In general, professional does not mean something is sleek or well done or good or anything like that. It does not refer to grade of wellness. So please, everyone, if something is just cool don’t call it professional, call it cool, leet or anything else. Those words have been left far behind in the level of annoyance since the breakthrough of the word “professional”. It makes me puke. Stop using it. Please.
professional |pr??fe sh ?nl| adjective 1 [attrib.] of, relating to, or connected with a profession : young professional people | the professional schools of Yale and Harvard.
2 (of a person) engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as a pastime : a professional boxer.
? having or showing the skill appropriate to a professional person; competent or skillful : their music is both memorable and professional.
? worthy of or appropriate to a professional person : his professional expertise. ? informal derogatory denoting a person who persistently makes a feature of a particular activity or attribute : a professional naysayer. noun a person engaged or qualified in a profession : professionals such as lawyers and surveyors. ? a person engaged in a specified activity, esp. a sport or branch of the performing arts, as a main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
? a person competent or skilled in a particular activity : she was a real professional on stage.
Oh I see.
I still hate it. 
It makes me think that there is some general appropriate way of doing things that defines a term “professional” and by which people are judged. Some common idea to strive for. In my head it’s very not creative word.
Would be nice to not know where this is coming from.
Professional? Someone making money out of whatever it is you do? (let quality been judged by people who know better)
Or selling yourself? due to stuff you do?
I’m on a twist.
saying that something sounds “professional” does not imply that it sounds “cool”.
i’m pretty sure i’ve been using that term before when commenting on someone else’s music and i don’t see any problems with it because it’s meant just in the way as the actual meaning of it is meant to be delivered:
it describes the state of an amateur-made tune to not sound like it was actually made by an amateur but by a professional, which does imply that the author was at least providing a certain degree of quality which makes the listener think it could as well been written by somebody earning his daily bread with what he does.
it’s a term i use to compare the sound-quality and overall impression of a song with commercially available music and i don’t see anything overly silly related to it.
so referring to the meaning of the term, it’s definately not a synonym for “cool” or “sleek”, because it’s still possible that i could personally dislike the song, even though it sounds professional.
I’ve seen it abused. It annoys the heck out of me.
Also if you compare the sound quality and overall impression of a song to commercially available music I think that’s really silly. That means you mind the commercially available music some sort of better music. That’s not the case. And if not, then it’s just an empty word describing something as something of no real value but with well-formed outlook.
Who the heck cares anyway if the song sounds professional or not if it does not correlate in any way to the quality of music? Many great pieces of music may sound like shit but that’s a part of their attractiveness.
So wanting to be a professional sounding professional musician is trying to sell oneself by sculpting oneself to the form grand daddy likes. Why not to take a dick up to one’s ass and get paid for it instead? Be a pro…
what about the word ‘expert’ lol
Don’t professionals just make a living off about what they do? Quality = subjective
If somethings professional, it means it was made with pro tools.
The pros use pro tools because its pro.
When talking of Renoise skills and quality words that come to my mind are:
Guru
Lord
Oh let’s not be sexist:
Queen
Sorceress
… As for the pro quagmire, forget it. Lo-fi or Hi-fi, boring music is boring music.
who cares? well, i care.
i care about that as much as i care about using a decent (half-way) audiophile music-equipment instead of monitoring my audio through 50$ active speakers connected to an 8-bit soundcard.
i love sonically good recordings and can enjoy music better if it also sounds more pleasant.
music is not only delivered through the notes, chords and the arrangement alone - the quality of the instruments, the mixing and the mastering do also have a great effect on how you perceive the tune and how intense the effect is that it applies on the listener.
and if you think music that sounds shit is great, it’s your opinion of course, but don’t think that the majority of ppl will agree to that.
p.s my quote was from an American dictionary… so not sure even I trust it… they do tend to destroy our language. 
I’m a Renoise-guru-queen! twirls 
Sound-heads…
Of course the better the sounds the better, but what a good sound is is not necessarily what commercial music is. Sound may serve other needs than sounding commercial.
“Professional” doesn’t describe the sound or the music in any way. It’s a dumb adjective in that sense. Not a bit analytical.
Hi all!
I think the word “professional” simply expresses state of music. For me, word “professional” for music done with tracker means music with
- sound quality = you can compare it to official releases on music scene (I don’t think primarily mainstream).
- (almost) no repetition = you can know that composition is made on computer but your chance to catch the componist from using computer must be minimal. You mustn’t almost find it out. Repetition here means variation on dynamics, notes, effects etc.
And this is pretty hard task.
God bless you!!! 
The only time I use ‘professional’ with music is when describing wether or not the music is made with direct profit in mind. Game music composers, film scores, stage music etc.
I’ve done ‘professional’ work, on demand and for projects. If a project is JUST for fun, it’s not ‘professional’. If it’s for a school project, it’s ‘educational’, and if it’s for free to get attention it’s ‘promotional’.
If it’s because you want to create art, as a hobby etc it’s what ever the hell you want to call it. Otherwise known as ‘music’.
Alberto Tomba was an amateur, simply because he didn’t do ski jumping for a full time living. And he still was one of the best.