I think the 3 hour deal in toms is a means to an end. Yes, the sound is sometimes not just right, and it's down to the studio guy to mix it while he goes. This might not be really the best sound for the band members, ie bass too loud, drums weak etc etc.. However, it gives people who are not studio wise a chance to get into a studio and put down tracks. We did this, with some of the results mentioned above. What we ended up with was 22 songs to chose from to put on to a cd for handing out to pubs. When doing so we could in truth say that this is what we sound like live. Not 6 layers of guitars etc and a fancy production to fool the venue owners into thinking they were getting the NE version of U2 etc etc. Hurray for Toms 3hrs deals;)