FAQ

  • Mastering is really two things. The first step of the process is making your music sound as good as it can. Careful spectral and dynamic processing can bring out the best qualities of your mixes. The second step is creating a master that works best for the way your audience listens to music. Whether it’s for digital distribution, CD, Vinyl, Film, TV or Broadcast, the right master will make your music sound its best wherever it’s heard.

  • Yes! With more than 39 years and over 10,000 albums of mastering experience, I’ve worked with every genre imaginable. My clients cover the musical spectrum. Whether it’s pop, rock, alternative, jazz, blues, country, classical, dance, club, electronica, R&B, hip hop, rap, acoustic, folk, world or any other genre you can think of. From major labels to indies, from well known artists to local garage bands: you name it, I’ve mastered it. For a sample, head over to my clients page and click on an image or two. That will take you to the album on Spotify where you can hear it for yourself.

  • There are many reasons most records are not mastered in recording studios by mixing engineers. Look at the credits on your favorite CDs or LPs. You’ll find that the vast majority were mastered by full-time mastering engineers in dedicated mastering facilities. Mastering is as different from mixing as building a sports car is from driving it. Different disciplines require different skills. I can offer a fresh perspective on your mixes in a reference listening environment. You only get one chance to hear it for the first time, and that can make all the difference.

  • I can work with whatever format you’re mixing to – with a preference for high resolution interleaved .wav or .aif files if possible. If you’re mixing to analog tape, please make a backup and bring/send the ORIGINAL reels.

    • Here’s a list of information that will help in the process:

    • Artist / Group Name

    • Album Title

    • Song Titles and Sequence

    • Specific editing instructions such as crossfades, timing between songs, hidden tracks, inter-song ID marks, etc.

    • ISRC information

    • Type and number of masters and reference copies

    • Job Number, Plant Info and Matrix Numbers for Vinyl Projects

    It’s also important to include any other notes that will help communicate how you want your music to sound.

  • It stands for International Standard Recording Code. It’s a 12 character alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies each song for digital distribution. Your label or distributor can help you get this code and I can include it on your finished master. For a more detailed explanation, go to usisrc.org

  • The answer is a solid “maybe.” If sibilance and other high frequency elements are well under control, there was not a lot of limiting done to the master and it has round, analog-like waveforms then it’s probably fine for vinyl. OTOH, if it’s excessively bright and/or it was heavily processed for loudness then it will be better to use a version that’s been optimized for vinyl. Some things that sound fine on a CD can sound bad very quickly on vinyl. Sibilance, high frequency mix elements and clipping create extremely jagged waveforms and a groove cut from a jagged waveform is difficult for a playback stylus to trace. When the stylus loses contact with the bottom of the groove the result is tracing distortion. It’s most obvious on vocal SSS sounds but can also happen on cymbals, effects or anything with excessive HF content.

    Imagine the waveform is a smooth winding road and the stylus is a sports car. The car can handle the curves and stay on the road. Now imagine the road is full of potholes. The car bounces over those holes and it’s a rough ride. That’s what happens to a stylus on a record cut from a jagged or distorted waveform. And now imagine you’re driving a 1978 Pinto on that road. That’s roughly the equivalent of a lot of cheap turntables these days.

    Vinyl is an exaggerator. If there is tone on the source there will be more tone on the vinyl. If there’s distortion on the source there will be more distortion on the vinyl. That’s the way it works. It’s a mechanical, analog format where the shape of the groove is the sound of the record.

    And besides all of that, this is vinyl. It SHOULD sound different than the digital version. That’s the whole point!

  • See Article on Mixing for Vinyl

  • Why my transfer sounds different than yours is always the toughest question to answer. And it happens a lot. One factor is that people are not used to hearing their own music on vinyl. They have gotten used to the digital sound and the vinyl surprises them. And they have not spent time examining what various digital albums sound like compared to their analog counterpart. They accept the sound of their vinyl collection without really knowing whether their table is accurate or not.

    Worse, each turntable has a different cartridge and tonearm configuration. Imagine how different each mic in a studio sounds. SM57 vs U47? At 6” or three feet? The difference between cartridges is even bigger. Some are bright, some are dull, some have poor stereo separation, some have terrible high frequency response, especially inner groove. Some have a fine line or elliptical shaped stylus that can follow the high frequency contours of the groove while others have conical styli that are simply too large to fit into the small physical shape of high frequency waveforms in a groove. And the geometry of the tonearm (how well physically aligned the tonearm and cartridge are) has a large impact on things like sibilance and inner groove distortion. Much more so than the physical alignment of a tape deck head.

    The vast majority of the time, when I play a test pressing and compare it to the source it matches very well. That means the groove contains the sound I intended. And that is honestly the best that I can hope for. I can not control for all of the variables out in the real world. Every speaker has a different response. Every room sounds different. Every turntable and cartridge has a unique sound. All I can do (and this is what all mastering engineers do; whether analog or digital) is shoot for the middle. Try to reach the largest audience.

    The turntable I use for listening to test pressings is simple. It’s a 30 year old Technics SL-1200. The most ubiquitous DJ tablet on the planet. Stock tonearm. Ortofon 2M Bronze cartridge. Nothing fancy. Just a very well set up turntable (Lofgren B tonearm geometry, 1.5 grams tracking force). I could easily make it sound terrible by messing with the cartridge alignment or by putting a $30 conical stylus cartridge on it. But that would not give us a good representation of what is actually in the groove. People with great tables will hear something like my transfer. Even better. People with lower end tables will hear more distortion and less top end. That’s just how vinyl works. No escaping it.

    When asked to make changes based on the sound of a client’s turntable, I tell them this: My philosophy is to not mess up a good master to accommodate a problematic playback system. This is also true in purely digital mastering. When a recent client said her boom box made song X sound funny, I had a hard time convincing her that the boom box was the problem, not the master. When a client tells me their test pressing sounds dull or distorted but it sounds good on my system, I tell them to first get their table professionally calibrated (I always recommend Lofgren B tonearm geometry) and to buy a decent cartridge. 99% of complains magically disappear after that.