it might be appealing to the eyes but not to the EARS.. and music is about HEARING di ba? 
Honestly it is not visually appealing for me, and much worse hearing it. I don't like seeing the vu meters peak all the time, turning the red lights into strove lights, while the green lights are "steady".
Baldo, since you'll be mastering most of the clients I refer to you, brace yourself for some stupid requests. You'll have to do a lot of de-amplifying some transients before slamming the wav to a compressor (your LA2A, that is). I've read a lot of HOT mastering techniques but I can't stand it. I think I can't last 2-3 hours doing the job. My ears get so tired so quickly.
don't these guys know that their album will be unlistenable for the most part if they keep up this kind of limiting? i mean, make them listen to the whole album for an hour and see if they don't get a migraine.
i would imagine communicating the idea to them might be a good idea, i know it has worked wonders for me. but even for people who don't need (or want) the whole theoretical approach to acoustics and physics, they pretty much have a good idea that excessive limiting is not good for the track AND their ears. as a result, I mix with enough headroom for the mastering engineer to do their thing without saturating the entire track and this practice applies to all genres of music i have worked with from dance to full-bore grindcore. i guess i have been fortunate enough to work with reasonable people. i don't think i've entertained any stupid mixing or pre mastering requests as of yet.
i am curious...are the clients sa Pinas more demanding when it comes to mastering and mixing? in my experience, people in the US tend to take the "you-do-your-job" type of approach so everyone has their part of a task and try not to impose on others who have had experience mixing, mastering or engineering a record. i listened to a lot of the tracks that skunky has deemed unlistenable because they have square waveforms and they sound fine to me. The tracks sound really strong and punchy but I can't find anything at fault with them to deem them "unlistenable." Granted, i don't listen to tracks with the volume knobe full bore whether I am listening through a digital or tube driven audio system but, still, Slayer, Linkin Park and other similar tracks mentioned on here as "unlistenable" sound pretty alright to me. Where is the problem? I drove my amps and speakers pretty hard and I couldn't detect distortion on the part of the cd i was listening to!
Abyss, I am not saying that Slayer's Christ Illusion album is absolutely unlistenable. All I think is there is no life to the track. Anyway, it's just that some of my retard clients think that by turning your wav into a square waveform, you get the same sound quality as a mix that was mastered in a real mastering facility. They don't understand that the FINAL MIX is
NOT supposed to be the final master. Hence, since they do a lot of cost-cutting (mastering is thrown out of the window) they think that MY job now is to be the mastering engineer as well.
I can say with conviction that it could be possible to sweeten up a track using the same tools to some extent without over-limiting, but once you call for -6dBFS RMS volume, YOU DO NEED A MASTERING HOUSE AND A COMPETENT MASTERING ENGINEER. Heck, by simply de-amplifying those kick transients, that can take you hours! Some mastering engineers prefer stems in fact, so that they can still manipulate the loss in punch of the 2-bus, especially with the kick and snare drum.
I'll give you a sample text message after listening to the master CD:
"<song 1> mahina! <song 3> may unnecesary noises (actually he's hearing the artifacts when blasting the treble)
<song 5> lubog drums!" (Actually hindi lubog ang drums... masyadong malakas lang in effect ang guitars because of over-limiting kaya mukhang lubog ang drums; btw he's the drummer and slave-driver)
For the record, I've heard loud masters that are not as bad. Foo Fighter's Colour and The Shape was loud. But not to the point of clipping hell. Californication on the contrary was a farce.
