I completely agree, chas. In 'professional' hands, all those options are a wonderful thing. The trouble starts when they fall into the 'wrong' hands.

For one thing, I completely agree that these Mastering tools should be used mainly for space and crowd condition corrections. But all too often, in lesser hands, they are simply used to often drastically change the overall sound of an arranger, and then never adjusted. Even OOTB they come with all options turned on, and a pretty drastic set of comp and EQ applied. Squeeze anything to death, and put a big 'smiley' on the EQ, and you can quickly ruin the basic sound of even the best arrangers.

And most professionals already have EQ's and compressors fro their PA's and studios. But putting these sonic hand grenades in the hands of newbies and home players is a recipe for confusion and dissatisfaction. I think I'm reading a fair bit of evidence for this, don't you agree?