I will be installing Sonar X2 Producer soon (hopefully...) and I am looking forward to using some of the new stuff it offers compared to Sonar 8.5 Producer. Apart from the changes in the interface etc. I am also interested in Pro Channel and things like the Console Emulator, which seem to sound good and better and awesome. However, the last days I've been thinking about this and I am beginning to wonder what's the use of it all... 
 
First: I read and hear a lot about 'subtle' effects. Like the Console emulator: it has a subtle effect. You almost have to A B it to notice it. I read about people spending ages on a mix to get all kinds of similar subtle effects and details exactly as they want to. I also read about for instance certain reverbs sounding better than others. But then I wonder: what happens to those subtle and better effects when things are being mastered...? Won't a lot of those subtle effects be removed/changed/altered completely, rendering all the work that has been put in it useless during the mastering process? Specially if you for instance throw the full suite of Ozone all over the mix...!? Aren't we wasting time with a lot of the (subtle) effects we like to use?
 
Second: and even when we do get everything precisely (and subtle) as we want to... who is going to notice it? I sometimes wonder why people spend thousands of dollars on equipment and/or a master engineer to get everything exactly right when in the end 99% of the listeners don't give a **** about it all and they only care about the song...! (I am presuming the songs are alright here... and the performance too. If the song or performer sucks, no amount of money and plugins will save it, obviously... which I could start another topic about because I also sometimes wonder why some people even make music, let alone spend money on doing so because they have no talent at all...!) I thought about this because a while ago I had a few people listen to an old recording of mine form the eighties, made with regular tape cassette recorders, sound on sound, obviously sounding like utter **** with lots of noise and no real mixing at all... but the listeners didn't care at all and thought the song was great and they liked it as it was...! Which made me wonder why the heck I spend days and nights on getting the mixed and masters right for an album I released a year ago...
 
Third: that album I made didn't sound as good (not even close) as any given commercial album did but the radiostation that played it didn't mind: they played it simply because they liked the songs! And just as any radio station they throw a bunch of effects on EVERY song they play anyway (totally changing the overall sound of the songs while doing so). And let's not forget about listeners who listen to music with crappy earphones on smartphones or stereosets that come with loudness on by default or which have all kinds of sound effects that change the feel of a song completely...
 
In short: isn't it all pearls before swine...?
 
Just curious what you all think about this. 

Well, I would say that it is like anything that artists do: strive for some imagined perfection.
 
I can say that when I listen to a well-recorded song or album, I may not notice the "subtle" stuff on the first or second listen, but when I do notice it, and it adds that "magic" that makes a recording special, I'm glad whoever worked to add it did so. Makes me come back for more.
 
If a song is well recorded and mixed, mastering isn't going to change anything. It will only make it clearer. However, if mastering is substantially altering a song, then the song was not mixed well and needed "fixing", or the mastering engineer midunderstood the mixers intent.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

This is so completely obvious, but it will not keep me from loving my mixes to death.

Yeah a lot of people listen to music on crappy systems and cheap earbuds, but I think the mark of a good mix is that it will sound good on all of these speakers and I guess top mixers put a lot of effort into making sure that they do. I sometimes see kids on the subway crowded round someone's cellphone listening to some music coming out of the tinny phone speaker and despite the fact that the sound quality is awful, you can still hear the essentials of the song loud and clear, and that's why the kids enjoy it just as much. 

In the end it's very much like with buying wines: We don't buy taste, we buy illusions, history, image..you name it. Most of us couldn't tell the proper wines from each other in a blind test, but when we see the label (and maybe hear the price), it's associated to something. If it tastes good in this particular occasion with this particular food, it's good.
 
If the song is good, most likely we forgive a lot concerning the technical level, and it sounds better than it is.
"It's supposed to sound like that!"
 
Mixing effects are used on track level. They can't (mostly) be removed in mastering, which is done to a ready stereo-mix.
 
Throwing in a mastering VST, like Ozone, in a mix, not to mention several of them, will most likely make mastering engineers work less rewarding and maybe compromise his task, unless used very carefully. You don't send the mastering engineer a "I tried to  pre-master-it-sort-of" -version, but a mix as decent as you can make, with good headroom etc.

I'm a fan of the Lord of the Rings movies and consider them to be masterpieces of film making. Every time you watch one you notice little details that escaped your attention on previous viewings. Watching all the "making of" documentaries really drives the point home that every aspect of production was handled with extreme attention to detail  - including many details that most moviegoers will never notice.
 
Factories were set up for manufacturing swords and armor as well as hand-made cups and plates. Even minor characters were exquisitely made-up and costumed. And these are just the things you notice after repeated viewings. There are undoubtedly many more little efforts that you'll never see, like waiting for an airplane's contrail to dissipate before resuming filming to avoid any anachronisms, or clever lighting and microphone placement, or the extensive post-production sound processing. If you think about the total audio experience, it's an amazingly good and amazingly complex mix. Every sound effect sits just right in the mix, every line of dialog is clear and clean, horses' hooves have just the right amount of low-frequency clump mixed in to give them weight and power.
 
Getting a quality mix requires similar attention to detail. Cleaning up barely-audible punch-in clicks, automating out noise and resonances, making sure reverb tails don't collide with the next snare hit, panning background vocals to clear the center for the lead, nudging drums to put them in phase. You do these types of things without regard as to whether or not they'll be audible in the final product, or whether anyone will notice them. It's the cumulative effect of many little details that results in a quality mix.
 
Sure, at the end of the process the listener may hear a severely degraded version streaming at 128kb/s, or squashed on the radio, or through tinny little plastic earbuds, or competing with road noise in a car, or badly mono-fied by widely spaced ceiling speakers at the grocery store. But even if one in a thousand listeners has the equipment and the attention span to hear it the way you meant it to sound, then it's worth it.

In the end it's the sound that matters. How you get there is up to you.
 
For one, I believe that the cleaner, simpler, and less cluttered a mix is, the better it sounds and easier it is to manage.
 
IOW, Why try to fix a bad sound after the fact with all kinds of plugins? Just record it right the 1st time and it won't need a lot of fancy-dancy stuff covering it up. Works for me anyway.
 
.

Geez, take all the fun out of mixing.  All those extra hours tweaking by dBs and fractional eq just wasted?
 
Not really, but a lot of what we do doesn't make a difference in the end.  Maybe marginally.  It is the song, performance, recording, mixing and then mastering.  the farther down the list the less impact.  that doesn't mean you don't work at it - that is what makes you better.  And the pros, having made all the common mistakes, do it faster.
 
When I do my own music I take time, not just to get it right, but to experiment and learn.  It may only be a minor difference quality wise, but it is a way to learn new tricks and what works when.  I then use that knowledge to apply to more deadline projects.
 
And mixing is just like a recording chain - you are as weak as your weakest link.  So it is pretty easy to get competent w/ a good song. But no mixing mastering can save a bad song.  A good mixer can make a song better and add little florishes that keeps a four bar beat interesting - dropping things out, adding a one time, time-based effect, more producer stuff rather than just twisting a comp knob.
 
Finally, not even engineers say "that song rocks but the bass recording really sucks and keeps me from putting it on a playlist."
 
@

AT
Finally, not even engineers say "that song rocks but the bass recording really sucks and keeps me from putting it on a playlist."

 
You don't go to the Songs Forum much, do you?

As the resident tin ear around here, I have to admit that I do not agree that processing does not matter. I agree that not everyone will appreciate really fine mixing or mastering (I for one will not.), especially if it is compared to just competent work, and I agree that a really fine song is worth listening to even if it is on a scratchy old LP or recorded on a tape deck with no effects at all. But even I can tell the difference between a well mixed song and direct to tape, and given the choice will take the former. I do not own any "live" albums nor do I attend concerts, partly because I do not care to be part of an audience, but mainly because I find a well produced album a far better listening experience. 
 
If your mix is being run over by someone "mastering" it, then maybe it should not be mastered, at least not by that master.