bones wrote:filofax wrote:its just that artists like Daft Punk for eg. there beats are so compressed and Amon tobin his beats and bass are so crisp and everything, i didnt know if there was a process on orion i can go through to get ths crispness
Mostly that comes down to having an excellent mix in the first place. Mastering just adds that final gloss, it isn't where the magic happens at all. You need to fine-tune every sound - what works as a synth preset almost never works in a mix - and should EQ every channel so that it all works together to create that sound. Once you have it 98% of the way there, mastering will add that final one or two percent.
Totally agree on all points made here by bones.
And I like to add that mastering is also about putting tracks together on an album and making them sound as a coherent production. Very subtle changes, sometimes not even clearly noticeable, can bind several tracks together in a special way. When you listen to a Daft Punk album (or another pro-production) there is a psychological effect of all the tracks sounding as part of the whole album. That's adding another perception of quality to the individual tracks.