I had a home studio and recorded bands in the Portland, Oregon area for about 10 years from the mid 90's. I was a one stop shop - I did the recording, mixing, and mastering. Here are a few observations from my own experience.
Most well known mastering engineers have a high quality stereo setup that is equal or better than what most audiophiles have. This rarely exists in the recording studio. I was lucky to have a nice system to help fine tune my mastering but the mixing was done on a traditional setup with bookshelf studio monitors at ear level.
A good mastering engineer will listen to their work on a home style audiophile system, car stereo, and headphones. I can testify that it is really important to listen to the final product on a variety of playback devices - mostly to get the bass right. But it's also important to check your work on a cheap pair of earbuds.
It is my opinion that there is a level of detail that recording engineers generally don't hear if they aren't doing the mastering and checking their master on a high quality system. Their monitoring equipment just isn't good enough to resolve the last layer of detail.
The effect that leads to the perception of a big recording space is more often delay, not reverb. With the advent of digital recording and digital effect plugins the delay effect has been largely perfected with a variety of adjustable parameters and is an integral part of the sound of modern recordings.
Most well known mastering engineers have a high quality stereo setup that is equal or better than what most audiophiles have. This rarely exists in the recording studio. I was lucky to have a nice system to help fine tune my mastering but the mixing was done on a traditional setup with bookshelf studio monitors at ear level.
A good mastering engineer will listen to their work on a home style audiophile system, car stereo, and headphones. I can testify that it is really important to listen to the final product on a variety of playback devices - mostly to get the bass right. But it's also important to check your work on a cheap pair of earbuds.
It is my opinion that there is a level of detail that recording engineers generally don't hear if they aren't doing the mastering and checking their master on a high quality system. Their monitoring equipment just isn't good enough to resolve the last layer of detail.
The effect that leads to the perception of a big recording space is more often delay, not reverb. With the advent of digital recording and digital effect plugins the delay effect has been largely perfected with a variety of adjustable parameters and is an integral part of the sound of modern recordings.