Otis Grapsas
Carbonite Member
The low levels are on purpose, that's what I meant by sarcasm. It is exactly the same in all the clips. I don't believe it helps the material.
The idea behind giving your audio to someone else to master is that he listens to the material for the first time. It's fresh ears, he can spots problems easily because he hasn't become accustomed to them like you did with the repeated listening. He can save you from a lot of trouble and he can protect you from yourself. All musicians have certain cliches in their audio processing, things they like to do, like a specific compressor they use a lot. There is so much mastering software these days and almost every musician abuses that power these provide when attempting to master. The output interferes with the audio quality and the mastering process. The mastering engineer knows the market, he knows the playback equipment limitations, his monitoring system and tools are far better than what a home studio has, and he has mastered hundreds of records and has working solutions for all common mastering problems. It's a new brain working on the material. It's money well spent.
