Concerning the use of the "mixer" option

Among the choices when uploading to wikiloops, one can pick the option "Mixer", which is intended for uploads where no new sound was added, but the existing track was edited for sound improvements.
That is a nice option to have, but obviously it does have some specialties to it, which I would like to comment on today:

In difference to all other instruments one can choose to upload on wikiloops, the mixer option does create a very different feeling and is eyed much more critically.

That's easy to understand if you know wikiloops a little:
First of all, people get notified about remixes, and expect to find someone added an instrument, which is the common case.

If someone added let's say bass, the addition may be poor, bad sounding, or really great - no matter, it is quite easy to deal with that, since there is always the feeling of: Someone added something that was missing, maybe in a not-so-great way, but the act doesn't say my track was flawed - it was just missing bass.

When the chosen option is "mixer", that always has the ring of "my track must have been flawed, otherwise no one would have felt the need to do a mixer-remix".
If the new remix is of outstanding quality and exceeds my own mixes sound by lightyears, I'd be happy that someone with some skill took the time to let it shine - if it sounds quite similar to what I produced, I'll feel like "What is she/he trying to tell me by doing that?".

It's quite simple psychology there, so I would strongly advise anyone to add some words of explanation to any future Mixer uploads:
What did you do / change/ EQ / comp, and what made you want to try that - that would be the best way to avoid the kind of misunderstanding.

Thanks for your attention :)

---

If anyone wants to do a remix I also strongly recommend requesting the HQ stems from the contributors, there's not much you can really do with the mixed mp3 apart from slapping on some eq and compression an limiting, but that does usually not work well because of the loss already present in the mp3.

---

and that's a very wise advice ! posting a mix that sounds very similar to a previous remix has very little to no interest at all ...

and Joe is very right ! trying to "mix" an already mixed mp3 is pure audio nonsense to me ... that would be more like doing some kind of mastering on a file that is missing many freqs due to encoding and with no headroom left ... mmm let's not go there ?

---

Amen!

---

Agreed. Mixing something where there's no individual adds is very limiting. It's one of the reasons, also, that my HD adds have very little processing on it - just the base EQ applied to the individual drums (mainly overheads to remove the 'gong' of my cymbals) and, usually, compressors and reverb removed depending on the dynamic demands of the track.

It's to give the subsequent contributors a 'clean' kit to work with - reverb stacked on reverb sounds as bad as compressors added to compressors! At the end of a stem I often find my drums just sound like a pumping squashed white noise so I try to control that by offering the HD option with most processing removed.

---