[mikestew]

but it doesn't really matter because we've become of culture of "good enough" that settles for sub-par achievements

Congratulations, that strikes me as one of the more elitist things I've read in a while. We are not a society of "good enough", we are a society that decided we don't need to go to the high priests in order to cut a demo. Because what you might call "quality" others might call "over-produced". Because some people would rather produce quality music instead of twiddle knobs. All kinds of reasons that GarageBand is adequate to replace a room full of equipment, if for no other reason other than every kid with an iPhone who wants to be a rock star can pretend to put an album together (which I'm sure will be of basement quality).

A culture raised on overcompressed and pitch fixed productions just won't care about dynamics and good mixing.

And how are they supposed to learn that for less than $200/hour? If only there were free software...

(And don't for a minute think I'm denigrating the importance of quality studio work. It's just not always necessary.)