The first time I heard your work, it was for Willard Grant Conspiracy's album Weevils in the Captain's Biscuit, in 1998. The recording was from a live broadcast I engineered on WMBR Radio in Cambridge, MA. I was blown away by how amazingly clear and dynamic the CD sounded, considering that the original recording was lo-fi — literally recorded off of the radio. Do you remember what you did?
The recording was definitely optimized for radio. It was pretty compressed. The Willard Grant Conspiracy is a band with beautiful instrumental textures, and in the case of this recording, I think there were 7 or 8 musicians playing at once. I wanted to open up the recording so that you could clearly hear every instrument and add back in some of the life of the original performance, which wouldn't have been possible to present over the air. To do this, I used analog EQ, some additional analog compression, and several multiband expanders, and digital equalizers. I also worked on stereo imaging and optimizing the recording for the CD format vs. the radio format.
Speaking of expanders, when most recording engineers think about taking their mixes to a mastering engineer, they think about EQ, compression, and limiting — making things sound balanced and loud. I've noticed that you spend just as much time expanding as you do compressing. In fact, I can't recall ever going to another mastering engineer who's used an expander like you do...
I think a lot of recordings have suffered from too much compression, which can bury things and takes away the life of the sounds. Not that I don't think that compression is an invaluable production and mastering tool, I just feel that recordings can sometimes benefit from undoing some of the effects of compression, which of course is an effect in itself.
Louder, louder, louder...
Exactly. The current market seems to feel that the louder their record sounds, the better it is. This is a trend that I hope to help reverse. I am amazed by how few of my customers understand the compromises that have to be made in order to make a recording "louder." There is no "11" on the knob. But, people often tell me to turn it up, but don't compress it any more. The loudest any digital signal can be is digital zero. So the only way to make something that peaks near digital zero louder, is to compress it heavily, then add makeup gain to get it as close to zero as possible without clipping.
Do you think this is a case of the technology driving the trend... or the trend driving the technology? I'm thinking Finalizer, Waves L2, various "mastering" plug-ins...
I don't know. It is certainly easier to get things louder with the new technology. I think in my case, the clients come in with a very compressed record and say, make mine as loud as this one. I explain the pros and cons, but they almost always decide on "louder!"
What are some of the more memorable sessions you've had?
Let's see... one of the most complicated projects I've worked on was The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs. Before I heard the songs, I was skeptical that even a genius like Stephin could pull off a record with so many songs and make it interesting and listenable; but he not only pulled it off, he created one of my favorite records of all time. I would go so far as to say that I think almost every song is a masterpiece. The Magnetic Fields are great to work with. They give me creative freedom to do what I feel is best for their material, but just enough guidance so that I understand what they are hoping to achieve. In this case, we had a strict deadline, so it was not possible for them to have all the songs mixed before the mastering began; and also for 46 songs they hadn't yet decided on an order. This made it especially important for all the tracks to be very closely matched sonically. I ended up spending over an hour on every single song on the record. All the songs were recorded under different circumstances, and a lot were recorded in a home studio. And the songs had a huge range of musical styles. It was lots of fun. It's rare that I get to work on a multi-week mastering project! Jack Drag's most recent albums were great projects. On one record, John Dragonetti had a concept for how the songs should flow into each other, so we spent a lot of time coming up with creative edits to create the flow of the record. I worked on the new Kelly Joe Phelps record for Rykodisc, which was recorded at Long View Farms and produced by George Howard. That record is so warm and beautiful, like Bob Dylan's album Time Out Of Mind, or Tom Waits' Rain Dogs.
Are there producers or engineers you like working with?
Paul Kolderie always sends me the most beautiful and textural mixes. Phil Greene — he has the best technical knowledge of anybody I've worked with. Mark Miller and Thom Monahan of Slaughter House in Western Mass are great. Jim Siegal of the Outpost always sends great material. Basically, I've just been blessed to work on some really great projects.
How about Sebadoh's lo-fi sound? How did mastering contribute to it?
They specifically asked that we maintain lo-fi qualities to the recording. On the album version of "Flame," the first single, Lou Barlow asked me to mix two mixes together because he loved both of them and couldn't choose between them. One mix was by Eric Masunaga, and another was by Rich Costy. This is not a normal mastering request! But they loved the double-mixed version and used it.
Wow! How tight was the timing between the two mixes? Did you let them go in and out of exact tempo lock?
I actually lined them up at the sample level, as best as possible. They were both at slightly different speeds; and they have very different effects on them; so the different delays and reverbs did cause a cool phasiness to occur. But the snare drum hits are pretty much lined up. It took a really long time to do this.
What's the typical amount of time you put into a project? Say a full-length CD with 10 songs...
It depends on the budget. If a client wants to put the time in to make everything perfect, it can average an hour a song. If a client needs to master something within a very small budget, I can work in as little as 15 minutes per song — depending on the song lengths that is.
How did you get into mastering? At what point did you decide, "I'm going to be a mastering engineer"?
I have always been obsessed with sound quality. It just seemed like a natural career for me. I love music, and I love to help people achieve their creative visions.
How did you learn the trade?
