Superb, @Vitaliy_Kiselev, thank you. The Katz paper on mastering is fantastic, http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/katz_1999_secret_mastering.pdf and that's one jewel amongst many. Really interesting stuff.

Yep, @MirrorMan, either that, or the (sort of) opposite: really crappy distant miking of speech.

You can't really be responsible for what people do once something has left your control. I had some experience of that working in old-fashioned analog broadcast radio: I was able to dial up receivers from around the world, and listen to how my transmissions were being received. It was always pretty depressing, particularly as the final transmission compression was out of our hands.

But it was great to have an instant comparison between what was leaving my studio and what was being heard by my audience, which meant that I could experiment (a bit!) in real time. I learned that if you have good sound to start with (for example, really well-recorded speech with mics that are properly positioned), it will still sound pretty OK after it's been mangled by various things along the way between me and the listener at the other end.

I've noticed a similar thing with video too - sometimes you will come across a very low-res video on youtube which shouldn't look great, but does. Probably because nice lighting and good composition still looks nice even when it's been mangled by YouTube.

With both audio and video, I think the other thing worth experimenting with (and reinforces the point about Skype etc) is to try out your stuff - with audio, record it and play it back on ipods, in the car, on a TV etc. Similarly with video - play it over livestream, youtube (various resolutions), on ipods, TVs, PCs, whatever you have access to. A bit like my audio experiments in live radio, you will learn what looks good when it's been through the mangler. It's much more realistic (because it represents more of your audience) than just producing stuff to look good on a cinema screen!

-23 the number that is burnt to my eyes daily

I think that if the major of laptops had better speaker/amplification setups, there would be even less justification for over-aggressive mastering. It's frustrating how much you have to struggle to hear quiet passages on many such systems, especially if there's any background noise. And if you are carrying around a laptop and want to play something for your friends, you don't generally pull out a y-cable and split headphones, so it remains a practical problem.

Some mastering engineers are better at handling the problem than others. One of my favorite examples is how Richard Dodd did a really good job of mastering Andy Hunter's electronica EP "Life" in 2005. Even with MP3 compression, you get a surprisingly good compromise between loudness, dynamics and separation and the songs sound/feel appropriately different without feeling jarring - compare "Lifelight" or "Wonderful" to "Come On". The original tracks had a lot of saturated saturation in the instruments that helped the perceived loudness to begin with, but poor mastering could have ruined that release.

But in terms of online audio that drives me nuts... MySpace. I've said it before and I will say it again: why 22 KHz instead of 44.1 KHz? And why not at least warn the artists? C'est la vie.

@DrDave do you have some links to other mastering resources? and thanks for the tidbit about the new DAW implementations...

@DrDave thanks for this. I know you'll get a different opinion from every engineer, some more technical than others, but every angle helps.

Re:"Make sure your effects are stacked in the right order...", I've wondered about this. A quick search yields a few pages that discuss mastering chains for specific software, but not much by way of general rules.

Or the nicer sounding Bricasti (IMHO)

@DrDave These are fantastic - thanks for the link. I've been collecting my own recordings of impulse responses of castles and cathedrals etc, whenever I visit one and have a recording machine handy, but this is a great collection and really useful to add to the ones I already have. I miss the really good Worldwide Soundspaces site, which seems to have disappeared from the web. It had some seriously wonderful ones - such as the insides of industrial gas-tanks.

As @MirrorMan says - good to have lots of opinions. I notice neither @DrDave nor the article mentions, for example, checking the mix in lots of different environments and on lots of different equipment that the typical end-user might be using. That's crucial. My last CD was designed to be played most often to groups in large community centres as well as sometimes in cars and only rarely on CD players at home, and once I'd tried that one out in various environments it led me to change a few things. That's probably more mixing than mastering, but still. There's such a huge amount to sound! And we've all come to it via different routes and with different experiences.

Anyone reading all this might wonder why we're all so passionate about "interfering" with audio, but I absolutely agree that the end-listener needs "help" from the eventual audio mix. It's not about "realism". Alas, perhaps! It's tempting to go totally purist, but years ago I worked with a blind person who really struggled with producing mixes that others would accept. Not what you'd instinctively think - her mixes were totally realistic but lacked the subtle pointing-up of clues which go into a really good end-product. It made me realise the importance of producing a mix that gives the end-listener a bit of subtle help. It's the audio equivalent of tweaking curves and looks.

Of course you need to check the mix in the car, ipod, youtubem etc, but after a hundred or so you learn where the reference speakers are in relation to these, and I also think the technology is changing too fast now, so I lean on the reference speakers much more than in the past.

Samplicity makes great impulses! For harp I do like the lex 96.......................... As far as realism, that is where the timing is really crucial.