its like any other medium.  if you good good at it, you can do pretty good stuff. 

for most people, fl is like music maker the home game.  but the modern versions have enough functionality to pull off a reasonable product, if you school it. 

ive actually used fl studio, in conjuction with the rest of my setup. 

the centerpiece is a roland daw, an integrated console.  still fully capable, despite the fact that pc tech has advanced to the point of matching it.

to that, add anything and everything that either makes noise or manipulates noise. 

samplers, keyboards, drum machine, whatever software [including fl studio]. 

ill admit that some of it, notably the keyboards, are not of the greatest quality [not very versatile], but i can still make a master cd good enough for pressing. 

too bad i cant get anybody to pay me for that. 

no one around me is recording anything, that i know of.  

havent heard of any demand for me as a producer. 

i can make a master, but its not the same as a real post facility. 

but, hey, if you got money to burn, how may i be of service?

i suspect thats more or less a con, not that i cared enough to look into it. 

speaking of which, got anything you need mastered? 

Mastering is becoming a dying career because too many people think they don't need to master their music anymore.

most of them dont, hence the con.

assuming the mix is right, not much point in throwing extra money at mastering services if 95 or even 100% of your end users are just getting mp3s.  a prime master will probably get you further, but in all reality, theres a diminishing return, if youre an unknown. 

i could cite examples, but... 

you get what you pay for.  If you get a trustworthy engineer you don't get ripped off.  And in the end you get a better final product

naturally.  but even they have a tendency to shine you on about what theyre doing. 

say ive got some music i want to release.  i can pay $25-$50 a minute to have it pro mastered and get a 99% perfect final product, or, i can spend basicly nothing at all, and have a 96% perfect product.  that extra bump is not gonna make a very big difference, unless there is already a real expectation of high quality from the consumer.  if im not pressing it up, the difference is almost infinitesimal.

now, say i have no ability to post on my own.  i now have a choice between a 50% product, or spending a load of money for a 70% product.  no one can really make the crappiest home recording, as you say, sound golden, not without remixing.  more like, shiny aluminum.  enough to convince the amatuer that hes getting his moneys worth, perhaps, but thats about it.  post production is heavily dependant on the mixdown.  a bad mix with good post is still gonna be a bad mix.  for this point, examples abound. 

in either case, the gain doesnt particularly justify the outlay.  and when your anticipated profits are floating around zero…

my advice is, if recording at home, pro-style or amatuer, dont bother to send it off to someone else.  if you know what to do, diy.  if you dont, it still likely wont matter a whole lot in the end.  if it does matter, and you cant master it on your own, dont record at home to start with. 

hell, fl studio has dynamic dsp tools based on the same principles as a post lab, many with identical algorithms.  just learn how its done [two, three days of research, followed by x amount of time practicing], youll be good.  [side note:  fl and some of its included plugins have a nasty tendency to introduce artifacts into the mix, if you arent paying attention.  this is not hard to prevent, but very hard, maybe impossible, to correct.  again, if you dont know, dont record on your own]

[edit]  actually, that last bit is true of any system, if your engineering skills are lacking.  the finest setup in the world can still make your mix into hamburger with just one or two improper settings. 

yeah, ducking sounds horrible, almost every time. 

uninteresting side note, i was going to post up some example tracks to demonstrate some of what i was talking about, but i havent yet found a convenient way to do that.  so, im thinking i wont bother.

but i do want to see this kind of discussion continue, because tons of people really oughta learn about this shit, whether they know it or not. 

It's like I posted on facebook one day; "We have the ability to learn almost anything through the internet, do we really have a reason for being stupid anymore?"

1  learning has a bad rep.  tv generation, everybody thinks that learning something is proof that youre stupid.   

2  the internet tends to help people learn things that are incorrect. 

well, of course, truth is a subjective phenomenon. 

the judgment of any system, or a priori relational phenomena, exists in any rational, or–

nah, you know, what?  let em have their ignorance.