Would mix/mastering engineers do it differently if...

[taeyoung]

You are totally right. Getting a mix to sound good on most systems is a challenging feat but needs to be done as people wont be listening to your music on your system, they will be listening on all different sorts of systems.

I dont see anything wrong with using subs to mix and master as long as you set the sub up right so you know how to mix with it.
Play a commercial CD on your mixing set up that you like the low end of, and then set the sub so it is almost starting to go boomy when at loud volumes. Then that should give you decent transition to other systems of your low end.

Eck

Hi thanks for the responses everyone. Oops, maybe bringing up the Metallica CD was a bad idea...actually my main question was simply, do you think that since mastering is geared towards making the music sound good on the widest range of systems possible, that there is therefore comprimise in certain aspects to accomidate that?

I mean if you can get your stuff to sound good on ipod headphones, aren't you actually comprimising the sound in a way.

It was just a theoretical question more than anything. But thanks for the mastering advice too guys, lol

 

[Farview]

I don't think mastering is geared toward making music sound good on everything. It's about making it sound as good as it can, period.

You don't compromise the sound you want just because someone may play it on a 20 year old clock radio. The idea is to get it to sound great, if someone plays it on a bad sounding system, that isn't your problem.