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Giving what the artist wants in terms of sound is the mixing engineer's work. People these days confuse the words "master mix" and "mastering". Mixing a song and maximizing its potential is done at the mix level, not mastering. This produces a master mix, which people have come to call a "master", then the internet happened and people are now confused between the two. Mastering is not a per-song process, it's an album process. Any time a guy offers "mastering per song" you can bet your ass it's a guy who will just run your stuff through a compressor and some EQ and give you a bombastic track. That has nothing to do with actual mastering. Mastering compression should be almost imperceptible. If there's something that requires extreme work in the track, then the mix is bad and mastering can do nothing about that in 99% of all cases. For example.. the muddy snare in that Jentu track. You cleaned it up nice via EQ, but there's so much going on in the same area of the mids in that track that the the rest of the mids are screwed up, square wave now overpowers the rest by a mile and the pads are brittle. This track needs to be sent back to the mixing stage first, and your work on it will only makes it sound worst even if you have the best intentions.

Again, mastering is an album process. Get 10 different tracks mastered individually, trying to correct mix mistakes, and you end up with an album that's uneven and all over the place.

A lot of electronic music doesn't have much dynamics to begin with, so there's not a lot to preserve. Whether you maximize at 0db or -0.5db is of very little consequence since the music is so undynamic from the get go. Me talking about your master being damn near 0db wasn't something about dynamics, it was to say that it screws up perception when compared with a -10db source. As far as my ear can tell from a youtube stream, you didn't go crazy on squashing compression or anything. I really just meant that it's close to impossible to tell if you made the track better if we get a 10db jump between A and B unless we ride the fader.

Justice in my favorite album of theirs, but I don't think it sold 8 millions on sound quality It sold that much because it's just fucking great tunes. If music sold on production quality, jazz quartets would be all the rage right now Also.. I meant bass levels as in.. the volume of the actual instrument, not as in 'low end'. Justice has a plenty of low end, it's just on the wrong instrument. Ulrich didn't make that decision on sound preference, he made that decision on him hating Newsted. The whole bassgate debacle is pretty well documented. Ulrich has even come out many times speaking disfavorably about the mix on Justice. What I meant by that is that giving what the artist wants is by no means a measure for good sound. If you've ever been with a band trying to do a mix down you know what I mean. Each of the fuckers wants to have their shit sit front and center in the mix and bury the other guys so far down that they'll appear on the B side. Justice is terribly, terribly mixed. Amazing album.. but terrible mix nonetheless. Not that the shitty 'and justice for jason' fixed anything though

No offense, but that's one hell of a shit mastering job.

That's because everybody thinks they know what mastering is and can do it themselves. In my experience, 99% of artists can't do proper mastering, and 99% of the 1% remaining can't either. People cannot be trusted around compressors and EQs.

Very good replies so far! Some answers were totally expected, some are very not that thing I just said. Keep them coming

Mind my PTSD please. My pro-tracker sound design.

Heteronormativity is saying that heterosexuality is the default, the norm. So technically, since YOU responded "hetero" to me saying "tits", you are the one doing heteronormativity. Tits and short shorts can appeal to any gender and orientation, for a variety of reasons.

Tits and short shorts usually are.