs" after the fact. He can't simply hit "export all" on the masters and throw them into a a folder, the album itself still needs to be put together even after work has wrapped on the main game. All this to say, Mick had an unfathomable amount of work cut out for him and this goes a long way towards explaining why the soundtrack release has been plagued with problems.

 

So, because Mick is swamped with his huge task, the album gets delayed. And when that second deadline rolls around and the work is still not finished, some mucky muck drops the hammer and says "this is taking too long, you either turn it in now or someone will do it for you," at which point the unfinished mixes are dropped into the lap of Chad Mossholder, with the order to "get this up to mastering level by last week, please." Which is presumably what he did, because the mixes that were released bear all the hallmarks of a quick'n'dirty "loudness mix." Mick is naturally dismayed at this ungraceful handling of his material and very understandably hesitant to come back and work with such people again.

 

I don't really have any ill will towards Chad (although the fact that he has a co-composer credit on most of the album seems pretty bizarre to me), who most likely got this dog assignment at the 11th hour with no time to do anything close to a good job. From the state of the mixes I wouldn't be surprised at all if he didn't even have access to the multitracks, and was only working from semi-finished mixdowns of all the songs.

 

A huge shame all around, Mick's music has been hugely influential on me not just as a regular vidya gamer but as an actual musician, too.

 

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Gifty

[yakfak]

of course you drop the default SoundGoodizer onto carefully layered music! it makes it Sound Good

giggle

it's kinda insulting
he's right to get the hell out of there, never let yr art be Curated by some manager

[Kronecker–Capelli]

10 hours ago, MFG38 said:

I have extreme trouble agreeing with this statement. First off, Mick still composed at least most, if not all, of the music for Doom Eternal - it was only the mixing that was handed over to Chad, judging by the evidence in this thread. As for why that was the case, it's not necessarily an issue of it sounding too close to DOOM '16 or money. You can speculate all you want, but ultimately, you know just as little as the rest of us do.

 

Second, Doom Eternal's OST is fundamentally an expansion of DOOM '16's. Mick employed many of the same techniques and methods for the former that he did for the latter, in particular the synth stuff. So claiming that Mick was only "showing off" with his work on DOOM '16 and that Doom Eternal's OST is "actually trying to be a soundtrack" is a massive contradiction.

Mixing is a most important part of a music creation. Because in this part of an audio recording process you can do literally anything with recorded sound. So not only change it loudness but completely change it spectrogram and make solo guitar sounds like a bass guitar or like an orchestra with trombone. And different sound engineers SUDDENLY mix music differently. The only problem with this is that with bad sound source you would spend enormous amount of time for this.
And I said "showing off" because I almost sure that Mick was hired to create "some coll metal soundtrack". And Mick like Meshuggah (and he not shy to admit it), so he think that something that sounds like Meshuggah is cool, so he create something that sounds like Meshuggah because he was asked to create some cool music.