[inkaudio]

A $1000 recording won't give you great sound quality, not 24/96 K. It easy to marginalize a recording engineer until you try to record an album yourself. To get the the sound you want there are number of things you want to get right, the right equipment, the right space, mic placement, recording levels. Still not as expensive or hard as making movie, but not so easy either.

[jiggy2011]

This is true, I know some indie musicians and they usually own a minimum of $10,000 worth of equipment themselves and on top of that hire other stuff when they record or play live.

A lot of things that people think are "done in someone's garage" are either done by someone with very rich parents or produced by a relatively well funded company.

[bengl3rt]

And, even if you get something recorded, mixed, and mastered by really talented independent professionals, the label will sometimes ask you for the stems (or even to re-record certain parts) so they can bring in "their guy" to put "their sound" on it.

Luckily with the labels fading as a distribution mechanism for independent music this is not happening as much anymore.