Can we please define a term here?
"Mixing for the masses"
What the heck is that anyway?
Whenever I work on a mix, I'm only thinking about making the best music possible. Every engineer I've ever worked with does the same thing. In other words, express the music to greatest degree it can possibly be expressed, with the gear at hand to the best of ones ability. Never ever, in all the years I've been doing this has any engineer ever talked about "mixing for the masses" or dumbing anything down. Or trying to appeal to some mythical idea of what people might want to hear. It all comes from the music itself.
So what is this "mixing for the masses"? I need you to explain that to me, seriously, I really do because I don't get what that is.
My guess is that you are dividing the listening public up into two groups, the "masses" and the "audiophiles". As in: "the unwashed masses" and "the good guys".
My feeling is that a great mix will play back well on a standard home stereo system, but also sound that much better on a killer audiophile system. I'm not talking about making car mixes, and I don't think anybody here is. Although getting a mix to work in a noisy environment and still be a good mix is a bit of an art unto itself.
Dewd, you are very entertaining and some of what you say is half right, but you come at it from the wrong angle. Like looking at the truth from 180 degrees off, it's not the truth anymore.