I'm extremely fortunate to have married a fiddler whose father also has an excellent ear but don't most of us have a circle of fellow musicians who can lend an ear?
Ron: I don't know if you're deliberately missing my point or just plain missing it so let me try again.
"Good enough for folk" is a joke that has been around for a long time but most often heard when some guitarist has just spent 5 minutes tuning his/her instrument to perfection.
When I said "And it's good good enough for Folk" I meant just that.
I wouldn't be putting it out there if it wasn't good enough for Folk.
I seriously doubt that I will ever produce anything in or out of the studio that I won't walk away from saying "The next one will be better". Haven't done it so far.
That's the way some of us are.
As for the mastering; I know you can spend $1000 on some engineer who will take your product into Wavelab 6 and tweak it within an inch of its life and you will come out with a perfectly polished album.
But you really don't have to.
Studios are great.
So are home studios.