Great work, as usual, so you would have my OK. But I can not make this decision. The authors of the songs should decide this, as its their artwork.
And I agree with Garf that they should be louder. Most of the songs only use half of the masters headroom.
IT-Alien, Keith, Florian, Sewen, Neil: Could/should we use the remastered versions?
Didn’t do a a/b comparison (as I always delete the song folder) so can’t really tell if there are big improvements, but the mixes sounded good on my cheap hi-fi speakers. But like taktik already mentioned, they could be much louder.
in my opinion Overlook needs more emphasis on the synth at track03 in the final part, which is almost silent in the mix.
regarding The path, I have nothing against the new version. By listening to it, however, I’ve noticed something weird which I will report to the bugs forum.
concerning ROTU:
the good
no more clicking and popping.
the track “drums” is less sharp (less high frq) and more pleasant.
the bad
the “bassline” track has become a bit too prominent in the mix and the “LPF Pads” FilterON/OFF automation workaround with the “filter”-sendtrack suppresses the admittedly annoying clicking, but also makes the effect itself less perceivable.
apart from that, the whole track(not the song) has become too gentle in the mix, loudness-wise - which is in my opinion the most striking change for the worse and the only one i’d rather see fixed before replacing the original.
the slightly off-topic
besides all that i think we should seriously think about including a completely new set of demosongs, exclusively written with and for v1.9 as there are a lot of beefed up FX, which with the current repertoire of songs don’t come into consideration at all.
Thanks for the feedback Taktik, Itty and Keith. Just goes to show you how subjective the mixing thing is. I didn’t reach for the Maximizer because I didn’t want to go down the mastering road without proper exciters as well. Hence in my books they remain quiet.
Perhaps if Keith’s “tabla rasa” suggestion is not adopted (though a good idea) perhaps then each author can do a final tweak to their liking. I’d still personally refrain from using the Maximizer, but I’m made my offering and it stays there 
If we do a new batch of songs for 1.9 can I please be involved with the mixing process?
(ps. taktik, micro small small small unrealistic feature request: Can we have a native exciter effect for mastering?)
OK I should just quit my pompous whining and get on with it. Any work you guys want me to do just let me know the specifics and I’ll do it.
So start submitting the details.
Extension of what foo? started…
How about making a pool of the existing demo songs and anyone who wants to remix/master them can and they can be included in a monthly update which Renoise automatically asks if you want to download.
Sort of like AdAware asks you to update your definitions…
Which reminds me. It is defrag/reg clean/adware/virus check time!
Have you done yours recently gentlemen?
foo : why not emulate some brickwall limiting with the compressor ? It’s not working that bad, really.
Or, go through the track, normalize all the samples, add a gainer where needs be and remix it from scratch…
Ok, let’s do some replying here, in reverse order:
Vadarfone:
Normalize all the samples? You’re kidding right? I can’t even find the words to counter this. Thanks for the suggestion, but no.
Looza:
Indeed, it’s OK (the bus comp needs work, it’s very phasey). And the Maximizer is probably fine too. We just lack an exciter for proper mastering (EQ boosting will NOT cut it). If the dev team and the artists so desire it I can use the Maximizer to master each track to -8db RMS, but no louder. It’s their call.
Vadarfone
This would be a mess, and would also negate the fab work already put into the existing demo songs for the purpose of showing off Renoise’s capability. Sorry to get snobby about it, but some of us can mix better than others, just as some of us are better at Ninja-tracking than others. ROTU the definitive example of how a cutting edge groove can be pulled off in Renoise. The Path is probably the world’s greatest Ninja-tracking piece ever. I can’t imagine the demo pack without them. We’re trying to standardize our presentation here, multiplying creative chaos will not help.
Bantai:
I’d be happy with either ogg or Flac. I don’t feel the ogg compression on the songs I’ve mixed really detract from the sound in a major way. This is more of a debate about how big the installer file size should be, which I’ve no voice in.
Bantai:
I think Digging For Gold shows what can be done with vocals well. Again it’s not my call if more songs should be added or not, but if they were I’d suggest very selectively and with a high amount of quality control. My fear is that the demo pack could turn into something like FL’s pack, with a gazillion songs where most of them sound awful.
Keith303
The bass I can fix easy enough (out of interest Keith what monitors are you using, KRK’s? Sub?). With the ‘clicking workaround’ I can probably fix this by making use of the Render Selection to sample feature and then hand-mute the clicks in the sample editor. This workaround was caused by a problem I need to talk to Taktik about: disengaging some of the internal filters causes nasty clicks, probably due to something with CPU suspend function. It’s a real problem in the DSP chains and instrument note-offs as well.
Keith303
Well I’m not going to discuss the loudness-war debate and which side of that argument we all fall upon. Simply, if you like I’m offering to use the Maximizer to boost the track to a -8db RMS loudness. This will still sound incomplete as a mastering due to the fact that we have no exciters to use.
Additionally if the track sounds too quite as a pre-master then maybe you’ve not callibrated your monitor playback to compensate for listening to mastered and pre-mastered masterial. You could simply do what I do: set your DSP card mix to 0db for mixing pre-masters, and set it to -8db for listening to mastered commercial material. This also will quickly show you commercial music that’s been mastered too loud compromising transients.
It-Alien
This I can fix if you like.
Should I PM Florian, Sewen, Neil to make sure they’ve read this thread? If we all come together on an agreement to Taktik’s liking per the points I’ve outlined above then I think we’ll have something very awesome to present 
Fair enough mate. No need to come back with such an aggressive reply though, when you basically self-appointed yourself as the main man for the job anyway.
Agreed on all points Vadarfone and Bantai.
Aaah. I like it when balance is restored.
Peace and all that.
Yeah…
not much more to say… the musical time based selection method is totally awesome for dealing with beats…
Btw. I think it would be whole lot better if the timings inside the sample editor could be only “graphically” synced - and the playback (pitch) would not be affected at all.
Or perhaps I just don’t understand the logic behind this
or perhaps a tickbox would do so that you could select that just the sample editor would understand the timebase. Then the loops could still be played by different keys.
edit3: um… okay this feature needs some getting used to do so these were just the first impressions… anyways this new editor is quite lovely
Yeah… after some testing I think it would be creatively better if the sync button could just sync the sample editor timings so that the measures were understood there and not alter the pitch to match the tempo.
Or… perhaps another tickbox for releasing the pitch for normal playback when the sync is selected.
I don’t directly see what the problem is between syncing the sample and the graphical display in the sampleeditor? Maybe you could try to explain the problem more clearly.
Lets say you sync a 1 bar beat loop to 16 steps. If you now go into the sampleeditor and select 16th or 32th or whatever beatbased ratio, -> you can snap to the beatgrid in the sample editor and this can be very handy. This isn’t your problem right?
Syncing a sample without changing the pitch (like ableton can do) isn’t possible right now in renoise, tho I son’t see what this would have to do with the sample editor
hmm…
I just want the sample editor to understand the measures of the loop without losing the ability to play different notes on the keyboard.
No beatsyncing needed here… Nothing like ableton or anything.
Otherwise the editor is great but if you want to edit the loop by measures the pitch changes.
Call me an idiot, but I still don’t get it.
Is this already documented somewhere?
there is the sync button in the sample properties. When you press it autosyncs the sample editor so that you can make edits by measure or beat - it’s selectable.
REALLY awesome for slicing loops if you want to do it the Recycle way.