Blimey, what a load of whoo ha!!. It's good to see how emotional people are getting over their art. The point i was making (for the record), is that I like T-racks on first impressions and feel that it might be interesting for newbies to use. By running through a few presets they can hear (hopefully!) any muddiness in their mid area etc etc, and it may give them a different approach in how they attack their next piece of work, or amend their present one. Trial and error is always a good plan of attack, and if you are of the opinion that mastering is important, and you don't have the money or the intention of mailing your production to a mastering house for a lot of money, then T-Racks could play a part. It could never take the place of a fantastically trained musical ear, but it's the most intuative and cheapest way to go about it. Finally, Pjotr was right in saying that you can't polish a turd, but it helps to use a magnifying glass(T-racks)to see just how shi*ty it is, as people tend to learn from their mistakes.

hmm I see my statement has raised hell



What I said does not imply that I am the mix master of the world, and that my mixes are so great etc etc. But I do notice, especially in the "amateur scene" that mastering is used as a quick and dirty fix.

For vinyl, a track is mastered, not to make it sound better (ideally), but to make sure that the vinyl is cuttable/playable, and to get a decent volume out of it. The latter part is also applicable to any medium.

But a lot of "mastering" is a lot less subtle than that, which I think is a shame. If you invest time and effort to fix problems at the root, the result will at the very least leave you with more possibilities for a better end result.

I don't see why this has to be taken as arrogant. I'm not saying my skills are better, I'm suggesting a process which I feel would improve quality in a lot of cases.

___________________
All rhythm evolves around a kick...

Bah, mastering at home is overrated. Home producers should focus more on making a proper mix, rather than mastering. Most times a bedroom producer will completely kill the dynamics of their track by trying to "master" it by themselves, as it takes a truly skilled professional to properly master a track. Making your track louder is not a problem(as long as you save an unmastered copy), but overdoing it (which most seem to do) is a huge problem. Even some professionals screw up sometimes(look at some recent pop music, ie. recent Red Hot Chilli Peppers stuff, totally overcompressed to hell), so what makes you think the average joe with no experience can get it right. Just remember, as long as it took you to get a grasp on producing there is a hell of alot more to be learned about mastering, which is more about slight almost unnoticeable subtle changes.