Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Stephen Marcussen

Transcript

Stephen Marcussen · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

0:04
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My
0:08
Speaker 1: guest today is my good friend and mastering engineer Stephen Marcuson. Hey, Bob, Now,
0:16
Speaker 1: you've worked with literally who's who the music business, everybody
0:18
Speaker 1: from the Stones to Tom Petty to Stevie Wonder, I
0:23
Speaker 1: go on and on, and then you're mentioning a new act.
0:25
Speaker 1: You think it's gonna blow up, Ben Platt, anybody else
0:27
Speaker 1: you want to throw in from my audience? Uh? Maybe
0:31
Speaker 1: as we go along, I'll well, M it's literally too
0:34
Speaker 1: many to mention. Let's start from the beginning. What exactly
0:39
Speaker 1: is mastering? You know? Mastering is uh, it's this gray
0:44
Speaker 1: art that people don't really understand. It's do you understand it?
0:48
Speaker 1: I hope so forty years in right, I think I
0:52
Speaker 1: got it. But it's sort of it's your last creative
0:56
Speaker 1: stage of making a record. It's it's a chance to
0:59
Speaker 1: take all of your work and put it together in
1:02
Speaker 1: a cohesive manner. You can change the sound. You can
1:06
Speaker 1: change tempos of tracks, you can enhance centers for vocals.
1:12
Speaker 1: You can do any number of things to get a
1:16
Speaker 1: consistent sound that flows from beginning to end. There various
1:21
Speaker 1: tools you use whether it's you can play it back
1:24
Speaker 1: on tube type tape machines, if you're fortunate enough to
1:27
Speaker 1: see things like that. Uh, files come in mainly these days,
1:33
Speaker 1: but occasionally we see tape. So you can pick and
1:36
Speaker 1: choose how you look at a project. And I shouldn't
1:39
Speaker 1: say you, I should say I and uh I put
1:43
Speaker 1: it up. I listened to it just as it comes in,
1:48
Speaker 1: and I think about what would do, what what I
1:52
Speaker 1: could do to enhance this project and make it make
1:57
Speaker 1: it deliberable to you know, a man us, I should
2:01
Speaker 1: say numbers of ways to play it, whether it's radio,
2:06
Speaker 1: whether you're listening to a c D, whether you're listening
2:08
Speaker 1: to hires files, m fits. So it's I don't know
2:13
Speaker 1: what m fits are. M fits are mastered for iTunes,
2:17
Speaker 1: and I don't know there was an acronym on that
2:19
Speaker 1: there is and it's uh it's interesting because m FIT
2:22
Speaker 1: they tried to set a standard of quality to reduce
2:27
Speaker 1: what they call inter sample overs and uh, well, let's
2:31
Speaker 1: slow down here. What are inter sample overs? I'm not
2:34
Speaker 1: going to get into interstatt a little bit. Well, when
2:38
Speaker 1: you're working in a digital scale, there's zero within the scale.
2:42
Speaker 1: You can have these inter sample overs, which are these
2:45
Speaker 1: spurious peaks that essentially can clip. They don't, but they can.
2:52
Speaker 1: So Apple decided to try to enhance their format. The
2:56
Speaker 1: A C and badget M F I T and it
3:00
Speaker 1: gives the mastering house, or Apple gives the mastering house
3:04
Speaker 1: an Apple it to drop it on. You can measure
3:07
Speaker 1: your inner sample overs, and they don't really want to
3:10
Speaker 1: see hundreds of thousands, which you can on a you know,
3:14
Speaker 1: a hot rock record. They want to see it brought,
3:18
Speaker 1: brought down and contained within a reasonable amount. They don't
3:22
Speaker 1: define a number, they just want you to use good judgment.
3:26
Speaker 1: So an m FANT can typically be as much as
3:29
Speaker 1: a dB, quieter than a c D or a digital
3:33
Speaker 1: file source. So okay, let's just stay with there. If
3:38
Speaker 1: you're mastering for iTunes, that's a downloadable track, do they
3:42
Speaker 1: want the same track for the Apple Music service. That's
3:47
Speaker 1: a very good question and the answer is yes. Um,
3:52
Speaker 1: I'm going through something right now because all of these
3:56
Speaker 1: services are looking at different features. Apple has the complete
4:02
Speaker 1: my album feature, Spotify wants it to mirror the CD
4:09
Speaker 1: UM and I literally got the email a half hour ago,
4:13
Speaker 1: so I'm going to start dissecting it. When I'm done here,
4:16
Speaker 1: but they they they want to have a standard that
4:22
Speaker 1: is consistent with their platform. Okay, just going for left
4:28
Speaker 1: field for one second. Prior to these streaming services, there
4:32
Speaker 1: were the loudness wars, which will get back to. But
4:36
Speaker 1: now since these I know they basically I don't know
4:39
Speaker 1: the technical turn off the top of my head. They
4:41
Speaker 1: basically average the sounds or everything is the same volume
4:44
Speaker 1: normalized normalized, thank you, and uh does that affect the
4:49
Speaker 1: loudness wars? It does? It's uh. Loudness is measured on
4:54
Speaker 1: a left scale l ufs, and depending on you know,
5:00
Speaker 1: who's releasing or playing your your your file, they like
5:06
Speaker 1: to target a certain number. The lower the number four
5:10
Speaker 1: point three is louder than seven point two. Our testing
5:14
Speaker 1: has shown that if you bring a CD level down
5:19
Speaker 1: a few dbs, and a few dbs is a lot.
5:22
Speaker 1: Remember six d b s is twice the volume. So
5:25
Speaker 1: if you bring it down three d b s, they're
5:28
Speaker 1: normalizer isn't kicking in as much, and consequently your program
5:34
Speaker 1: sounds better. There's you know, an example that comes to
5:38
Speaker 1: mind is there's a piano vocal track that gets played
5:43
Speaker 1: up against you know, a slamming hard rock track. Well,
5:48
Speaker 1: the hard rock tracks got stack guitars, it's got bass,
5:52
Speaker 1: it's got bombastic drums. Yet the piano and vocal so
5:56
Speaker 1: much louder because it isn't as loud physically in the
6:01
Speaker 1: digital medium as the slamming track. So the normalizer doesn't
6:06
Speaker 1: kick in. Normalizers can really bring your level down. You
6:11
Speaker 1: know a lot of dvs. So in addition, getting technical
6:15
Speaker 1: for a second, if it's normalizer brings it down, obviously
6:19
Speaker 1: it's going to be quieter. How does that affect the
6:22
Speaker 1: sound It's not beneficial. Let's go back to the beginning
6:28
Speaker 1: of our discussion. Theoretically, especially in today's d I Y world, Uh,
6:34
Speaker 1: could you just make a record on your laptop and
6:37
Speaker 1: send it straight to a streaming service? People do every day.
6:40
Speaker 1: That's very common SoundCloud, you know, people that put post
6:45
Speaker 1: their music up on services like that. It's a complete
6:49
Speaker 1: d I Y. In many cases they get a little action.
6:53
Speaker 1: Then they want to actually master it or finish it,
6:56
Speaker 1: remix it, depending also, you know, it just depends on
6:59
Speaker 1: the kind of action they get. So I think a
7:02
Speaker 1: lot of people that are you know, breaking in as
7:04
Speaker 1: it were, go ahead d I Y at if there's uh,
7:09
Speaker 1: if there's notice. They then maybe get get get noticed
7:13
Speaker 1: by a professional and indie somebody that wants to you know,
7:17
Speaker 1: join forces with them, and then they'll go rework the project. Okay,
7:22
Speaker 1: asking something that's not quantifiable in a quantifiable way, what
7:27
Speaker 1: percent can mastering effect attract? Yeah, you know that's that's
7:32
Speaker 1: kind of an impossible question, but I'll attempt to answer it.
7:37
Speaker 1: If you've got a track that comes in and you
7:39
Speaker 1: were working in a studio or just in your own studio,
7:44
Speaker 1: and your speakers weren't giving you reality, reality means the
7:48
Speaker 1: balance of frequencies lows, mids, highs were you know, terribly skewed.
7:55
Speaker 1: You take if you know, you take your track to
7:57
Speaker 1: a professional mastering facility, you're in a room that your
8:02
Speaker 1: engineers worked in for a period of time, in my case,
8:06
Speaker 1: twelve years in my particular studio, I know the room
8:10
Speaker 1: like the back of my hand. I put your track
8:12
Speaker 1: up and I say, this is dull, or this is boomy,
8:17
Speaker 1: or what what what? Whatever the correction needs to be.
8:22
Speaker 1: You take my judgment because you've now come to me
8:26
Speaker 1: for my services, and I say, well, we can open
8:29
Speaker 1: it up. In the vocal now is coming out of
8:30
Speaker 1: the track and clean and clear, and the bases and
8:33
Speaker 1: muddy and you know whoofing out your bottom end. So
8:38
Speaker 1: that really is a big change and well worth doing.
8:42
Speaker 1: Um okay, so since I've known you almost forty years,
8:46
Speaker 1: you're working precision. Then you worked at A and M
8:50
Speaker 1: before you established your own facility. I didn't really work
8:53
Speaker 1: at A and M A and M. I meant to
8:56
Speaker 1: say work in a general term. That's where you your
8:58
Speaker 1: worked reinspired. You did not work four AM and am.
9:01
Speaker 1: You rented the space. But my question is all three
9:05
Speaker 1: rooms are different. Is someone like you so professional? How
9:09
Speaker 1: long does it take you to adjust to a different room.
9:13
Speaker 1: Mastering engineers are nervous types. Uh. To make a shift
9:18
Speaker 1: in just your chain, in your chain as your processing
9:22
Speaker 1: to plug in a new new piece of gear can
9:25
Speaker 1: be daunting because it could change something. And you know,
9:31
Speaker 1: back to the gray area of mastering. If you put
9:34
Speaker 1: something in that you think sounds good, and I can
9:37
Speaker 1: be fooled. Anybody can be fooled by sound. Its sound
9:40
Speaker 1: is an elusive dragon. But you put something in your
9:44
Speaker 1: chain and you don't notice it immediately, and it changes
9:48
Speaker 1: your sounds. So you go from room to room, moving
9:54
Speaker 1: from the place I learned to work to A and M.
9:58
Speaker 1: I took in my own loud speakers. Uh that they
10:01
Speaker 1: were kind enough to let me place in a mastering
10:03
Speaker 1: room and a lot of my own gear. So uh,
10:08
Speaker 1: it's it's always scary making a change like that, going
10:12
Speaker 1: from A and M to the first facility I I
10:15
Speaker 1: built for myself. I fell in love with bing W
10:21
Speaker 1: loud speakers and really bought them site, you know, without
10:25
Speaker 1: having evaluated them. I knew that they were good speakers.
10:29
Speaker 1: Then how did you fall in love with them if
10:31
Speaker 1: you hadn't evaluated them? Good point, I had heard them
10:35
Speaker 1: in places I had never worked on them. The you
10:40
Speaker 1: go to a hi fi shop and you listen to them,
10:43
Speaker 1: and you take your favorite CD and you go, oh,
10:46
Speaker 1: I can relate. The center is a little off center here,
10:48
Speaker 1: The vocal sounds this way, the sibilance is what it
10:51
Speaker 1: should be. So, and I've listened to a lot of speakers.
10:55
Speaker 1: Believe me, they were the only ones in a store
10:58
Speaker 1: I could say that's good. Okay, let's go back to
11:00
Speaker 1: the speakers. Forty years ago, there was a transition. There
11:04
Speaker 1: was something called the aura tone, which was one speaker
11:08
Speaker 1: meant to mimic the car dashboard. Then seemingly everybody went
11:12
Speaker 1: to the Yamaha and as ten M and they might
11:15
Speaker 1: take off the grill and put a little piece of
11:16
Speaker 1: tissue paper over the tweeter. But obviously car radios have
11:22
Speaker 1: become more sophisticated and less important. But every mastering room
11:27
Speaker 1: you go to, everybody is using different speakers. It's it's
11:32
Speaker 1: a taste. You know. Some people like a t C S,
11:35
Speaker 1: some people like homemade speakers. You know, there are many
11:39
Speaker 1: facilities that incorporated a woofer here in the mid range
11:43
Speaker 1: here and put them in big, big cabinets. It's really
11:47
Speaker 1: a taste. Okay, let's go just a home audio for
11:50
Speaker 1: a second. You know, the big thing on home audio
11:53
Speaker 1: is these digital testers. Now, Okay, you buy something and
11:56
Speaker 1: it comes with a little microphone. Whether that's good or bad,
12:00
Speaker 1: that's not really my point. Are you so sophisticated that
12:04
Speaker 1: you could set up a room just by ear? That's
12:07
Speaker 1: how I did my last room, and I think it's
12:11
Speaker 1: my best room yet, I mean, I don't think you
12:14
Speaker 1: could get a better place to listen to music loudsoft, direct, indirect,
12:21
Speaker 1: the back of the room, the front of the room.
12:22
Speaker 1: And I've worked with acousticians George Ocksbird namely for decades now,
12:30
Speaker 1: and I brought him in just to help me. Um.
12:35
Speaker 1: Just you know, you're building a new room. You've got
12:38
Speaker 1: a lot of things on your plate, so it's good
12:41
Speaker 1: to have professional help there. But by and large, you
12:44
Speaker 1: set the room up to please yourself. Uh. You know,
12:48
Speaker 1: I've got good equipment. I built a phenomenal room. George
12:51
Speaker 1: designed the room. It's trapped properly. It's incredibly for the
12:56
Speaker 1: people who don't know what it's contained, the low ends contained.
13:00
Speaker 1: It doesn't boom. It's uh, it's natural. It decays naturally.
13:06
Speaker 1: It's not splashy. There are no reflections from left to right.
13:11
Speaker 1: You know, imagine a loudspeaker playing loud in a barn.
13:14
Speaker 1: That wouldn't be a good room. Uh. You put a
13:17
Speaker 1: loudspeaker in a room similar to what we have here,
13:20
Speaker 1: you can see their sound dampening on the walls. It
13:23
Speaker 1: just breaks up reflected sounds so that you can, you know,
13:26
Speaker 1: focus on the direct sound in my case, the direct
13:29
Speaker 1: sounds coming out of loudspeakers. Okay, Now, there's been a
13:33
Speaker 1: big transition in the Internet era. Back prior to the
13:37
Speaker 1: year two thousand, there were a limited number of professional
13:40
Speaker 1: mastering engineers. Literally you could count unless than five fingers
13:44
Speaker 1: people in Los Angeles, and there were people in New York.
13:48
Speaker 1: But suddenly, since the digital revolution, everybody thinks they're a
13:52
Speaker 1: mastering engineer. There's a good amount of that. Okay, and
13:59
Speaker 1: I know I'm trying to think of way Roy would
14:01
Speaker 1: ask this question, But is basically all the newcomers, or
14:04
Speaker 1: any of them, any good. There's always going to be
14:08
Speaker 1: somebody younger, hungrier, and better. So I'm glad I asked that. Uh,
14:14
Speaker 1: whether or not they're discovered remains to be seen, but
14:19
Speaker 1: don't discount anybody that's young and trying hard. Okay, let's go.
14:24
Speaker 1: There's Lander. Why do you explain for the people who
14:26
Speaker 1: don't know what lander is. I'm not fluent in lander,
14:30
Speaker 1: but to the best of my knowledge, lander is a
14:33
Speaker 1: computer algorithm that looks at your sound, analyzes your sound.
14:37
Speaker 1: You say you want it to sound like X y Z.
14:43
Speaker 1: I think you can actually plug that criteria into the computer.
14:48
Speaker 1: It will look at the frequencies, it will look at
14:52
Speaker 1: the level, and it will make sonic adjustments to your track.
14:58
Speaker 1: But let's to be over, I should have put it.
15:00
Speaker 1: Lander is essentially automated mastering. Right. I think there are
15:03
Speaker 1: actually a couple of programs out there that are doing
15:06
Speaker 1: automated mastering. I think there's another unit in Florida. I
15:10
Speaker 1: don't really keep up with that. Would any professional use
15:14
Speaker 1: one of those automatic I mean professional act Would anybody
15:17
Speaker 1: use one of those services? I would doubt it. Okay,
15:21
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. Now, you've had quite
15:23
Speaker 1: a peripatetic life. You were born in Africa and a
15:28
Speaker 1: country that no longer exists. Well, it exists, it's just
15:32
Speaker 1: changed its name. Okay, So how many years did you
15:36
Speaker 1: live in what was then Rhodesia. I left Rhodesia at
15:39
Speaker 1: a very early age. The pattern was we we left
15:43
Speaker 1: Rhodesia moved back to Northern Europe. As my parents were
15:47
Speaker 1: Northern European British and Danish. Realized that what they had
15:52
Speaker 1: experienced in Rhodesia was very different than being in Northern Europe.
15:58
Speaker 1: Northern Europe where Denmark and England, and they sort of
16:05
Speaker 1: followed the sun, if you will. So living in Rhodesia,
16:09
Speaker 1: it's it's beautiful. It's like California. The climate's magnificent. You
16:12
Speaker 1: can grow anything. It's a marvelous place. California was in
16:18
Speaker 1: my in my parents sites, and so we we flew
16:22
Speaker 1: to well, let's just go a little bit. So you
16:24
Speaker 1: were in Rhodesia to what age three or three and
16:27
Speaker 1: a half, okay, and then you moved to northern Europe. Correct.
16:30
Speaker 1: We floundered there for about a year, six months in
16:33
Speaker 1: uh in England, six months in Denmark. We arrived in
16:37
Speaker 1: Los Angeles on my fifth birthday. Okay. They were literally
16:42
Speaker 1: following the sun, they were, and that was their last destination.
16:45
Speaker 1: They never left, okay, but they sent you different places.
16:49
Speaker 1: I was sent to boarding school in England for my
16:53
Speaker 1: formative years. And so when did you start boarding school
16:56
Speaker 1: in England? I started when I was ten and a
16:59
Speaker 1: half and I left England when I was I think
17:03
Speaker 1: just about fifteen, maybe just fifteen. And was there anything
17:08
Speaker 1: good there? It was everything good there. It was a
17:13
Speaker 1: great time to be in England. Uh. From four it
17:17
Speaker 1: was fantastic. We turned onto music and I went to
17:22
Speaker 1: a very progressive boarding school and we one of my
17:27
Speaker 1: classmates got a cassette, which was a portable way of
17:31
Speaker 1: listening to music. It was mono, but we taped out well,
17:35
Speaker 1: he taped albums and we would be out, you know,
17:40
Speaker 1: in in the fields just with music and hanging out
17:44
Speaker 1: with people. I mean, music was a really really big
17:47
Speaker 1: part of my life. And this boarding school was were
17:49
Speaker 1: a relative to London. It's forty miles southwest of London.
17:53
Speaker 1: Did you go to London? Like? Positively? London was an
17:56
Speaker 1: hour train ride from Frensham, and uh, we we get
18:00
Speaker 1: to London as often as we could. You have to
18:02
Speaker 1: remember we're boarding school. We don't We didn't have unlimited budgets.
18:07
Speaker 1: Once you're in London, you know, we'll see these cost
18:10
Speaker 1: money and you could bum around London and we did
18:13
Speaker 1: and stayed, you know, dropped in on people that we knew.
18:16
Speaker 1: But it was just a marvelous time to be in
18:19
Speaker 1: London people, you know truly, you know, think of Austin
18:23
Speaker 1: Powers and Carnebie Street and that's really what it was. Like.
18:35
Speaker 1: Let's go back. Your father was a butcher, right, correct.
18:38
Speaker 1: So he moved to Los Angeles and where does he
18:41
Speaker 1: go to work? Uh? He went to work for a
18:45
Speaker 1: supermarket chain. And uh, you know, my my parents really
18:50
Speaker 1: didn't have much to be to begin with. We came
18:54
Speaker 1: to America having left Rhodesia, um with not a lot
18:59
Speaker 1: because Rhodesia was in a downturn, so selling your house
19:04
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, it wasn't easy for them to
19:08
Speaker 1: literally uproot and come here. My father worked at a supermarket.
19:14
Speaker 1: My mother worked as you know, they referred to people
19:18
Speaker 1: like my mother in those days as secretaries. You can't
19:21
Speaker 1: say that anywhere, um. But she worked for a company
19:27
Speaker 1: called the American Gem Society, which was a standard. It
19:30
Speaker 1: was a company put in place for standards and jewelry.
19:33
Speaker 1: She worked the balance of her work life there. My
19:37
Speaker 1: father ended up migrating from one chain to the next,
19:42
Speaker 1: ultimately landing it a shop that I'm sure you remember, Jorgensen's,
19:46
Speaker 1: which is a very high end grocery store. And I
19:50
Speaker 1: was forced into an early retirement. Okay, but a couple
19:54
Speaker 1: of questions. If you're going to school in England during
19:57
Speaker 1: the winter, spending your summers in Los Angeles, I would
20:01
Speaker 1: come back twice a year. I'd come back for the
20:03
Speaker 1: Christmas break and I'd come back for summer. Now, the
20:06
Speaker 1: English school year was divided differently than America. You got
20:10
Speaker 1: a month off for Christmas and you only got seven
20:13
Speaker 1: eight weeks for summer. So did you make any friends
20:16
Speaker 1: when you were in l A over the summer. Well,
20:19
Speaker 1: I had my friends that were here, but England was
20:22
Speaker 1: a very, very uh changing experience. I left as a
20:29
Speaker 1: fairly straight child and came back with my eyes opened.
20:33
Speaker 1: And you come back to l A and you go
20:35
Speaker 1: to high school in Lafe. I negotiated my way through
20:38
Speaker 1: high school from boarding school. I had my eyes set
20:42
Speaker 1: on being in the music business. How did that revelation
20:45
Speaker 1: there was? I think it's the third Yes album called
20:48
Speaker 1: Close to the Edge, and there's a picture on the
20:51
Speaker 1: back cover of Eddie offered in front of a console
20:54
Speaker 1: and you know, we we love music. I saw that
20:58
Speaker 1: and I said, this is for me, this is what
21:01
Speaker 1: I want to do. So I finished high school. You
21:05
Speaker 1: say you negotiated your way What does that mean? Because
21:08
Speaker 1: of the English education and l A Unified, there was
21:11
Speaker 1: no way to access what where I really was in
21:13
Speaker 1: my education. So they brought in specialists from u C.
21:17
Speaker 1: L A to evaluate me and uh. I was actually
21:22
Speaker 1: going to graduate when I was fifteen and a half,
21:25
Speaker 1: but they couldn't allow it, so they forced me to
21:28
Speaker 1: stay an extra semester. I I did the one semester.
21:33
Speaker 1: I then did summer school to take care of some
21:37
Speaker 1: required courses government in history, US government history, and then
21:42
Speaker 1: my last semester I had to take the the early
21:48
Speaker 1: course for the advanced course I had already taken just
21:51
Speaker 1: to fulfill. So I made an arrangement with the teacher
21:55
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't show up and take the final. Meanwhile,
21:59
Speaker 1: I was working in to nine in grocery stores. Okay,
22:03
Speaker 1: but then you do graduate, you have a dream of
22:05
Speaker 1: being in the music business. What's the first step in
22:07
Speaker 1: when um, I was working in a grocery store. I
22:13
Speaker 1: then decided I wanted to be in the music business
22:18
Speaker 1: and had to get out of that and had to
22:20
Speaker 1: pound the pavement. I found, Uh, never a thought to
22:24
Speaker 1: go to college. I went to college j C to
22:29
Speaker 1: really fill time because I was at loose ends and
22:33
Speaker 1: I had to get out of my parents house because
22:34
Speaker 1: I couldn't be hanging out. UM. So I did that.
22:38
Speaker 1: I I took some electrical engineering courses, but I pounded
22:42
Speaker 1: the pavement and got a job at a radio commercial duplicator.
22:50
Speaker 1: So I think it was a J. Walter Thompson was
22:52
Speaker 1: a big ad agency McDonald. So literally we stuffed a
22:57
Speaker 1: two cards which were like eight tracks, except they were
23:00
Speaker 1: thirty second or one minute spots. And from there one
23:06
Speaker 1: of the guys I worked with had I should say,
23:12
Speaker 1: he came to work there. He had just left what
23:16
Speaker 1: was Richard Perry's studio, which was studio on Melrose. I
23:23
Speaker 1: heard that and I thought, well, that's the door I've
23:25
Speaker 1: got a knock on. So I noticed that there was
23:29
Speaker 1: a studio across the street called I think Radio and
23:32
Speaker 1: Records or something. It's still there on Melrows is gone.
23:36
Speaker 1: I knocked on the door. The receptionist had been involved
23:39
Speaker 1: in a car accident, and the Carol Child's who ran
23:43
Speaker 1: Richard's publishing company at that point, let anybody in because
23:47
Speaker 1: it was seventy four it's a great time. And I waited, waited,
23:52
Speaker 1: and the studio manager interviewed me and then called me
23:56
Speaker 1: back and started, you know, from from the toilet up
24:00
Speaker 1: and okay, So the first job, I'm sure there was
24:02
Speaker 1: not a job description, but it be what janitor? There
24:05
Speaker 1: was a job description. Really, you were the janitor, truly,
24:08
Speaker 1: you had literally had the foot in the door. Had
24:11
Speaker 1: the foot in the door, couldn't have been happier. And
24:13
Speaker 1: that was the job of the guy was working to
24:14
Speaker 1: the grocery store janitor. No it was. He wasn't working
24:18
Speaker 1: in the grocery store. He was working at a T
24:20
Speaker 1: and T. That's I think that he had played his
24:26
Speaker 1: cards wrong and said he was qualified and he wasn't.
24:30
Speaker 1: So I knew that there was a void, So okay,
24:34
Speaker 1: so tell the people that didn't no longer exists. The
24:37
Speaker 1: history of studio Studio fifty five was I think it
24:41
Speaker 1: was Decca where being recorded White Christmas. We always said
24:44
Speaker 1: the ghost of being resided in the attic there. Um
24:49
Speaker 1: Howard Steele, who was Richard's engineer, had owned it with
24:55
Speaker 1: and Howard, by the way, it was a part of
24:57
Speaker 1: a console manufacturer called quant him. He had you may
25:04
Speaker 1: remember the name Vanjie Carmichael. She did all the jingles.
25:08
Speaker 1: He was married. Howard was married to Carol, so Carol's mom,
25:12
Speaker 1: Vanjie sort of funded this studio for Howard and it
25:17
Speaker 1: just didn't happen for them, and somehow another Richard got involved,
25:23
Speaker 1: and part of the agreement was that Howard would be
25:26
Speaker 1: Richard's engineer, and Richard so that as a benefit because
25:29
Speaker 1: he knew the room and and all of that, and
25:33
Speaker 1: Richard developed the studio. He rebuilt the big control room
25:37
Speaker 1: A made a beautiful studio out of it, and there
25:40
Speaker 1: was B which was a smaller room. Both had quantum consoles,
25:45
Speaker 1: and it became an incredibly successful studio. Toto came from
25:51
Speaker 1: that studio. There was just a lot of great music
25:55
Speaker 1: made in those rooms. Okay, so you started out as
25:57
Speaker 1: the janitor, how do you get out of the ship hole? Well,
26:00
Speaker 1: Howard was He was interested enough to ask me to
26:08
Speaker 1: come and assist him on on some demos he was
26:13
Speaker 1: doing on a weekend session. So I'll never forget this.
26:18
Speaker 1: I knew nothing of what I was doing, and I
26:20
Speaker 1: mean nothing. I didn't know that you had to tell
26:23
Speaker 1: him microphone was in number sixteen or any of that.
26:26
Speaker 1: So we we get this whole thing going. And in
26:30
Speaker 1: those days you ran a tape machine and he says, okay, record,
26:35
Speaker 1: I didn't know how so that so I, you know,
26:41
Speaker 1: I just started assisting Howard and uh then you know,
26:45
Speaker 1: you just get more gained more and more experience. In
26:48
Speaker 1: those days, you could hang out in people's sessions and
26:51
Speaker 1: observe and people weren't offended by that, and so I
26:56
Speaker 1: made myself useful. And still still cleaning up, still cleaning up,
27:00
Speaker 1: still go fering, go you know. So, Okay, if you're
27:04
Speaker 1: working there, theoretically you have janitorial hours, how much do
27:08
Speaker 1: you working there? Are you essentially living there? I was
27:12
Speaker 1: essentially living there. I'll I'll put some numbers in place
27:16
Speaker 1: for you. When you're in the union and you're a
27:20
Speaker 1: checker in the supermarket, which I was, you make incredibly
27:23
Speaker 1: good money. I left that job to go work for
27:27
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars a week. I worked over eighty hours
27:32
Speaker 1: a week and took home seventy six dollars on a
27:36
Speaker 1: paycheck and was thrilled to do it. Okay, so what's
27:41
Speaker 1: the next step of the ladder there? Um? I started
27:46
Speaker 1: second engineering, then I started first engineering. And when you're
27:52
Speaker 1: first you're running the session, you're doing the vocals, you're
27:54
Speaker 1: tracking the drums, you know, whatever it is. Um, how
27:58
Speaker 1: long did it take to go from janitor a first engineering?
28:03
Speaker 1: That's a good question. It wasn't that long, relatively speaking.
28:06
Speaker 1: Maybe a year and a half, a couple of years. Um.
28:09
Speaker 1: I remember, my my first real date was working with
28:15
Speaker 1: earth Window basically earth Wind and Fire as the band
28:17
Speaker 1: without Maurice. We're doing uh, was it Denise Williams demos
28:22
Speaker 1: or something? It was really it was like as completely
28:25
Speaker 1: out of my league, but you know, you just wing it,
28:28
Speaker 1: and that's what I did. So from there, I uh
28:33
Speaker 1: got involved with a producer, Bob Asteen. We made a
28:37
Speaker 1: lot of disco music. He was part of Neil Bogart's
28:42
Speaker 1: camp and Neil treated him really well. And over the
28:46
Speaker 1: course of making disco music, we would start mastering and
28:51
Speaker 1: you couldn't really get the sound of what was on
28:54
Speaker 1: the tape on a phonograph record, which was the medium
28:56
Speaker 1: in those days, and there had to be a re reason.
29:00
Speaker 1: So the people I was working with, we we were
29:04
Speaker 1: trying to figure it out, and we discovered that there
29:08
Speaker 1: was a lathe, which is what you cut phonograph records on,
29:12
Speaker 1: was made locally. It was a unique machine because with
29:18
Speaker 1: a phonograph lathe, the computer needs to know what it's
29:23
Speaker 1: going to cut before it cuts it, because it's turning
29:26
Speaker 1: a lead screw and moving a cutter head across the disk.
29:30
Speaker 1: This lathe didn't need that, so suddenly you could use
29:33
Speaker 1: a better tape machine. The next part of the equation
29:37
Speaker 1: were the cutting package, which was an order phone package.
29:43
Speaker 1: I'm using one today. Actually, I would do a lot
29:45
Speaker 1: of work with Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welsh when we're
29:47
Speaker 1: committing their catalog into vinyl. So the order phone could
29:51
Speaker 1: cut what no one else could cut, very delicate system.
29:58
Speaker 1: UM but ended up hearing that Steve Wonder, Stevie Wonder
30:02
Speaker 1: was having some problems mastering hotter than July, and people
30:09
Speaker 1: I was working with had the wisdom to send him
30:12
Speaker 1: a brail letter and Steve was interested and we cut
30:18
Speaker 1: a ref for him. Okay, let's go a little bit slower.
30:21
Speaker 1: So you were working at studio bybe Bestie and you
30:25
Speaker 1: have this problem with mastering, do you then commit yourself?
30:28
Speaker 1: I'm on the mastering dream or is just like a
30:30
Speaker 1: side project, a side project. It's totally a side project.
30:33
Speaker 1: The lathe and the cutting amps were set up at
30:37
Speaker 1: the back room at fifty five. It was on a table.
30:41
Speaker 1: You know, we were just learning, learning, learning, but we
30:44
Speaker 1: knew there was something good about it. Okay, so you
30:47
Speaker 1: had one of these leaves. You said it was made
30:49
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. Did anybody else have one? There were
30:51
Speaker 1: five in the world. UM one that was at the
30:55
Speaker 1: place that made it so that they could keep it running.
30:58
Speaker 1: UM two went to a company called Future Disc that's
31:01
Speaker 1: now gone and Precision had the other two. So they
31:05
Speaker 1: were finicky, delicate and really a miracle that they went
31:12
Speaker 1: from day to day. So it was again it was
31:17
Speaker 1: a learn while you earn experience. UM ended up building
31:21
Speaker 1: Precision well before you. But first you got ahold of
31:24
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder before Precision. No Stevie came at Precisions. Okay,
31:29
Speaker 1: So you ended up building Precisions. So you say, we're
31:31
Speaker 1: going down this path. We're committed, We're committed. There were
31:34
Speaker 1: three partners in on it. One was an experienced mastering
31:38
Speaker 1: engineer that ended up not not coming through in ways
31:43
Speaker 1: that should have, and so it was really it fell
31:48
Speaker 1: on me, so you were learning on the job by
31:51
Speaker 1: the seat of my pants. Fortunately, Richard started his record
31:55
Speaker 1: company at that point, Planet and Michael Solomon, who I've
31:59
Speaker 1: just reacquainted with, put together one of the very first
32:03
Speaker 1: compilation records of punk bands. It was called Sharp Cuts,
32:08
Speaker 1: and you know, we were all in the family and
32:11
Speaker 1: Michael came to me and, uh, you know, the plim
32:14
Speaker 1: souls were I don't remember who all the acts were
32:17
Speaker 1: on it, but Michael came to me and, uh, to
32:21
Speaker 1: master it. And I really didn't know what I was doing,
32:27
Speaker 1: but it sounded pretty good. At the end of the day,
32:30
Speaker 1: the equipment wasn't so great, the meaning the lathe, but
32:34
Speaker 1: I mean, truthfully, there was there was a lot of
32:36
Speaker 1: tears for me on that because it just it was
32:39
Speaker 1: frustrating knowing that the potential was there, but I just
32:43
Speaker 1: couldn't get get it going right and it took a while.
32:46
Speaker 1: But Michael worked with me. He brought me Mark Saffin's
32:51
Speaker 1: next So I got a little education doing that. But
32:54
Speaker 1: the best education I got was your friend Harold Bronson,
32:59
Speaker 1: who had Ryan before we do that. This is before
33:02
Speaker 1: or after Stevie Wonder. This is actually after tell us
33:08
Speaker 1: to Stevie Wonder story. Stevie was interested. There was a
33:15
Speaker 1: gentleman by the name of Arnie Acosta that was brought
33:18
Speaker 1: into Precision to help teach me to master um. Arnie
33:24
Speaker 1: it was really a gifted mastering engineer, and I mean
33:27
Speaker 1: a really gifted mastering engineer, and Arnie helped put that
33:33
Speaker 1: all together. Arnie though did not live in Los Angeles,
33:37
Speaker 1: he lived in San Louis Obispo, so he would commute
33:41
Speaker 1: down for four days a week and we'd work so
33:45
Speaker 1: the other three days in the week because in those days.
33:48
Speaker 1: You know, it was a seven day haul. It was
33:52
Speaker 1: me and so I would be in there on the
33:55
Speaker 1: weekends just trying to figure it out, and you know,
33:58
Speaker 1: slowly people would come and well I finished the story
34:03
Speaker 1: with Stevie Wonder though as well. We Steve came in.
34:07
Speaker 1: We mastered Hotter in July. Um, he was he's a
34:11
Speaker 1: critical customer. He really knows what he wants. Um, I
34:16
Speaker 1: should say he didn't come in at that point, but
34:18
Speaker 1: we kept sending refs to him. And this, incidentally was
34:23
Speaker 1: the infancy of digital audio. Stevie worked on these Sony
34:28
Speaker 1: systems called sixteen hundreds, and Sony built Steve a braille editor,
34:33
Speaker 1: forum and stuff like that. So it was a lot
34:37
Speaker 1: of pioneering on my part, Sony's part, Steve's part. Uh,
34:42
Speaker 1: it was it was just um, it was really the
34:45
Speaker 1: order phone system that really spelled the difference. And Steve
34:49
Speaker 1: could hear that. So he was ultimately happy that you
34:52
Speaker 1: were doing a better version. Thrilled, thrilled. And we cut
34:55
Speaker 1: the parts for the world. We you know, in those days,
34:58
Speaker 1: you cut lacquers, you cut who sets for Portugal, Spain,
35:03
Speaker 1: South Africa, you name it. We cut Stevie Wonder till
35:07
Speaker 1: the cows came home. There would you'd get at the
35:10
Speaker 1: end of the day, there'd be a stack of boxes
35:13
Speaker 1: to be picked up by motown and careered off to
35:18
Speaker 1: the to the regions. Okay, so then okay, so then
35:22
Speaker 1: you do Stevie Wonder and you were telling this story
35:24
Speaker 1: with Harold Bronson. Another thing, well, Steve sort of put
35:28
Speaker 1: Precision on the map, Harold who was one of the
35:32
Speaker 1: co founders of Rhino correct Harold. I don't know how
35:37
Speaker 1: Harold got to Precision, but he did. And this was
35:42
Speaker 1: really at the beginning of his reissue world. He was
35:45
Speaker 1: coming off the wild Man Fisher stuff and the Barnes
35:49
Speaker 1: and Barns, and he struck a deal with Precision that
35:57
Speaker 1: we would work together for a rate. But meanwhile, you know,
36:01
Speaker 1: I'm doing naz nas nas nas nas nas off off
36:05
Speaker 1: of the master tapes with Harold, and it was really, uh,
36:10
Speaker 1: it was a great learning experience. I mean, Harold, who's
36:13
Speaker 1: a fantastic music fan. You know, he would have all
36:16
Speaker 1: the originals to reflect on and then look at what
36:18
Speaker 1: we were doing and he'd make corrections and it was
36:22
Speaker 1: really it was a great vehicle for me to learn
36:24
Speaker 1: how to master okay, so go on. I was gonna say,
36:29
Speaker 1: when I was learning to master, it's about a ten
36:31
Speaker 1: year process until I think you were okay to good.
36:35
Speaker 1: I mean, let's be real. You start something, you're never
36:38
Speaker 1: great at it unless you're gifted. And Harold worked with
36:44
Speaker 1: me through that. And I did a lot of work
36:46
Speaker 1: with Harold over many years um mastering his catalogs, and
36:51
Speaker 1: I think it made me better. It certainly gave Harold
36:55
Speaker 1: a good product to sell. And uh also now, because
37:00
Speaker 1: of the Stevie Wonder connection, those days, people would look
37:05
Speaker 1: at album credits and by the way, we were so
37:07
Speaker 1: late in the game. On the Stevie Wonder credit, they
37:09
Speaker 1: had to put it on the actual disc label as
37:12
Speaker 1: opposed to in the artwork in the package. But they
37:15
Speaker 1: credited us, which was the main thing. So I started
37:19
Speaker 1: doing a lot of Solar Records, Gap Band, just a
37:25
Speaker 1: lot of really great music, and again learning as I
37:30
Speaker 1: went along. I mean, it was in those days reading
37:35
Speaker 1: the album art sort of helped your career tremendously. So
37:39
Speaker 1: you weren't working at you were waiting and you're waiting
37:42
Speaker 1: to pick up the phone, right, We're waiting for the
37:44
Speaker 1: phone to ring. I mean, that's I've never been good
37:48
Speaker 1: at selling myself, and uh, it was just word of
37:52
Speaker 1: mouth that just you have the soul records, then how
37:56
Speaker 1: do you break into the rock records. Well, as I'm
38:00
Speaker 1: transitioning out of engineering, I'm really full time mastering. Jimmy
38:06
Speaker 1: Ivane and Shelly are coming to Los Angeles. That Shelly yakus.
38:12
Speaker 1: Shelly his father was in the business, and Jimmy started
38:17
Speaker 1: out as Shelly second, and then Shelly ended up working
38:20
Speaker 1: for him, right, I think that's the way the story goes.
38:24
Speaker 1: But they were coming west because Jimmy was doing Stevie's
38:29
Speaker 1: first record, Stevie Next, and uh, Shelly was staying in
38:35
Speaker 1: New York finishing up. I think it was damn the
38:37
Speaker 1: Torpedoes of Tom. Jimmy needed an engineer. I got thrown
38:43
Speaker 1: in for two weeks with Jimmy, which is just great. Um,
38:47
Speaker 1: and we started tracking the Belladonna record I was mastering,
38:54
Speaker 1: but needless to say, I wasn't swamped with mastering work,
38:57
Speaker 1: so I could do this work with Jimmy Stevie Nicks,
39:02
Speaker 1: and uh it was time to do a single stop
39:06
Speaker 1: dragging my heart around. By this time, Shelley had come
39:09
Speaker 1: in and I had shown Shelley the studio and what
39:11
Speaker 1: we were doing, and I'm not sure where they mixed that.
39:16
Speaker 1: I think they may have mixed that in good Night
39:20
Speaker 1: l A. I don't really remember, but it wasn't mixed
39:23
Speaker 1: at fifty. But Shelly and Jimmy gave me the shot
39:28
Speaker 1: at mastering that track. Um, I'm fairly certain it had
39:33
Speaker 1: been mastered at the facility they were used using up
39:36
Speaker 1: to that point. Once again, the order phone came through
39:41
Speaker 1: and put on the disc what was on the tape,
39:45
Speaker 1: and Jimmy and Shelly both heard that. So that was
39:49
Speaker 1: the beginning of a great run with Jimmy and Shelley
39:53
Speaker 1: and you know, which led through Jimmy's work with Tom
39:58
Speaker 1: Stevie obviously, and then Jimmy started his label and I
40:02
Speaker 1: did a lot of the really fun stuff on Jimmy's
40:07
Speaker 1: label before he really got deep into the urban world.
40:12
Speaker 1: So I did a lot of work with him over
40:15
Speaker 1: many years. I it was a good run. So at
40:18
Speaker 1: what point does it's to turn where you've got not
40:23
Speaker 1: enough time to do? Everybody's looking for you, you know,
40:29
Speaker 1: I never said no. So I can remember doing three
40:36
Speaker 1: albums in a day, which was unthinkable. Um, But I
40:41
Speaker 1: was hungry. I was eager. I really loved what I
40:45
Speaker 1: was doing, and it was great. It was so okay.
40:49
Speaker 1: But now let's say if you go to a regular
40:51
Speaker 1: recording studio, of which are limited number these days, they're
40:54
Speaker 1: loaded with equipment. Okay, you go into a mastering room,
40:59
Speaker 1: there's a lot less equipment. Well yeah, because first of all,
41:02
Speaker 1: you're only dealing with two tracks. You're dealing with the stereo,
41:06
Speaker 1: so you don't need all the limiters and the pre
41:09
Speaker 1: ampts and the microphone, this, that and the other. Excuse me.
41:14
Speaker 1: So it's you know, I think I use the word
41:18
Speaker 1: chain a little earlier in this conversation. Mastering engineers like chains,
41:22
Speaker 1: and the chain is I come in off the tape machine.
41:26
Speaker 1: I like this wire, I like these connectors. I mean
41:29
Speaker 1: it gets really pretty minutia. Like I like to go
41:34
Speaker 1: into this piece of gear first. I like to have
41:36
Speaker 1: this piece of gear come in second. I like to
41:39
Speaker 1: have and that's a great place to start. You may
41:43
Speaker 1: change it up, but you're using the same stuff all
41:49
Speaker 1: the time. It's not like, okay, we want to a funk,
41:52
Speaker 1: distorted guitar sound that all those types of pieces of
41:56
Speaker 1: gear don't really apply. In mastering master ring is you
42:01
Speaker 1: know David Manley, who's a name a lot of people
42:05
Speaker 1: will know built equipment. Now Havanna's running the company. But David,
42:10
Speaker 1: David really taught me a lot. He said, if you
42:14
Speaker 1: don't have a clean chain, you've got nothing. You can
42:17
Speaker 1: always make a dirty chain. And he's so right. You
42:20
Speaker 1: know you you don't need to turn something down to
42:23
Speaker 1: turn it up later in the chain. You have to
42:25
Speaker 1: figure out a series of equipment of tools that you
42:32
Speaker 1: work with and that worked for you. So the question
42:39
Speaker 1: was why so little gear? Well, in my opinion, there
42:44
Speaker 1: aren't that many good sounding equalizers. So it took me
42:48
Speaker 1: three years to find the last piece of gear I
42:51
Speaker 1: I wanted in in an analog world. And it wasn't
42:54
Speaker 1: for lack of trying. So now, if I remember correctly,
42:58
Speaker 1: you met David Manly because you came in he said,
43:00
Speaker 1: I have special wire, right this wire for those people.
43:03
Speaker 1: This is something that's debated in the Stereo magazine that
43:06
Speaker 1: infinitem to what degree is why are important? Um? I'm
43:10
Speaker 1: going to take a very unusual position on this. If
43:14
Speaker 1: wire is making a big difference for you, you've got
43:16
Speaker 1: a big problem. Okay, I believe that. But for someone
43:21
Speaker 1: like you or someone like Stevie wonder, can you hear
43:23
Speaker 1: the difference in the wire? You can if there's a problem.
43:27
Speaker 1: If if you're working with gear that's really good. I'm
43:33
Speaker 1: not saying a piece of zip coord from a lamp
43:36
Speaker 1: is what you should be using. But whether if you're
43:39
Speaker 1: using a Macgami wire or a Belden wire or you know,
43:43
Speaker 1: what are the quote studio standards, can you pick the difference?
43:48
Speaker 1: I'm not sure this is this is a big problem
43:51
Speaker 1: in our audio world. People think they can pick the
43:54
Speaker 1: difference until they do a double blindfold and then they're surprised.
43:58
Speaker 1: Stunned is the word I to use. Okay, So once
44:10
Speaker 1: you have your chain established, what are you actually working
44:13
Speaker 1: on on each record? What are you changing on each record? Well,
44:17
Speaker 1: it's it's on a case by case basis every terms
44:20
Speaker 1: in terms of equipment. Well, I'll talk about a project
44:25
Speaker 1: I just I'm in the middle of right now. I
44:31
Speaker 1: had probably not the right take on the project. I
44:35
Speaker 1: thought that they may want something that was a little
44:37
Speaker 1: more forward commercial loud, if you will, But that's not
44:43
Speaker 1: what they wanted. And so the producer I spoke to
44:48
Speaker 1: on Monday said, and we've worked a lot together. He said,
44:53
Speaker 1: it just seems like maybe the attack time on your
44:55
Speaker 1: compressor needs to be you know, slow, or to let
45:00
Speaker 1: more of the transience through. Well, that to me, men,
45:06
Speaker 1: there's you know, I have my favorite pieces of gear
45:09
Speaker 1: that I like to use. I knew exactly what he
45:12
Speaker 1: was talking about. I said, no problem, I'll take that
45:14
Speaker 1: piece out. I'm only getting a dB out of it,
45:17
Speaker 1: and I'm just actually in the middle of finishing that
45:22
Speaker 1: record right now. But I completely understand what he was saying.
45:28
Speaker 1: I completely understand what the artist was saying. It made
45:32
Speaker 1: it too different than what they gave me. And so
45:38
Speaker 1: what they gave me was excellent to begin with. And
45:42
Speaker 1: so you know, my my my task is to put
45:45
Speaker 1: a little frosting on this cake. Okay, generally speaking, I've
45:49
Speaker 1: certainly been in the studio with you where at one
45:52
Speaker 1: point you had a box that was basically, you know,
45:55
Speaker 1: push it up for a little of this sound, push
45:57
Speaker 1: it down for a little of that sound. Is that
45:59
Speaker 1: general what you're doing? Absolutely? But you know, if um,
46:05
Speaker 1: just from a creative perspective, some people want to eq
46:10
Speaker 1: before they compress. Some people want to EQ into a
46:14
Speaker 1: compressor and EQ afterwards too. So these are all choices.
46:20
Speaker 1: There's not a right or wrong. It's how you want
46:23
Speaker 1: to set up your workflow and how you or how
46:26
Speaker 1: I think I can achieve my best result for the
46:29
Speaker 1: criteria in front of me. Um At every tape that
46:33
Speaker 1: comes or every file now that comes in, it is different,
46:37
Speaker 1: and I mean it's different. Some of them come in
46:41
Speaker 1: they haven't used a limited on the recording at all.
46:44
Speaker 1: I just did this record for this isn't any thing,
46:47
Speaker 1: and it was incredibly great music. Uh, and the guys
46:51
Speaker 1: really really talented. He doesn't even know what a limitter is.
46:56
Speaker 1: I saw his files and I thought, oh my goodness,
47:00
Speaker 1: this is gonna be hard work. And it really was
47:03
Speaker 1: hard work. But it was putting the right pieces to
47:09
Speaker 1: put the good color in place for him preserve what
47:12
Speaker 1: was great that he presented, which was the fact that
47:16
Speaker 1: it was really dynamic. It was full of transients. But
47:20
Speaker 1: he also wanted to compete. You know, in a modern
47:24
Speaker 1: ish rock world, it's not the loudest record in the
47:26
Speaker 1: world and it shouldn't be. Well that brings us to
47:29
Speaker 1: the loudness wars, which I really think of being the nineties. No,
47:34
Speaker 1: it's ongoing still ongoing never ends, okay, So explain what's
47:40
Speaker 1: going on there and how you address it. People do
47:47
Speaker 1: their mixes, mixers a mix and at the last part
47:52
Speaker 1: of the process they'll strap a plug into plug ins
47:57
Speaker 1: in to mimic a CD. That does two things. It
48:04
Speaker 1: makes it super loud, but it now becomes part of
48:08
Speaker 1: the sound that the artist hears. So whatever their choices
48:14
Speaker 1: are of tools to make it loud, I think, become
48:20
Speaker 1: integrated into what really is the master. So somebody will
48:27
Speaker 1: come in with a file that's good to go. It
48:30
Speaker 1: takes a lot more knowledge to know good to go
48:33
Speaker 1: than it does to touch it. So it just depends.
48:36
Speaker 1: It's some of them come in so loud you can't
48:41
Speaker 1: do anything. You just literally can't do anything. Doesn't want
48:46
Speaker 1: to go through an analog chain, it doesn't want to
48:48
Speaker 1: go through a digital chain. It doesn't want to go
48:50
Speaker 1: through a plug in chain. You try them all and
48:55
Speaker 1: at the end of the day you think, well it's
48:58
Speaker 1: got It's a little harsh the high end, but this
49:02
Speaker 1: is part of the sound that everybody's married too, and
49:05
Speaker 1: they may hear it, they may not hear it, but
49:08
Speaker 1: if you change it, they for sure hear it. Okay,
49:10
Speaker 1: but the way the customer would look at it is
49:13
Speaker 1: the loudness wars were based on making your record as
49:17
Speaker 1: loud as possible, so it would jump out on radio.
49:19
Speaker 1: No go back a little further, so it would jump
49:22
Speaker 1: out on the jukebox. Okay, So we've all been in
49:27
Speaker 1: bars with jukeboxes and a great Motown come track comes
49:32
Speaker 1: on and it's just loud and fun and boisterous, and
49:37
Speaker 1: then something that's uh a folk California, it's not as loud,
49:43
Speaker 1: and suddenly you know you can talk over it. So
49:46
Speaker 1: loudness wars started there where you got noticed if you
49:50
Speaker 1: got a loud you know, they called him a hot
49:53
Speaker 1: track coming in on a jukebox. You heard it made
49:57
Speaker 1: you want to go buy it. So that is translated
50:00
Speaker 1: for sure into radio and now streaming as well as
50:06
Speaker 1: c d s and the all important feature called shuffle,
50:12
Speaker 1: meaning one when you put your library or take your
50:15
Speaker 1: library on shuffle and here comes you know. But based
50:19
Speaker 1: on an earlier part of the conversation with this normalization, well,
50:24
Speaker 1: there's an off switch for that, and I suggest you
50:28
Speaker 1: use it. Most people don't dig deep enough to find it,
50:32
Speaker 1: but there's they all have an off switch. Okay, so
50:37
Speaker 1: in other words, the loudness wards are forever seemed to
50:41
Speaker 1: be but the loudness wards were amplified both metaphorically and
50:46
Speaker 1: literally when we went to the c D, because the
50:48
Speaker 1: c D could hold a whole bunch more stuff, right,
50:52
Speaker 1: It wasn't a question of holding a bunch more stuff.
50:57
Speaker 1: There were tools that we will call brick wall limitters
51:02
Speaker 1: that would stop you from going over so you could
51:04
Speaker 1: push it to the point of distortion. And we can
51:07
Speaker 1: all cite distorted records not gonna um, but people were
51:14
Speaker 1: found that sound pleasing, so um, what was unusual became usual.
51:21
Speaker 1: So now suddenly you've got a lot of really loud
51:26
Speaker 1: records out there. And again, the shuffle feature really makes
51:31
Speaker 1: an artist not want to be quiet. Artists are competitive
51:35
Speaker 1: in in strange ways, so this is as about a
51:39
Speaker 1: problem as ever. It's not improving. Let's switch it to vinyl. Okay,
51:45
Speaker 1: what do we know. There's a Vinyl gets a lot
51:47
Speaker 1: of ink, even though literally the number of sales are
51:51
Speaker 1: small and a lot of people are paying them on
51:53
Speaker 1: crappy systems. You obviously started out in vinyl. I'm still
51:57
Speaker 1: doing vinyl. But let's start with raw sound. Okay, assuming
52:07
Speaker 1: you know, you kids, vinyl sound better than if it's
52:10
Speaker 1: a file to begin with, it is supposed to be
52:12
Speaker 1: cutting on tape. Can a file sound better on vinyl
52:16
Speaker 1: than it will on a streaming or purchase service. I
52:22
Speaker 1: think the answer here is if you enjoy it, it
52:25
Speaker 1: can sound better. I don't think there's a real answer. Technically, no,
52:32
Speaker 1: it can't. It's a bankrupt system. But it's very pleasing.
52:36
Speaker 1: I put on some of the phonograph records we've been cutting,
52:39
Speaker 1: and I've been selectively doing vinyl on some of the
52:43
Speaker 1: artists I've been working with. UM, I don't want to
52:47
Speaker 1: cut you know, bombastic stuff because we're using an order phone.
52:51
Speaker 1: It's very fragile, but it's incredibly pleasing. UM do you
52:58
Speaker 1: get the same if you didn't know what you were playing,
53:00
Speaker 1: If you could eliminate the ticks and the pops and
53:03
Speaker 1: the surface noise, would you find the same satisfaction off
53:07
Speaker 1: of a file? I think you would. You know, the
53:10
Speaker 1: surface noise adds something to it. I like the conversion
53:15
Speaker 1: of electrical to mechanical and mechanical back to electrical. There's
53:20
Speaker 1: something that's good about it. But technically no, it's not better. Okay,
53:28
Speaker 1: So let's go back to stuff that was cut on
53:31
Speaker 1: tape to begin with, Are you gonna hear it better
53:35
Speaker 1: on vinyl than you will on any digital system? Vinyl
53:42
Speaker 1: is let's just talk about vinyl for a second. Vinyl
53:47
Speaker 1: has its has really strict limitations. Okay, the low end
53:51
Speaker 1: doesn't go as deep as subs do off of a file,
53:54
Speaker 1: and the high end is rolled off, but it's rolled
53:56
Speaker 1: off musically, so tape does similar things. Tape is not
54:03
Speaker 1: an exact image of what you've got. It's a color.
54:08
Speaker 1: It can be very slight, it can be very very big. Um.
54:14
Speaker 1: Back to David Guilt, they're complete analog people. We master
54:17
Speaker 1: their stuff off the tube shooter. It's uh, it sounds
54:22
Speaker 1: spectacular when we put it in vinyl. Their music doesn't
54:28
Speaker 1: have a lot of high frequency component. Um, there's air,
54:32
Speaker 1: there's dimension their space. If you're going to put in uh,
54:37
Speaker 1: something that's done with files, it's all digital all the
54:42
Speaker 1: way through comes in lout as ship. It can sound
54:45
Speaker 1: okay on vinyl, but I think it sounds better off
54:49
Speaker 1: the dig Okay, let me just ask you this though.
54:52
Speaker 1: If you're mastering off the high REDS file straight from
54:55
Speaker 1: pro tools, Okay, to vinyl. Is that gonna be better
55:01
Speaker 1: then the commercially available file? You know, I can't qualify
55:09
Speaker 1: better if you like it. It's better if you you
55:13
Speaker 1: know it's it's it's a first of all, you've got
55:16
Speaker 1: to have a great system to play back final. Okay,
55:18
Speaker 1: you can't put in a cross USB turntable and think
55:22
Speaker 1: you've got something good because you don't. So no, that
55:26
Speaker 1: can't doesn't stand a chance. You're come into my room.
55:30
Speaker 1: You've got a fancy turntable, You've got a fancy preamp.
55:33
Speaker 1: You've got some nice speakers, very clean path, noise floor,
55:38
Speaker 1: very low in the room, so you hear the rumble.
55:41
Speaker 1: You can hear all kinds of crazy details in the vinyl,
55:46
Speaker 1: but you will also hear those in the file because
55:48
Speaker 1: they're not invented in the vinyl. You know, the vinyl
55:52
Speaker 1: is just a capture medium that back to the electrical
55:57
Speaker 1: to mechanical to electrical it there's something very good about that. Okay,
56:04
Speaker 1: I'll ponder that. What is the So if I'm an
56:07
Speaker 1: act trying to develop, what's the best thing to send
56:10
Speaker 1: to you? If you're working on it, something that you've
56:14
Speaker 1: mixed that you like and you say I feel really
56:18
Speaker 1: good about this. So it doesn't matter what formatic comes in,
56:22
Speaker 1: whether it comes in on a piece of tape or
56:25
Speaker 1: it comes in and hires file or forty four, it
56:27
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. The best thing to send me is something
56:31
Speaker 1: you like and are happy with it. It's satisfying. So
56:37
Speaker 1: you've gotta you have to work at your mix until
56:41
Speaker 1: you're happy. Don't don't come in with something that's limping
56:43
Speaker 1: and think you're going to be a you know, a
56:45
Speaker 1: thorough red racehorse. So what is the futuring of the
56:48
Speaker 1: mastering world, Well, it's, uh, I think it's very much
56:54
Speaker 1: a in the box future. I think that define that
56:58
Speaker 1: for those unfamiliar. It's working with computers and plug ins. Um.
57:02
Speaker 1: I think there's always going to be room for what
57:05
Speaker 1: i'd call traditional mastering and analog chain fancy analog gear,
57:10
Speaker 1: good great converters, um. But that's a special client to that.
57:16
Speaker 1: You know, budgets come into this too, more than ever
57:19
Speaker 1: now somebody that wants to take the time to do
57:22
Speaker 1: a real, full on analog recording where they've got a
57:25
Speaker 1: great machine, fantastic tape, and you have to remember they
57:29
Speaker 1: don't make tape so much anymore. So good and bad batches,
57:32
Speaker 1: and so you know, if you're fortunate enough to have
57:36
Speaker 1: a budget that you can work like that and you
57:39
Speaker 1: want to mix it down through your pristine NIV or
57:43
Speaker 1: SSL console and put it on a fantastic piece of
57:47
Speaker 1: quarter inch or half inch tape. Takes a lot of
57:51
Speaker 1: time times money. It's so if someone is doing that
57:56
Speaker 1: and they're doing a full on mastering, what would be
57:59
Speaker 1: the rights for that? For my services, I charge an
58:04
Speaker 1: hourly rate and then the goods um. You know it
58:09
Speaker 1: gets expensive. Okay, so today, when you're finished, what do
58:15
Speaker 1: you actually send to the manufacturer or to these varying outlets. Well,
58:19
Speaker 1: we provide multiple files sources, so the m FIT, so
58:24
Speaker 1: we we conform to Apple standards for the m FIT.
58:28
Speaker 1: We're an infant sanctioned studio. There's the digital, which is
58:32
Speaker 1: your Amazon um from the digitals. I think Amazon makes
58:40
Speaker 1: their two fifty six MP three and a half. And
58:46
Speaker 1: then there's the CD which is getting less and less.
58:49
Speaker 1: And another thing I'm noticing is is that we get
58:52
Speaker 1: less call for the super high res K two. It's
58:57
Speaker 1: getting it's reducing. Yeah, we don't we see fewer requests
59:01
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah, I think that I may not work
59:05
Speaker 1: in the genre of music. I think that that's maybe
59:09
Speaker 1: more jazz classical oriented than it ever you know, has been.
59:14
Speaker 1: But we used to provide those high res files for
59:17
Speaker 1: I forget the name of the company in New York,
59:19
Speaker 1: the HD tracks or something. Okay, what about for a
59:23
Speaker 1: long time, especially in the CD era which started in
59:26
Speaker 1: Night two or so, remastered what was going on there? Wow?
59:34
Speaker 1: In two not a lot of good stuff. But fast forward, Um,
59:40
Speaker 1: I've been around long enough to have the privilege to
59:45
Speaker 1: do people's twenty five year anniversary albums and stuff. So
59:49
Speaker 1: I just did the last I did Monster and Out
59:52
Speaker 1: of Time for R e M. And in those cases
59:58
Speaker 1: R e M is really into quality be We actually
1:00:01
Speaker 1: get the half inch tapes from the vault and uh
1:00:07
Speaker 1: I remaster them. I got to say, it's kind of
1:00:11
Speaker 1: a daunting task because I put on those old CDs
1:00:15
Speaker 1: and they're incredibly good sounding, and it's you know, it's
1:00:19
Speaker 1: always different, and different can be good, different can be bad.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: It just depends on who's just is. It's such that
1:00:27
Speaker 1: there's been improvements in technology such that a master like
1:00:30
Speaker 1: you can literally do things better. Yeah, I mean, I
1:00:36
Speaker 1: experiences is a big contributing factor. I think that if
1:00:40
Speaker 1: you're dealing with somebody that works in the in the
1:00:43
Speaker 1: world I work in, nobody's really got second rate anything.
1:00:47
Speaker 1: We've been around long enough to pick and choose what
1:00:50
Speaker 1: it is we want and can use the tools to
1:00:54
Speaker 1: get out of the project what I'm looking for, and
1:00:58
Speaker 1: hopefully the client is satisfied with. So in a perfect world,
1:01:02
Speaker 1: if you could snap your fingers, what would you change
1:01:04
Speaker 1: about today's music industry? I wish loudness wasn't such a factor.
1:01:12
Speaker 1: I like my loudness. I certainly get slagged by the
1:01:18
Speaker 1: the people that like to finger people for making things loud.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: All of those people forget that somebody approved it. Um.
1:01:28
Speaker 1: But my personal taste would be for music to come
1:01:32
Speaker 1: back a couple of notches, because you never run out
1:01:36
Speaker 1: of volume on your volume control, but you sure run
1:01:39
Speaker 1: out of patients when it's too loud. You know. I
1:01:42
Speaker 1: we had a car when I when our son came
1:01:46
Speaker 1: into this world, we got a Mommy Mobile and it
1:01:49
Speaker 1: was interesting the first click of volume. You couldn't talk
1:01:52
Speaker 1: over with a modern c D. Wow Wow is right, okay,
1:01:58
Speaker 1: but inherently nal will be quieter. You know, Vinyl, you
1:02:03
Speaker 1: know you're you're at the limits of time and frequency,
1:02:10
Speaker 1: so to reproduce a fifty cycle wave, and vinyl takes
1:02:15
Speaker 1: up space physical space on the disc. So if you've
1:02:18
Speaker 1: got something that's got a robust low end, you're not
1:02:22
Speaker 1: going to get it super loud without overly compressing or
1:02:27
Speaker 1: compromising the audio in ways. It's not to say it
1:02:30
Speaker 1: can't be pleasing to do some of that, but that's
1:02:34
Speaker 1: the Vinyl has those types of limitations. Um. You know,
1:02:39
Speaker 1: if you remember, there are numbers of your favorite records
1:02:43
Speaker 1: that are nine tracks, you know, maybe thirty four minutes,
1:02:48
Speaker 1: you know, seventeen minutes aside sixteen eighteen, whatever it happens
1:02:52
Speaker 1: to be, which is sort of an ideal time to
1:02:55
Speaker 1: for for a vinyl disc. When you get up into
1:02:58
Speaker 1: these twenty four minutes sides, they're okay because you know,
1:03:03
Speaker 1: again the level is not overly pushed. The problem is
1:03:05
Speaker 1: you start start having signal to noise problems. I did
1:03:10
Speaker 1: I did Leonard Cohen's last record, and it was before
1:03:14
Speaker 1: I was cutting vinyl, and I remember saying to the
1:03:22
Speaker 1: guy that was cutting it that could we hear it
1:03:25
Speaker 1: a half dB quieter because I thought it might sound
1:03:29
Speaker 1: a little better. And he said, well, you know, we
1:03:31
Speaker 1: can do that, but you're gonna start noticing the surface noise.
1:03:35
Speaker 1: And he was so right, you know, he was just
1:03:37
Speaker 1: so right. So it's all a delicate balance. Uh, you know,
1:03:42
Speaker 1: audios a, it's a funny thing to chase. It's a
1:03:44
Speaker 1: sure a lot of fun and well, especially today because
1:03:48
Speaker 1: people are not younger generations not into stereo like the boomers,
1:03:52
Speaker 1: so they're playing it back through earbuds and a lot
1:03:55
Speaker 1: of crappy systems. Yeah they are. I mean, that's that's
1:03:59
Speaker 1: the downfall of add O is is that there's no resolution.
1:04:01
Speaker 1: You know, you're listening with such limited reproduction, you know,
1:04:05
Speaker 1: reproducers meaning earbuds, even good headphones. There are very few
1:04:10
Speaker 1: good headphones. I know a lot of people take issue
1:04:13
Speaker 1: with that. I should say there are very few good
1:04:14
Speaker 1: affordable headphones. Um. And when the you know, the common
1:04:19
Speaker 1: denominator is the handheld device, i e. Your phone. Um,
1:04:24
Speaker 1: you know, if it jumps on that and that makes
1:04:26
Speaker 1: you happy, great, And I'd like to make it jump
1:04:28
Speaker 1: on that and make you happy. That's your job. You've
1:04:31
Speaker 1: been listening to Steven Marcus in Mastering Engineer Extraordinary here
1:04:36
Speaker 1: on the Bob Left Sets podcast. We've gotten technical, you know.
1:04:40
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are intrigued. Some people
1:04:41
Speaker 1: are knowledgeable about this already. Other people can learn. I
1:04:45
Speaker 1: certainly learned a couple of things. Stephen, Thank you so
1:04:48
Speaker 1: much for being here. Thanks for having me, Bob. It's
1:04:50
Speaker 1: been a pleasure. Until next time, I'm Bob. Left sets