anyone pay for mixing & mastering?

Spending $1000's of dollars on mastering your promo album obviously isnt worth the cash. Mastering yourself is the best option most of the time for dealing with promos...but in order to create a professional album release mastering is basically as important as writing the song itself....all of your favorite albums that you have listened to released in the past 50 years has most likely been mastered over and over again using the best professional equipment out there....do you seriously think dr. dre and the neptunes can get there songs to sound the same played on any system without mastering???? But even before mastering they use tons of top of the line gear (compressors, preamps, mixers) during recording...not just an mpc....

well my mate did a bit more than just set levels and limit but i know the more you pay the better result you'll get....just get that mix right first...

greg

yea but if you were to record dry from your mpc into your mixer or your software, with just a little bit of eq and then mastering, you can achieve a really great product.

all of these indy labels arent paying the same amount as dre and pharrell, but the sound qualitiy is still top notch.

i think 75% of the battle is on the mpc itself. its been said many times before, you cant polish a terd. if your kick drum is shit, eq will help but not completely fix. if you can make your beat crack on the mpc, multi track em out, make sure they dont clip, when im eq'in em. the only thing that ill really do is do a low cut on any samples that may have an underlying bass tone on that particular that may muddy up my bass track, ill add a SLIGHT reverb to the snare, give the kick a slight boost in the 60hz area and the bassline a boost in the 40hz area. chorus on the bass rarely.

mastering would make it sound nice and full.

word up to sensewondah... your on point with cluing cats into slight eq in dry recording gives you a solid sound... and I do similiar things to my drums during mastering... get at me on the pm, or ill get at you, i want to discuss what devices.
peace