The official Doom Eternal soundtrack has received a lot of criticism and backlash from the listeners as it was not able to provide the quality that the listeners were hoping for. The criticism got more intense when it turned out that the Doom Eternal soundtrack was mixed internally by Id’s lead audio designer, which ruined the soundtrack. Mick Gordon cornered himself from the controversy and said that he did not thoroughly mix the soundtrack. Seeing the reactions of the fans, Id’s executive producer Marty Stratton came forward in support of his lead audio designer. He issued an open letter on Reddit, to put for their side of the story.
According to Stratton, the speculation that the quality of the soundtrack is compromised because Gordon didn’t get the accurate time and freedom for the track are baseless. The quality of the soundtrack was compromised because of the multiple delays in releasing the soundtrack as Gordon failed numerous times to complete the soundtrack in due time. Id had announced during E3 2019 event that it would release Doom Eternal soundtrack with the Collector’s Edition of the game.
In January 2020, Id and Mick Gordon signed an agreement according to which Gordon had to deliver the OST track by March so that Id could release the soundtrack with the Collector’s Edition of the game. He opened about the term of the agreement, according to which Gordon had to produce a minimum of 12 tracks, and also, a bonus was added if the soundtrack was delivered on time. Gordon got complete creative control of the soundtrack. Though in February, Gordon came forward and demanded extra time for completing the track as there was a lot of work involved then he anticipated and told Id that he would try to complete 30 soundtracks.
The company honored his demand and extended the deadline for the track by six weeks, due to this Id was unable to release the track with CE even though many countries have strict consumer protection law according to which consumer has the right to ask for a refund if any product is not delivered on time. Id was under the pressure of releasing the track on time in April, Id started working on a backup plan and their lead audio designer Chad started collected the music that Mick had delivered till now and started mixing the track together into OST.
Chad started working on the Id backup track by editing pre-mixed and pre-compressed music from Mick. At the same time, Mick was reminded about the deadline and was informed about Chad working on the backup track. After which Mick suggested that he and Chad should work together for good results. Mick Took Chad’s work and he decided that he will work on 12 track and the rest of the soundtrack would be filled with Chad’s track. Mick was able to deliver only 9 tracks as he ran into some sort of problem, but his track was not up to the standard of heavy-combat music. Mick then suggested that they can add Chad’s track to add the more heavy track. Then Id added Mick previously released the track in place of Chad’s track having similar thematic material.
This mix up took wrongly by people as they noticed the difference in the waveforms of the track. He explained that when Id receives the track from Mick, the highs and lows of the song waveform are clipped which makes the track look like a bar. When Mick finally mixes the song for OST, he re-mixes the song so that the highs and lows are not clipped. In the end, he said that “Gordon music is incredible, he is a rare talent, and I hope he wins many awards for his contribution to DOOM Eternal at the end of the year”, but was extremely unhappy with the way Gordon refused that he didn’t have any information about the mixing of the song by Id and said that work of his team should get the deserved appreciation.
