As you already know, today's prosumer level equipment is financially within reach of most everyone. A good recording engineer can achieve greater quality today than possible from a high end studio 15 years ago (or something like that, I've got no real facts to back that up, you know what I mean).
Don't mistake capacity for quality. Sure , one can create a massive multi-track production in th home for $2500 with of gear, which used to take a Gig Boy studio to achieve. But the quality just isn't the same. $2500 is the cost of a single mic preamp - hell a single mic - in a Big Boy studio, and that's for a reason. Because they *sound* different.
Sure, a good engineer can make something servicable out of a small project studio, whether they're pro or not; but that's not because of the gear, that's because of their skills.
News flash; it's no different with mastering.
But mastering equipment and skills needed are still out of reach of the normal guy like me.
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Then comes the non-tangibles, like listening expertise. I don't have it, that's why my mixes sound like crap. That's why i need to send it out to a mastering studio.
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I won't say that tracking and mixing are easy to do. I feel I fall flat there. I certainly don't think mastering a set of songs is black magic. But there's a level of committment to a mastering studio that's not needed to track and mix.
This is exactly the misunderstanding, the untrue double-standard that I'm talking about. The belief that all tracking and mixing requires is some crap gear run by any old dude or dudette with enough personal credit, but mastering is on another level both gear and expertise-wise. Quality mastering does require that, but so do quality tracking and mixing to an exactly equal degree.
But now you have discovered that your gear and your level of expertise *isn't* good enough to get the tracking and mixing down, and that you have to hope that someone like Tom can "save your bacon". A year and a half of your life and $2500 spent just to have to pay someone to come in and try and salvage what they can from your mess.
Do you have any idea how much cheaper it would have been in both time and money to actually do it right from the beginning by hiring an experienced producer or engineer to help with your project? You would have had your tracks done a year ago, it would have cost a whole lot less than you've spent doing it this way, your tracks would sound a whole lot better, and your mastering costs would be lower with better results.
Then there's another aspect of tracking and mixing that lends to the reason people like to do that themselves and that is the artistic side of it. As a writing musician, my songs are still works in progress until I mixdown.
What that means to me is that you rushed into recording before you actually had a product that was ready to record, and that you didn't have a plan in your head for what you wanted before you hit the record button. And it wound up costing you a year and a half anyway.
Glen, I think the only thing we have in common is we are trying to put out quality material. Our paths to that point are completely different and I need to rely on a good mastering job to get me to that point.
I'm only asking this:
I'm asking where it is that you guys get the idea from the get-go that it's OK to phone in the tracking and ignore the mixing, because all the quality comes from the mastering? Where did that idea *come from*?
I'm asking what is so economical about spending $2500 on entry-level gear, a year and a half of your life that you'll never get back (that's worth a lot more than $2500 right there), just to wind up having to pin your hopes on the idea that all your mistakes can be fixed in the shrinkwrap, which, BTW you're paying even more to have done, only to wind up with a result that will be inferior to and more expensive than what you would have had if someone didn't come along and plant those ideas about tracking, mixing and mastering in your head, and if you weren't in such a hurry to record.
Again, Chili, I'm not meaning to pick on you, you just happen to be here right now
. There are a few million other Chili's out there who have this idea that the only thing that requires pro skills is the mastering, and it just gets sickening to keep hearing that over and over, like the ringing of a bell signifying the death of the music recording industry.
G.
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