How important is the mastering tools

To get the Motown sound.

More music with feeling so people can feel again.

instead of processed human beings maybe?

If they can bring out a more natural sound I would be happy! If not and it still sounds good. I am happy.

+1!

My daughter put it to me this way : " I hate concert albums!  I love live concerts, but hate recordings of those concerts." Our ears are used to a certain sound when listening to what we considered a finished product.  The same is true with video.  Movies look less real than footage from a high quality camcorder intentionally. Colors are graded to match or create moods that do not occur naturally.  Movies that try to look natural tend to be low-budget affairs that have very little mass appeal.  I'm not saying these are good things.  Just the way things have developed.  For whatever reason people prefer a less natural sound when it comes to recorded media as opposed to live.  I won't even get into how impossible it is for many popular genres of music to sound natural since they are based on unnatural sounds to begin with.

Its not the tools. Give 2 guys the same amount of wood and nails and supply each of them a hammer. One will build an amazing house and another will build a dinky shack.

Its never the tools. Its how you use them

Its never the tools. Its how you use them

 
I agree, mostly.  But the tools matter.  A lot.  If you don't have the right tools, you may still be able to make it work but it's going to take a lot more time, effort and frustration.  Some of the mastering tools available now make the process of mastering easier than it's ever been.  Not to say mastering is ever easy, because it's not.  It's one of the trickiest parts of music production.  That's why we have engineers who do only mastering, and have extraordinarily expensive hardware and software JUST for mastering.
 
I've always had to do my own mastering, out of necessity, so over time I've gotten reasonably okay at it.  I mastered my last album with Sound Forge using the Ozone mastering plug-ins.  It came out good, not perfect, but still perfectly listenable and musical.  I over-compressed a couple tracks, squashing the dynamics, which I regret (even though that seems to be the "industry standard" these days).  And the drums got a little buried in the mix.  But there are no game-ending flubs, and I've actually received a lot of compliments on the sound.  Considering the tools I had at the time, I'm very proud of the finished product. 
 
It took me years to get to that level, though, and I'm still evolving as both artist and engineer.  Right now my focus is on composing for film/tv/games, so that's a whole different ballgame with a completely different approach to mixing and mastering.  Again, having the right tools matters.  For this I'm using EastWest Quantum Leap sound libraries, and it makes mixing orchestral instruments relatively easy because all the nitty gritty production was already done in the EastWest studios.  It's about as close as you can get to having a real orchestra sitting in front of you.  To the greatest extent possible, this allows me to focus on the art of composing rather than the art of engineering. What a blessing that is.
 
So, yes, it's ultimately true it's "in the way that you use it".  But the tools definitely matter, too.

+1
Look at what the beatles did with nothing, but a 4 track

Some of my favorite music was made in bullet riddled huts with bargain basement instruments and gear on 4 tracks as well.

dubdisciple


Some of my favorite music was made in bullet riddled huts with bargain basement instruments and gear on 4 tracks as well.

this post has been nominated for "most creative line in a post"
 
+1
 
good stuff

Michael Five


a bad recording can't hide good music, and a good recording can't hide bad music....

This post has been nominated for "best post that most resembles a fortune cookie"
 
sorry guys,im all done nominating.
 
but those are some great words of wisdom.

I'm a bit skeptical about the oft-stated "look at what The Beatles did with just a four track". If they ever did anything with just a four track, I've certainly never heard it. I've heard what they did with a four-track, in a fantastic sounding room, with the greatest mics available to them, set up by the best engineers in the world, running through the most state of the art desk and outboard available at the time, working with, in practical terms, unlimited budgets and a supporting cast of the best session and orchestral players available. It's not like they banged out Sgt Pepper on a Tascam Portastudio.