"The reason I asked is, I seem to get the feeling on "Forums" (ours excluded!!)these days is that, for any music to be considered worthy of a 'listen', not only must one be a master of composition, but be a world class arranger, singer, player but now be the ultimate Mix Masterer to avoid your 'unbalanced' mix offending them."

I do not know but to make my point, imagine that James Taylor made all of his recordings as an instrumentalist/vocalist and that each and every one of his recordings were set up, mic'd, recorded and mixed by professionals. If James Taylor were to subsequently make a home recording by himself, in his home without the benefit and help of professionals, and post a simple, clean, clear and balanced mix of this work on any of the above forums, how critical do you think those same forum masters would be toward his mix. I'll wager you would not see offenses and unbalanced mix comments. His clean, simple mix would be lauded as a goal to reach for.

My point being for me, BIAB provides the opportunity to attain a level of music instrumentation beyond my personal pay grade of ability and talent. Most of my productions, although they are originals, do not sound like me. I tend to over produce my work.

Herb mentions, and I have personally received, public comments and private messages from helpful forum members that see areas that I can improve my work product. One of the most prominent suggestions are toward securing a vocalist because I have written and produced a song in a style and production manner I cannot sing. The criticism is warranted.

I find my song productions are better received here on this forum than they may be on other forums because the members here understand how Biab works and can tell some of the behind the scenes production mistakes I'm making.

Every song does not have to be 'mastered', compressed, eq'd, nectared and Ozoned. But they do need to be recorded cleanly, clearly and properly balanced. The more production placed in a project presents more opportunities for someone to find fault in your work. Not to say don't experiment or try new things, but leave your experiments in your studio except to share for evaluation with trusted ears. Publish your good stuff that is clean, clear and balanced, even if it's just you and a single instrument.

BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.