I'm Becoming A Real Freaking Perfectionist

I've been doing home studio recording of my tunes since 1977. Back in the
early days, things were really bad. A crappy home studio cost a fortune. If
I got anything that sounded half way decent, I was happy.

Today, $600 will get you a digital recording studio that kicks the ass of
anything that was around in the 60s or even the 70s.

So I just finished this one tune and was going into the mastering phase. Now
before I started mastering, what I had was already better than anything I
had done even 5 years ago. But I wanted the sound just right.

I decided it needed some compression on the high end so I pulled up the
small compression preset, but I didn't like it. It compressed it a little too
much for my taste.

The settings were:

low -7 db
mid -7 db
high -13db

Those are all minus settings.

Well, it still wasn't quite right. So I fiddled with the preset a little and
finally came up with

low -5 db
mid -5 db
high -10 db

And yes, there was a definite difference if you listened hard enough. And
with the audition feature, you could actually switch back and forth
between the two in order to hear the difference.

4 hours to get just the right settings.

So when did I become such a freaking perfectionist when 30 years ago
a 4 channel analog recorder with a bass and treble mixer would have been
good enough for me?

I gotta get a life.