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Originally Posted by hevusa
It is impossible to make the tracks "as loud as the person making it wants them" because everyone has their own volume knob on their stereo. Mastering will just make the album more consistent so the end user doesn't have to keep adjusting their volume knob between each track. I wouldn't actually change much about the audio content unless it was an extreme case and it was absolutely necessary.
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Well, this is the bare bones of the disagreement - if I do something incredibly quiet (which is likely) or with a big dynamic range (which is possible) or something that's ranted to fuck (also likely) I don't really want it adulterated because someone else has recorded something very flat with minimal dynamic range. What I'm cautious about is that I'll probably do something electro-acoustic, while I imagine there'll be a lot of guitar-based things, which requires a very different approach, mastering-wise; I know there a few people who might do dance-based stuff (Shabbers, SYR Fox) which, again, I wouldn't want compromised because most people are doing rock music.
Essentially, I'm interested in a good, diverse mix of music - if you're moving everything towards the middle ground just for the sake of consistency then you threaten to undermine those at the perimeters - at one end, harsh noise, at the other, lower-case EAI. I'm not saying that mastering is entirely unnecessary, but I'd say a very softly-softly approach - that is, take out any peaks unless the person
specifically requests they be left in (which I'd imagine the lo-fi and noise contingent would prefer). This has a few problems, obviously - I know people like Clone explicitly likes a very low mastering, and knox tends to keep things this side of quiet, and their tracks might not 'jump out', but I think it's more important to keep the integrity of the track and let the listener decide than it is to 'compromise their artistic vision'. Or, putting it another way - I've a suspicion that the more experienced musicians (Clone, Terminal Pharmacy etc) would happily chop off your hands if someone fucks about with their track. I'm in that same boat, but more because I'm awkward than experienced.