there’s no way gang starr’s approach was to fix it at the mastering stage.

why would they EQ the whole song to fix one track that can be treated all by itself at the mix stage. if you EQ 400hz at the mastering stage it affects that frequency on all tracks.

the voice the snare the horn the high hat etc

until recently artists would do mixes over and over until it was right. trying to fix anything other than very small enhancements would always been done at the level of the mix

nowadays it’s very different. cats aren’t producing/mixing at the level of previous eras. many times these days the songs are recorded in less than stellar rooms and mixed in less than stellar rooms and the mastering engineer will have to fix more. but from 72-2000 that was definitely not the case for major label releases

http://howardlloyd.bandcamp.com