Originally Posted by: SuperhumanThat guy probably did home recording then had an engineer edit and tweak each track and wav file individually, just like in a studio except the takes are all done onto a home pc then burned to dvd and reuploaded to the studio work station. If you are thinking of doing that it then it is advisable to keep a number of takes of each riff/solo as the engineer may decide to edit and splice some parts because of timing or an unrepeatable lick. Everything needs to to be recorded at the highest possible bit rate in mono and saved as high quality wav files. Don't do any destructive manipulation of files eg effects, compression or normalisation if you want to get the most from the engineers experience. Hope that helps!

I think we have our terms confused.
We're talking about "Mastering". (at least I think we are)
I think what you're talking about is 'Mixing Down'

Mastering is taking the finished songs that have already been mixed down into stereo, and then applying compression/limiting, EQ etc... to the final mix so that each song is the same perceived volume on the album, has the correct gap between songs, that the songs are in the right order, that the fade outs have been properly done etc etc...
It also involves the ability to make each song sound like they came out of the same studio and that they all sound like they were played by the same band if you've recorded in several different studios or used different equipment.

In a lot of cases with top 40 stuff, it also involves making the songs 'radio competetive' by pushing them to the limit (brick wall mix) so that your songs sound louder and punchier.

A really good mastering engineer will take several days on each song (if you're willing to pay for it) using a high end system that he's worked with for years.... tweaking them from beginning to end, pushing the EQ up on the guitar frequencies when it's needed, bringing the EQ on the vocals down, or making the bass punchier without making the crashes overly loud.

Unfortunately, if you're an indie band or home recordist with limited funds, you're only going to get what you pay for.