And all of Danny's post above, is what often times ends up being wrong with music released by boutique record labels.

They "save money" by having, say for example, the person who owns the label (!) doing the mastering - which basically means they rent a mastering studio for a day and sit there themselves twiddling knobs and pushing sliders when the harsh reality is they don't actually know what they are doing in there.

Danny does, and you can smell the passion right there.

In the moment, on the day and with gigantic studio quality speakers it sounds good to Mr Label Boss, but does it sound good to me with 40 years worth of actual real hifi?
Does it sound good in the car?
Does it sound good to my 21 year old God Daughter who only plays 'files' through a laptop and then via the bloody phone and the Gods-awful earbuds?

In Danny's equation, yes it does. Because Danny knows his trade and so did many engineers back in the day. Watch the Sky Arts documentary about the Moody Blues and find the parts where their engineer talks about this very issue. It's FAR too easy with tech available for the label boss to do this - and believe me in another life I I used to see this happen...a lot.

And so in many cases...it sounds somewhere between soup and the brick wall theory again.

Well said DD - 100% on the money for my ears.