That's all great stuff. So with all that in mind... what do you expect when you pay $300, $800, $2000 and maybe $6000 for mastering of the same album? What's the difference between those scenarios and does the price justify the result? What's the difference between the guy at home using his Ozone/TRacks compared to Bob Ludwig with $200 000 speakers?
I think that's a matter of subjectivity at that point, and also politics on another level.
Think early White Stripes versus later White Stripes. It sounded as good as they wanted it to when they started off, and the garage scenesters ate it up and it was just fine for them. As soon as there was money and industry politics behind them, the "quality" of the music changed. Now, who gets to make that call?
I think if it sounds good, it IS good, but, honestly, some people can just hear better than others, just like I can make a lay-up in a friendly one-on-one game, but I'd get swatted if I was playing against Ben Wallace, cuz he's a PRO at what he does.
Jamie King masters his own mixes, and they sound pretty good cuz he knows his routine. When he masters other people's mixes, it just sounds, well, amateur and Tracks/Ozone-ish (i'm pretty sure he uses Peak Pro with vbox though, but I digress)
Joey Sturgis knows what he's looking for from his mix to master it, and he's come up with a pretty good routine to make it from multi to 2track really clean by now with a pretty hot RMS and an overall pleasing unclipping sound.
But then start talking about REAL pros who really know what they are listening for, those weird frequencies that need to be there to make a song sound good on radio, on tv, over the PA system in a supermarket, in a movie theater, on a boombox, through ipod headphones, through laptop speakers, over a home Bose system, in a Hummer, in a Sunfire, etc etc etc. That just comes from years of experience and a lot more than a TC Finalizer or a few stock plugins I think.
But again, back to White Stripes, if it can sound like that and capture attention, then maybe all this fancy mumbo jumbo is more self pleasing to those of us involved.
Like, when we hear a song, we hear all the individual parts that are making it sound that way. Analyzing guitar tone, determining how much the drums were sampled, compression and EQ techniques, tracking layers, etc etc, but when we step into an office building, we just walk to our destination without worrying about the height of the ceiling, the building materials, the floorplan, the light fixture layout, yadda yadda yadda like a professional architecht would...
So what is the need for a pro mastering engineer versus someone with a few plugins and the ability to match RMS levels and pleasant EQ levels? Probably not much if all you're doing is releasing your music to the internet masses via MySpace, PureVolume, itunes, torrent sites and communities like this. But if you plan on delivering a commercial product, I think there's some criteria that needs to be met that maybe the average joe in his bedroom studio cannot achieve. As always, you'll have your exceptions to the rule with your prodigy phenomenon artist+producer combos, but I just don't see a band like Metallica ever resorting back to someone of that caliber because it could be cheaper and still sound "about as good".
