Classical recordings and mastering. Why mastered sounds so much better?

[Stradivariusz]

Hallo
I'm a musician and a beginner as a recording engineer, so this had intrigued me veeery much.
As a musician I played in the recording of some chamber orchestra. Just after the session I asked the guy who did the recordng if he could give me few fragments of the recording on the CD to check some things where I played solo. Some time ago he send to everybody the first edit of the recording already mastered a bit. When the sound of the orchestra on the NOT mastered first CD was not really great - simple, thiny and quite boring - instruments didn't glue to each other, it sounded not really like a quality recording we know from the shops, mastered CD was astonishing!!! How does he do it? What is he using? There was great full sound, fantastic space and depth! Exactly like all this commercial CD's we know from the shops - this CD has to go there as well

Actually for fun I mastered the fragments of the original tracks from the first CD and achieve the similar sound which he got, but I wonder if my way is the way the BIG GUYS are using, but keeping it as a secret?
It has nothing to do with compressors, EQ, reverb. I wonder if I'm on the good track. I used some M-S plugins.

With it I could change the space and reachness of the sound, but since nobody is talking here about it, maby somebody will shoot at me?

Greetz

Strad

[Massive Master]

I actually do more that my fair share of classical...

1) It all comes down to the actual recording.
2) Classical normally doesn't go "through the garden" like most projects would - The point is to leave it very "pure" (for lack of a better term). If you're tweaking classical, and the classical buffs notice it, it's bad.

Therein lies the problem...

It's a VERY fine line between "mastered" and "processed" with classical... It's VERY easy on a good recording to toss on a little mild compression and get the recording sounding much "bigger" - On a lot of "rookie" (musician) material I do, I try to mimic the ear's natural compression at high volume - very conservatively.

If I did that with a pro orchestral recording, traditional and purist listeners will hear that little extra bit of compression when they crank it up in some towers and call it a "hack job."

So, it depends on your audience. Me? I almost wish they'd bend a little, as I tend to enjoy a little mild compression on classical pieces myself. But I think they have the same fear as most M.E.'s and gun owners - Once you give them a little, where will it stop?

They have no fear of the volume knob, so I think they want to just leave it alone. They want to hear it as it was captured. I can respect that.