Who the Hell is Mastering these days???

[engmix]

Originally Posted by princeplanet

Getting back to the OP, nobody ever got fired by sending out mastering to Sterling/Gateway/Grundman etc, so it's easy to see why the labels do it. Trouble is, what passes for A&R these days in many cases have no idea of a good mastering job vs a bad one. It's all about credits, budgets and deadlines to them, NOT quality control, as it used to be, as it still should be. So the Mastering houses are taking advantage of this lack of pressure to maintain quality. I strongly suspect that to handle the enormous O/S component to their workload, these places are employing "understudies" maybe into the night. This may explain the often bizarre results we've been hearing from these types of places over the past few years, some of which actually get released!

So what can you do? You complain around here and get jumped on for daring to suggest that the pro ME houses are dropping their guard. Better to register the complaint with the record labels, as well as to musicians. There is a culture of denial going on around here which I find unconscionable....

very interesting thought. i have to say, i recently had a single mastered at one of the houses you mentioned with one of their chief engineers, whom i have used before. what a pile of shyte they sent back to me. my ruff mastering sounded better. i really don't think that he actually did it himself. i have had good masters from there. but i have noticed if i don't go, it's a total disaster.

it really makes me wonder.