| joeaudio wrote on Fri, 14 July 2006 13:26 |
I cold email a record label here in New York.
I get a response saying "we usually use sterling
but we're always looking for a good mastering lab".
So he (a&r dude) gives me his next record to master.
It's a pop record, well produced and written in the vein of
Kelly Clarkson recorded and mixed (and produced I believe)
by a well known well established engineer.
As I was listening to the second track and I hear good
old fashioned over modulation clear as a bell. I'm sitting with said a&r guy and I point this out to him (I would go on
to find distortion on 5 out of 12 tracks).
Rich and famous engineer says to a&r guy "you see ? this
is why I only master at sterling"
Anyway famous engineer remixes distorted songs and
sends them back to me (same distortion as the first try)
This time I don't say anything. I stayed in the digital realm
for EQ. I could not change the level as they were all maxed out.
The biggest change I made was +1.5dB @ 14K Shelf on my Weiss EQ.
Make two refs (one for a&r one for famous guy)
Famous guy tells a&r that I fucked with the harmonics on the vocals. I said shit, I knew I shouldn't have used my vocal deharmonizer (VDH).
a&r guy says, wow your right the vocals are deharmonized.
Got a kidney stone attack and landed in the hospital. My
good friend and partner in crime remastered the project 1:1
at famous guys request (distortion and all)
It's tough to be at the mercy of fools, but that's the nature of the biz I guess. Can't win.
Joe
|
Hey Joe:
Interesting post, as always, and nice to see you back on the board.
So a couple of days ago I got a call from a producer who has mastered here several times over the last five years and he asks me to fit him in at the last minute for an A/C single. So I delay my departure time and agree to do this after already mastering an album that day.
Now coincidentally, in between my album master and the single, there is an hour and a half of down time so my tech guy decides to go in the studio and try out a different signal path/routing experiment that he thinks will work in order to allow us to do real time SRC with our new Lavry box.
Anyway, the client comes in with a mix that was done by a well-known Canadian mix engineer.
I listened for a moment and then flipped over to my analog loop. I couldn't believe how loud this sucker was! An A/C "mix", no less. I had to turn it down about 11 db just so it wouldn't distort my loop.
At this point, I would normally assume that the mix was overloaded or distorted in some way but since we had just done some work in the studio, maybe that was causing the problem.
I called my tech guy in and we started trouble-shooting. I mean how could it be Mr. Well-Known Mixer and the producer, who is a very skilled musician and always seems to bring in decent to good material bring in such an overloaded mix.
Well, long story short, we finally determined that the mix was maxed (almost "mastered") and in fact, while it wasn't obviously distorted, it did have some grungyness that wasn't helping matters.
Normally, I would just do the best I could, but given that this was a regular client, I suggested that they ask the mix guy to lighten up a bit on the compression and that would make a better master in the end.
I got an email later in the evening where the producer guy says he stopped at another engineer's place, for a second opinion, and the guy dropped it in his Pro Tools session and mastered it. The producer's comments was that the mix was pristine and so was the master. His tone implied that there must be something wrong with my set-up!
Now the delicious irony is that the engineer who gave the 2nd opinion is a very good mix engineer who does also does some mastering work. In fact, another regular producer client of mine who used him on his last album told me that he tried to talk him out of mastering...nothing against Andy but the mixes sounded really good and didn't need it!
Fortunately, they over-ruled him mastered the album with me and were very happy that they did.
Imagine how that engineer must have enjoyed mastering the A/C mix after I criticized it sent it away to be remixed! Now after mastering for five years for the producer, he'll probably go somewhere else the next time!
My tech guys comment was that where they checked the mix and mastered it was a recording studio and the speakers are not optimized for a critical mastering-level evaluation. All I know is that my Lipinski's show up distortion and harshness immediately and make me work really hard by b/c you can really hear when the mixes are distorted and also when I am adding any distortion via my work.
Andy,
Silverbirch Productions
www.silverbirchprod.com
