[rakmanenuff]

Mike Rivers wrote:

Used to be that if I spent more than 4 days on a whole LP (admittedly,
thosehours might have spanned several months due to schedules and time
required to get ready) it was a big project.

Yeah. When I work from home i have to make do with a computer and very
little hardware. Maybe it's me, but everything seems to take longer
than it does on a console with good outboard hooked up. I might tweak
the computer for 10 minutes and still not get the right sounding EQ.

There's "raw" and then there's sloppy, technically flawed, or just
plain bad. It seems that the broad category of "underground" styles
can get away with a less polished production because it kind of goes
with the genre. But they also have a much smaller audience, fan base,
and sales than a slick, expensive, and no-holds-barred production that
has a lot of money (including publicy dollars) behind it.

Due to computers most of the "underground" styles are now sounding
quite polished, (relatively speaking). But "polished" does not
guarantee "good". Lots of top10 records as well as underground records
are weak songs with good packaging.

But yeah, there are a few underground styles where sounding "basic" is
the trend. Some producers do this on purpose, others just can't think
any further.

Small labels on low budgets sometimes abuse their engineers by booking
2-3 days of recording/programming for a whole 14-song album, then
another 2 days to mix the whole thing.

How is that abuse? You do what you can within the budget.

What are you supposed to do? 3 days without sleep and a product full
of minor flaws....

No, you give them a good three song demo, and tell them that they need
more practice before they record a full CD.

We gave them a "finished" album in 3 days (programming from scratch,
tracking, arrangement, vocals) then handed it over to a big studio for
mixdown and additional overdubs), and it charted in the one country it
was aimed at.
Our client had money to spend, but was on drugs, very impatient,
wanted the files yesterday, and showed no appreciation for detailed
studio work.

Do those flaws matter? How much?

Depends on what the flaws are and who's listening. If you're a garage
band and want a CD to sell for $5 at your occasional gig or on your
web site, no matter how bad it is, nobody is going to return it and
ask for their money back (but they may not listen to it more than
once, either).

Whether someone listens to a CD more than once has more to do with the
material and performance than the exact level of production. The
public are accustomed to a certain level of production, but they're
also accustomed to really crude, amateurish use of Auto-Tune.
Everything is relative.

what they hear must sound professionally produced and, more important,
professionally played, not sloppy thrashing and random screams passing
as vocals.

Yeah, but good vocals come from the singer, not the producer. Comping
is time-consuming, but a much better way of working than drop-ins, at
least. Good singers tend to do the lead in 1, 2 or 3 takes, but good
singers don't grow on trees.