Same guy here, I also wanted to say that if you go back to video, reviews of gear where you play with something in the studio are some of my favorite parts of crosstalk.

Thank you kind sir, I too think I will not disappoint. In regards to mastering, I've had a handful of different experiences. My last group had our "farewell EP" mastered by Jason Ward (who was an absolute pleasure to work with) at Chicago Mastering (co-owned by Bob Weston of Shellac fame, http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com) and once we decided how "loud" the finished piece would be as a whole, it ended up taking roughly an hour a song. Different aspects included tweaking some problematic EQ peaks and valleys, de-essing lead vocals, and what probably took the longest time, sequencing the track list and smoothing the transitions from track to track, creating one coherent piece of music. Let's not forget rendering the mastered source material to our final master format, in this case a CD.

The reason I detailed all of this is that I wanted to highlight that it was the same experience working in a fantastic mastering studio as I had mastering my indie pop high school band's demos at our bass player brother's home studio. EQ, compression, normalizing, noise reduction and sequencing were the cornerstones on both occasion. It will definitely take you more time when you're first learning the art, and while my timing might not be exactly what you experience, the 5 or 6 completely different mastering experiences I've had have all seemed to clock in around that time.

i will look into it.

-Bill