I read somewhere on this site that there is a really good thread about mastering somewhere. Does anyone know where that is? I still don't know if i think it's necessary, but I was talking to someone who has and as a before and after and they can tell the difference. I've definitely gotten recordings to sound good just using my eight track and mixing it to sound studio and messing with normalization and db. I don't know. If anyone reads this and knows where all that mastering info is, let me know.

What About Mastering?
Mastering?
Mastering Engineer?
Mastering Places

Mastering is more than just getting something to sound good. All (or most) of the recordings at Electrical get mastered, do you think they sound like crap before they go out to the mastering studio and then magically sound better on the way out?

Mastering is the final step before production. It's quality control. It's another set of (really good ) ears. It's about optimizing levels without compromising sound. It's a final check of frequency response on a very accurate playback system being listened to and adjusted by (hopefully) very well trained and experienced ears. It's about getting the sequence, spacing and flow of the album just right.

Some people don't find these things to be crucial or necessary, and some people think they can do just as good of a job on their laptop. As long as those people are perfectly happy with their final product I don't see anything wrong with that.