..or that should be a Masterer, or in ‘proper’ english Mastering Engineer. The Interviewer: Robert Henke (Monolake) and the interviewee: Rashad Becker, of the legendary Berlin mastering company Dubplates & Mastering. Rashad has some interesting ideas on his role & the evolution of how music is made – have a read here as it is insightful on many levels, and I find his use M/S in the process very interesting but perhaps predictably his biggest bug bear is dynamics:

“If you talk about real mistakes, I’d say most mistakes are really related to limiting. Second most mistakes are related to compression, and thats about it. Mistakes – there are a lot of things I have to cope with, which derive from being uneducated or inexperienced, like for example people keep sculpting their sound by boosting frequencies if they feel an element is not prominent enough in the mix. Lets boost it! If it has not enough bass or not enough high end – lets boost!!!
Instead I try to educate my customers to think the other way round: Scrutinize every singal for consistency, check for what disturbs it, and try to remove that, and not primarily check the signal for what’s too little…”