"Isn't the reason for Mastering to make the music LOUDER?"

You're so cute.

 

I see your point but imagine the artist sitting with the mastering engineer at the board, listening through the engineer's monitors and being all excited about how they now get to make it nice and loud for release...which Mona Lisa is that artist after? They can hear all three versions for what they are. They think the mix is good but they want MORE. Do they want the yellow and orange cartoon or do they want the t-shirt imprint?

I think the engineers here that have lived through this nightmare know. I can only speculate.

 

The thing is that it seems that when equal things are done to audio as I did to the Mona Lisa image, people do not regard them as so glaringly bad. The reason why it looks too shockingly cartoonish to you visually is because we all seem to have more visual sensibility nowadays. But, believe me, it's the same thing that is being done to music. Even if it sounds far off, this is how I normally hear those ultra-compressed hyper-maximized albums being released today.

Does the image look too gaudy and excessively simplified? Have you really listened to much of the pop music being released nowadays? Do you noticed its rampant affinity with the simplicity of a ring tone (cartoon) than with more nuanced music? BTW, although I get what you mean I, myself, would not use the word 'cartoonish' to describe this; I'd opt for the word 'loud.'

In fact, I am glad that your visual sensitivity finds this shocking, but such is the equivalent in audio. I have not done anything equivalently different in the treatment of this image than has, say, been done to McCartney's last album.

 

Ok, I get what you're saying.

Hell no. Fair enough...

 

I have my contrast and brightness on mild, and my color temperature is warm on my LCD, and that still bothers me to look at it!

 

Half serious? No, you're right. About two years ago a gal down the block brought an indie CD for us to hear back from Nashville. The musician was a pretty decent guitar player that the gal was quite smitten with. She couldn't wait to have others hear the CD. The recording was pathetic - really horrible. I spent less than an hour with headphones and some pretty basic PC software and gave her back a copy that amazed her - and I wouldn't make a patch on a decent mastering talent. Indie production isn't the answer, nor are low rez downloads, but I'm afraid too few of us know that or care.