"It should be a given that you need the highest quality equipment... and that goes for mixing, recording and mastering EQUALLY.
...you shouldn't need someone to tell you that... even though it has been told to you countless times."
Not true.
"The Roots" used 3 sm57's to record a complete live drumtrack. John Mayer uses a single sm57 to record his guitarm electric and acoustic. sm57's aren't the highest quailty mics, but they are a staple in the recording industry as a mic to have. All mics are vauled for their imperfections(dips or boosts in the frequency response, their lacks/exagerations), thats what gives them character. even if you're looking for a true (flat response) mic, there's alot of affordable small condenser mics(i've even seen a pair of homade ones that we put into smaart and tested and they pulled a flat frequency response) that can give you a pretty true response. Again these mics are not the highest quailty.
ever hear of wu-tang? do you think rza used the highest quailty equipment to make his beats? or half the people who produce anything, do you think they always had the highest quailty equipment there whole life, some how they made it using lesser quality equipment get where they're at. When they were growing up do you think technolgy was at the same level that it is now, but they still acelled and there were still great recordings made. Alot of producers and engineers choose to stay with the equipment they grew up with too, instead of upgrading to the highest quality of stuff they can afford.
why do you need high quailty equipment if you're not looking for a high quailty sound? Punk music and heavy metal some rap and other geners are based on there distortion and not sounding high quailty. why would i need a U87 to record a kick drum thats going to be high passed and used for the low freq, or
a blue bottle to record a backing vocal thats going to be washed in reverb, low passed, delayed and pitch corrected and put in the back of a mix. I knew a guy who had a matched pair of blue bottles, and he used them as overheads on a drumkit once, and the only reason he could give me for it is "because i can".(he actually said that whenever he used them, haha.) he never said anything about them being the highest quailty.
Tell me this, how many professional recording studios have closed in LA and NYC in the past 10 years. This is a straight correlation to not needing the highest quality equipment to record/mix/master EQUALLY. Its because of the digital age, now everyone has the ability to make a professional recording in there house (if they know how) without needing the highest quailty equipment. why is over half the recording population mixing in pro tools or any other DAW instead of doing it on a million dollar ssl? The ssl is deffintely higher quaility than a mac or a dell.
Show me a song you recorded that you don't like or that you don't think sounds good. I bet i can put the blame on the quality of the Musicians, their instruments, the engineer, or the mic placement that would play more of a role of the subpar quality of the recording than the quality of the equipment.
My point being, its not what you have but how you use it. Now don't get me wrong, you need equipment of a certain "quality" to record, but hardly anyone uses the HIGHEST. If you ever start having that "if i had this or if i had that" mentality when trying to record, mix or master just remember, some of the greatest recordings were recorded straight to tape, one take(no multi-tracking) with limited to no eq or compression and equipment that would be consider very low quality to todays standards.
other than that i do agree with everything else you said. cheers.
