I agree, but disagree: The history of mastering is maybe different from the current context. If you’re making a CD for commercial distribution exploring pros who specialize in mastering makes a good deal of sense, but in many cases, when you’re talking about online distribution, particularly if its not a commercial distribution, why not do it your self?

A good mastering engineer gives #1 better equipment then you’d probably other wise have and #2 trained and experienced ears.

What I’m talking about is rethinking labor distribution. Specialists focus in on one small area in such a way that they aren’t able to make the same sort of connections that a generalist can make between different fields. So what does this mean for process? The point is that there are aspects to mastering that have to do with how things are compartmentalized:

For instance, one of your jobs is to give an album a unified sound. Could a unified sound be achieved in a different area of the production? I would think so.

You create what is basically a play list and work out how things fade in and out and whatever. What’s the effect of this on how a mix engineer works, in a compartmentalized process?

I think what we are seeing is a disruption of the industry that’s going to change the way records, or there modern incarnation, are created. We are going in the direction of publishing industry. This effects how much money you have to produce your product, and this effects the choices the creator makes. For all that a specialized mastering engineer can bring to the table, when we are talking about producing content on the cheap, it seems to me that its very much within the range of possibilities that, one who’s not a specialist, can learn to get results that are at least “good enough,” and maybe even comparable.

Or at least that’s my view on it.

CD mastering is NOT the same as recording…let a specialized mastering pro do it!…

I would say yes, there’s incredible value to the sort of education you can get from online resources. Take a look at iTunes U.. if you have iTunes.. there’s a hell of a lot of amazing stuff in podcasts generally.. lectures from UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Standford.. and there’s a hell of a lot you can find from independent podcasters.. there’s a huge universe of blogs out there on all kinds of things.. I mean… I think most of my education is coming from podcasts these days.. It’s like going to a library “hmm, what do I want to learn about” and just searching around for stuff.

You may like to check out the teaching for the future podcast: http://www.teachingforthefuture.com/

My feeling is that education will probably go more this way over time.. though I don’t know.. but it so good for educating your self… the question, maybe, is one of accreditation..

I suppose maybe there’s the question of how you define value.. or what you’re thinking as you ask your question.. but my sense is that it’s amazing what you can find..