| This is an age-old argument. Experience counts for more than gear for sure. However, nobody could say with a straight face that the monitoring chain, including the room, doesn't matter in mastering. You can't fix what you can't hear, and even if you do pretty well for a while, eventually you will miss something important with an inferior chain. Many Dynaudios are reasonable speakers, and certainly far more appropriate than NS10s for mastering. With a sub it's not a bad place to start if set up well in a good room.
Moving beyond that, anybody can buy gear. The reason you pay hundreds per hour at Sterling or other top houses is not because of the gear. It may make their job easier, but it is the experience and track record that pull in the clients and enable them to charge what they charge. A real room and real gear is simply expected at that level. At a lower level, some may take gear as a sign of seriousness, but it may be just be the sign of a trust fund. Regardless, in the end, to have both gear and ear is better than either one alone.
Talking about Lance, a kid on his bike won't win, but Lance isn't riding and winning on a Huffy 3-speed either. Just because one thing is of greater importance doesn't make the other thing of no importance. |