Psychobillybob
Probably a huge difference in the way we work, I am tracking WITH clients in the studio, they sit with me IN the control room, an actual room filled with analog gear...we can hear "dynamics" immediately anytime we want...if you are dealing with folks in a virtual studio, then by all means use virtual tools.

I deal with all kinds of people, from award-winners to up and coming artists, from mixes made from 2" 24-track analog to Apple Logic. I love mastering a wide variety of material, it keeps me fresh and interested. But, no - I rarely track or do mix engineering because frankly I'm too expensive, so most of those projects involve classical music from labels with decent budgets. I receive two-tracks, often from people who weren't satisfied with the results from working with previous "professional" mastering engineers. I believe part of that is because those engineers didn't work with the client and give them the attention they deserved. Those recordings are people's dreams, they're not just a gig.
 
Your way of working with the client is to mix and track with them, which is great. My way is to have a lot of back and forth regarding what they want to accomplish with the music they've already recorded. I see LANDR as providing a component in that back and forth.
 
And yes, most people are clueless about mastering. I do not hold that against them or diminish them because of that. Mastering is not their gig, it's mine. I love nothing better than a superbly crafted song with a decent mix that I can bring to its full potential.  

stxxIf I send 8 songs from a project there, they comes back sounding like they belong together.

I'm very interested in this point.
 
I'm sure everyone has noticed that the word "mastering" in the modern day, and in the context of Landr, is now quite different to what it used to be.  It now seems to mean simply making something louder so it can compete with other commercial tracks, by homogenising and standardising it's level and frequency content and distribution.
 
One aspect of mastering used to relate to putting an album of songs together so that they would work as a sonically consistent body of work.  A ballad following an uptempo rock track would be "mastered" differently so they could play consecutively on the album without it being jarring or unnatural.
 
So what I want to know, and maybe stxx can confirm based on his experience (quoted above) - does Landr "master" a collection of tracks with this in mind - or is it simply a one-song-at-a-time enloudner?
 

Dreamstation
So what I want to know, and maybe stxx can confirm based on his experience (quoted above) - does Landr "master" a collection of tracks with this in mind - or is it simply a one-song-at-a-time enloudner?

 
Thank you for bringing this up. Mastering an album is an entirely different skill set, but the variability is huge. THIS is what many people don't understand about the mastering engineer being the last step in the creative process, not just the technical process.
 
For example in doing albums I almost never use the default 2 seconds between cuts specified by the Red Book standard. I ask that clients provide individual songs without fades. I suggest changes in song orders, and even cut sections of songs. I suggest crossfades and transitions. In one recent project I asked the artist to cut a new section to transition between two songs. He loved it. 
 
It's not always that way; some artists know exactly what they want, know the running order, have the balances set right, etc. etc. But others are very open to creative input, while others expect it because they're burned out after listening to something for months or years and they want an objective viewpoint. 
 
As far as I know there is no one-size-fit-all mastering solution for all use cases, but there are definitely some solutions that work for most of the people, most of the time.

I love music. I HATE the "industry" of music. And that's what we're really dealing with. I respect everyone on this forum and I do mean everyone. Please, respect what I'm about to say even if you disagree. Cool? Lets be honest. This service is not needed in the least bit. If clients knew half of what's being said here they'd be engineers. One of the most simple thing to do is to give a client a semi-mastered track. You just want it not to sound too weak when they play it. It's called a "rough mix" for a reason. Or "rough master" :)
 
I believe some professionals here (not me) feel insulted that their DAW of choice has gone this route. Yeah, kinda tongue in cheek. I'm curious if all this debate will change anything.
 
And I admit I don't like it. It's like sticking a bumper sticker on a Porsche. Even if all the other companies go this route. All the more reason to stay out of it. But I KNOW I DON'T KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT.
 
 
 
 
 
 

jpetersen
Then set up a genre-appropriate preset, process and return to sender.
 

I'm not a big fan of presets, here's why. 

Incidentally, the Landr blog has a recent post about DAWs where they list-out 12 of "the best" and its nice to see that Sonar isn't included down the bottom somewhere as an "also-ran".  However, they are referring to X3 rather than the latest iteration, which I guess is a little disappointing given this newly announced association.

Anderton
 
I'm not a big fan of presets, here's why. 

 
So you truly believe that landr is that different to a preset in a mastering plugin Craig? I have given it a spin and to me the results were pretty similar. Like any mastering plugin preset,  it certainly works better on some tracks than it does on others,  and the end result is sometimes better but never brilliant.  Surely your 'works by coincidence' assertion could apply equally to it? 
 
I personally could not care less that the installer was included with the main installation package.  I have no use for it,  but as long as it does not affect stability I can easily ignore it.  That said,  what I find as perplexing as peoples fickle outrage at its inclusion though is Cakewalk heavyweights so tenaciously defending a third party consumer oriented cloud service utility that many of it's customers seem none too thrilled with having shown up on their computer like a U2 album on an ipod. 
 
 

 
Submit to the will of Landru:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZMuBIJxmnA
 
 
 

I'm curious and a bit concerned about one point that's been raised (several times).
A few people were insisting that LANDR be removed from the latest update, and only be available as an option, separate from the main Newburyport update.
Other than the additional time it takes to download the update, why are people so adamant about not including it with the Newburyport update?

It's my understanding that this is just a plugin/separate program, when you go to export audio from your Sonar project, LANDR is just one of many options to choose when exporting the audio, and that LANDR doesn't even become active unless you choose that option.  Is LANDR running in the background as soon as you open Sonar?   Is it creating an open Internet connection before you even choose to use it?

So, I just don't get why it's so important to some of the commenters that LANDR be not included in the Newburyport update?  If it adds a couple of minutes to the overall download time of the latest update, what's the big deal?
Or am I missing something?
 

Leee

Other than the additional time it takes to download the update, why are people so adamant about not including it with the Newburyport update?

 
Unless this is changed, it will also be included in each update going forward as well (each update is a self-contained version, enabling rollback, but also growing at a rapid rate). The internal linkages to SONAR are part of the main SONAR program, but packaging LANDR's program is not anything CW even coded. Who knows, next month we could get Google Desktop "to help you manage your files better," then Adobe Acrobat "to ensure you can read the pdf help file," etc.
 
Bottom line, LANDR's software is no different, if people want it they can go download it on their own.