[Scott Dorsey]

Trevor wrote:
Hah, mastering pop music these days usually means reducing the dynamic range
to less than 10dB with ultra compression, and then pushing the whole mix so
far onto clipping that everything is totally flat topped. Just rip any
Brittney Spears, Lady Ga Ga, Katy Perry etc. CD to the wave editor of your
choice for a good example.

Of course classical music is different, and rarely requires "mastering"
these days now that the inadequacies of vinyl no longer need to be
considered. Anyone can simply normalise the levels before burning to CD,
although a mastering engineer can add all the proper CD codes a recording
engineer may not necessarily be familiar with I guess.

Right. The thing is, the majority of music out there falls into the range
in-between pop music and classical. Your jazz or folk release (or even
hard rock release) can be treated like either extreme or like something in
between. How it gets treated depends on what you ask for.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."