This is one of many bizarre but true-to-life animated videos floating around youtube and the gearslutz message board. Surely they were created by an audio engineer, because the situations depicted in these shorts take a candid poke at situations we regularly deal with: trying to work with clients who, in today's realm of cheap production and reocrding solutions, simply do not understand the value of professional mixing and mastering.
Mixing and mastering in itself is an artform. Just as musicians use tools and vocabulary creatively to express themselves, engineers employ their own cache of terms, tools, and tricks to enhance a recorded performance. As an artist, a good engineer is your strongest ally when it comes to the quality of the music you release, yet today it seems the love is all but gone.
Technology has evolved to the point where anyone with a computer can download torrents and/or install plugins to music software in order to simulate the process of proper mixing/mastering. However, there are elements to mixing/mastering techniques that require a skilled professional (aka human being) with a trained set of ears to balance levels properly and bring out the subtle nuances that make great music, well...great!
-TJ
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