Of course you can make a recording at home with equipment that is now incredibly cheap where the equivalent would have cost thousands a few years ago, but there's still a lot of skill to making a really good recording, and much of is is skill you aren't even aware of until you try it, start learning and find that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know.

As with other walks of life - buying a high performance car doesn't make you a good driver, buying a Steinway doesn't make you a concert pianist, installing a DTP package doesn't make you a graphic designer.

A good sound engineer can also make a good recording with cheap gear. Whatever you've got, it's about making the best of what you have available (and that applies to the "talent" behind the mic as well!)

A good professional sound engineer can have incredibly accurate ears. Some mastering engineers can listen to a mixdown and correctly guess what brand of monitoring speakers were used for mixing. You can't fake that level of skill with fancy digital equipment, and somebody with that experience could identify a recording made in someone's untreated home room instantly. There'll be some CD purchasers out there who can tell the difference too, even if they can't be sure exactly what's wrong or why one recording sound better than another.

Incidentally, sound treatment to make a good room is often the last thing an amateur recordist wants to spend money on, but it's often what's needed most. Anechoic isn't best, but the right amount of reverb and equally at all frequencies, which is really hard to do.

Anahata