Mastered/pre-mastered question

[Ormion]

I have a question. We all say sometimes ''this cd has great mastering or bad mastering'', but I'm curious... How do you know if a mastering is good if you haven't listened to the pre-mastered version first?

Here is waht I mean:

Some artists have in purpose a dirty/rusty sound (Schlabbaduerst artists for example). I fsomeone doesn't know their style, he might believe that the mastering is bad, right? Other artists use a very noisy, squeezy sound in their tracks like South African acts. I remember that I liestened to an Artifakt track with an intense ''squeeze'' sound and a friend said to me that this track has a very bad quality, but the truth is that Artifakt wants to achieve this sound.

 

Or: Let's say that I wrote a track with aaaawful sound and baaaad quality, and it's mastered by Xenomorph himself. Can the mastered version sound good? Even if he is the best music technician in the world, he still couldn't improve the sound of my track in professional level.

So, in that case it's the original version that it's bad not the mastering.

 

[Colin OOOD]

Depending on what is wrong with the track, you'd be surprised how much can be done to make something sound listenable, and for sure there are some 'shiny turds' out there. However the fact remains that the better the pre-master is, the better result good post-processing will achieve. As for not having heard the pre-master first, experienced ears can recognise overcompression or inappropriate EQ...

[Otto Matta]

I've been getting increasingly annoyed by computer tracks that are too glossy and clean in their production. Maybe I've simply been hearing too many "shiny turds", as Colin says, lately.

 

I'm starting to learn, slowly but surely, that production is part of the art itself, and shouldn't really be considered an exclusively technical and dry aspect of music-making. In other words, obviously it's a good idea to learn about production and how to do it properly, but the art comes with knowing how to break the rules in order to achieve your own sound, your own identity.

 

I'm sure I write more or less like everyone else, and do the production as I go along, side by side with the melodies and the beats and what have you. In this way it's part of the creation, and not just something you do at the end to make whatever you've done sellable or whatever.

 

But ultimately it comes down to one's priorities. Art? Money? Or somewhere in between.