Recording - October 2014 - 48

Once people started listening to music through their mobile phones, laptop speakers, and through headphones, it became imperative and incumbent upon any mastering engineer prepping things for commercial distribution to know what it sounded like
on range-limited single-driver systems.
What about musical genre? Do you have a specialty? Are there any styles where
you say, "Yeah, that's not for me"?
Genre-wise, I'll work on just about anything. Growing up I went through every phase
you could name; I listened to a lot of rock, hard rock, metal, rap and hip-hop... I never
got way into dance music, but I listened to Top 40; I listened to what was on the radio
and I always have. I would study and listen to jazz music.
I've done everything from Peter Paul and Mary to Skrillex, and I'm kind of comfortable working on just about any genre. If I'm unfamiliar with a genre or subgenre with intrinsic sounds
and sonic signatures, I can be taught. I always consider my job as like a sonic translator.
Predominantly my work these days is with scores and soundtracks, so I do a lot of
orchestral and compilation work, which incorporates every genre known to man,
depending on the film. And I do a lot of re-mastering where we are doing predominantly SACDs. We've also mastered high res digital for vinyl cutting and that's becoming increasingly popular.
Digitally sourced vinyl seems to be a pretty hotly-debated topic on the forums
right now.
So much really good vinyl-whether people want to accept it or not-is being cut
off high res digital these days.

When I spoke with John Davis about
mastering the Led Zeppelin vinyl, I
brought up the question of cutting
right from the original analog tapes,
and he mentioned that you couldn't
cut vinyl from them. There are
dropouts and bad edit points....
Bumps, wows, jumps. Yeah, absolutely
right.
One of your jobs is remastering wellknown and loved classic albums for
Audio Fidelity (audiofidelity.net), where
you work with re-issue producer/
mastering engineer Steve Hoffman.
What's that like?
In that situation he really focuses on the
production and the creativity. That allows me
to be much more nuts and bolts, and just
operate as an engineer. He will call out a frequency and say, "Hey, give me 2 dB at 50
Hz" or something, or "I think it needs this and
this," and I execute those basically the best
way that I see fit across the desk. So instead
of coming up with the recipe and then tasting
it, I'm simply throwing the ingredients I've
been given together in the right amounts and
then I'm tasting it! It's a different experience
for me and I thoroughly enjoy it.
Do you approach remasters differently
from clients with current projects?

We don't use any compression, and
there's nothing with an "-imager" or an
"-izer" or an "-esser" on it in the signal
chain. It's just EQ, gain, and the sound of
the desk. So in that sense our palette of
what we can do is very limited.
Occasionally, you have to do other
histrionics. If you get a tape where the
master's been edited from multiple takes
and it's off analog tape, you'll probably
have a slightly different azimuth character
on every single piece of that tape. Then
you have to do it in chunks, because you
have to align the azimuth for each of one
of those little sections and then put it back
all together. That can be fun. Not!
Have you ever had moments similar to
what John Davis describes with the
low frequencies of the bass and kick
48

RECORDING October 2014


http://www.audiofidelity.net

Recording - October 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - October 2014

Contents
Recording - October 2014 - Intro
Recording - October 2014 - Cover1
Recording - October 2014 - Cover2
Recording - October 2014 - 1
Recording - October 2014 - 2
Recording - October 2014 - 3
Recording - October 2014 - 4
Recording - October 2014 - 5
Recording - October 2014 - Contents
Recording - October 2014 - 7
Recording - October 2014 - 8
Recording - October 2014 - 9
Recording - October 2014 - 10
Recording - October 2014 - 11
Recording - October 2014 - 12
Recording - October 2014 - 13
Recording - October 2014 - 14
Recording - October 2014 - 15
Recording - October 2014 - 16
Recording - October 2014 - 17
Recording - October 2014 - 18
Recording - October 2014 - 19
Recording - October 2014 - 20
Recording - October 2014 - 21
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Recording - October 2014 - 23
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Recording - October 2014 - 25
Recording - October 2014 - 26
Recording - October 2014 - 27
Recording - October 2014 - 28
Recording - October 2014 - 29
Recording - October 2014 - 30
Recording - October 2014 - 31
Recording - October 2014 - 32
Recording - October 2014 - 33
Recording - October 2014 - 34
Recording - October 2014 - 35
Recording - October 2014 - 36
Recording - October 2014 - 37
Recording - October 2014 - 38
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Recording - October 2014 - 40
Recording - October 2014 - 41
Recording - October 2014 - 42
Recording - October 2014 - 43
Recording - October 2014 - 44
Recording - October 2014 - 45
Recording - October 2014 - 46
Recording - October 2014 - 47
Recording - October 2014 - 48
Recording - October 2014 - 49
Recording - October 2014 - 50
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Recording - October 2014 - 80
Recording - October 2014 - Cover3
Recording - October 2014 - Cover4
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