Arpangel wrote: ↑Fri May 20, 2022 8:27 amHugh Robjohns wrote: ↑Fri May 20, 2022 7:39 amArpangel wrote: ↑Fri May 20, 2022 6:13 amHow many people are going to be listening on mastering grade payback systems?
Very few... but the whole point of 'mastering grade' monitoring is to hear everything as it really is, so that it can be made to sound the best it possibly can -- without sonic issues that the mix engineer couldn't hear -- or, worse, tonal compensations the mix engineer dialed in to correct for on -- the inadequacies of their own sub-par 'monitoring' system.
Only by mastering through an truely accurate full range monitoring system in a neutral acoustic environment can you be sure that the music will sound the best it possibly can on the widest range of typical punter systems.
You could say, that it’s a good idea to listen on more modest equipment, things that are closest to your normal listeners situation.
You could say it, but that doesn't make it true...
It doesn’t make it untrue either!
Some mastering engineers have a magic touch, and are (were?) in big demand, but how much music today actually relies on high end mastering?
With musicians doing more and more of the work now, and the high quality of equipment on offer at lower prices, that last thing in the chain, just becomes something we do, just another job we don’t even notice, I think we do it as we go along.
I get your point, but high-end monitoring systems are not designed to make the music sound good, they're designed to deliver as much information as possible. That, in turn, allows you to create a mix/master that has the best sound of sounding acceptable across the widest possible range of playback systems.
If you're using cheap consumer stuff to mix or master, it's a constant moving target. One cheap system might boom horribly around 100Hz. Another might not, but sound really nasty around 5kHz. It's no good for your mix to compensate for those two specific issues, because the next system someone uses to listen to your mix might not have those issues at all, but instead have another set of problems. If you've held back at 100Hz and 5kHz in your mix due to your speakers, then it's going to sound lacking on other systems that don't have those specific problems.
No mix or master is ever going to avoid the problems inherent in poor speaker/headphones, but having a high-quality monitoring system in a well-treated space ensures (hopefully) that you're not adding any issues of your own to the mix, and not baking in the deficiencies of your speaker by compensating for them in the mix.