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Originally Posted by mindkontrolle  rcm: the "client service business" attitude will not get us far in the long run, I think we can all agree on that. |
I do not agree with that, especially at the mastering stage. People have the idea that mastering engineers are all the bad guys in all of this, but they do what the clients tell them. They have to if they want to keep the shop open. The problem they have is that most of the clients want things smashed to the gills.
I can not imagine any mastering engineer getting upset if a producer or label said, "we would like you to master this, but do not reduce the dynamic range in any way". They would probably really enjoy the session.
As a producer, I do a wide range of work. From acoustic jazz to extreme metal. What is right for each project is different. Sometimes I ask mastering engineers to leave the dynamics as they are on the mix, other times I ask the mastering engineer to smash the bejesus out of it, because the band and I wanted that as part of our artistic vision. One of the great assets of using a 3rd party to master (I do a fair amount of mastering myself) is that the engineer can give me advice, such as "maybe we should limit that jazz stuff more to bring out the subtlety of the drums", or "if we limited the metal band less we could really get those kick drums to punch harder". This is really valuable to me, but at the end of the day, its my decision as the client and if a mastering engineer refused to push the record the direction I requested, they would never have to worry about having me as a client again. I am sure Sony Records has the same policy.