Patchwerk's Chief Mastering Engineer, Kenny Mixx, recently posed this question to his facebook followers and got a range of commens. After all the feedback, he offered his take:

I still think there are a lot of great composers out there; I still master great music every day. What I mean by "convenience" is the lack of a solid foundation of knowledge of a craft, whether it's composing, mixing, mastering, or even tracking. It's easy to say "I mix," and just throw on some presets and not fully understand them. It's easy to say "I master," and just throw an L2 on the master track. It's easy to say "I track," and not understand the acoustics behind a properly treated vocal booth or proper microphone/preamp combinations/selections. It's easy to say "I compose tracks," and not understand phase relationships between kicks, 808s, and bass-lines. This is because it's more convenient to just *do* these things rather than understand *why* we do these things. Doing things right the first time with an experienced engineer is outweighed by doing things wrong multiple times the "convenient" way. Composing, mixing, and mastering are all different fields that require different expertise. When you begin to mix these together, you lose quality and replace it with convenience. Music should not be done in a "one-stop shop" where the mixing, mastering, and tracking are all done by the same person in the same room (or even worse, all in the same day). There is no Wal-Mart for audio. Can we get an intern to clean up the music on aisle 5 please, intern on aisle 5. Thank you.

-Kenny Mixx

Click HERE to check out his original post on Facebook

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