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[Ed Littman]

jazzius wrote on Sat, 01 May 2004 06:22

I'd like to also ask it in another way.....would you consider that the best ME's have a "sound" or "style"?.....of course, anyone can do transparent.....buy the Weiss stuff and an L2, get some good monitoring and tread carefully and voila....transparent mastering.

Well...Ted Jensen has a consistant sizzle to his sound
I think being transparent & improving the mix is very challanging.
It's easy not to do enough & easyer to do to much.
Ed

[Innominandum]

That "Stereo Comp on the 2-Buss" thread got me thinking. I recently offered to master a friend's upcoming split EP for free as practice. I did two versions: a "true-to-the-original" version and an "all-out" version.

I'm well versed in the genre and I'm pretty familiar with which albums my friend considers good sounding. So I took the EP and set out to take it to the next level. It took quite a bit to "get it there" but I feel it now stands up to some really well produced releases. Unfortunately, the resulting sound is very different from the original sound.

Now, the true-to-original version sounds like an improvement over the original but I feel the all-out version is much better. The transparent version only gets it half way there. I gave him both to let him decide which direction he wants to go and if he wants any further adjustments.

I'm also not sure I want to do two versions for every job thrown my way. If they're happy with the way it sounds, that's great. But one will never know how much further it can be taken without trying, right? I also don't want to earn a reputation as a "butcher of albums." So I guess I'm reposing the question about how far things should be taken.

[bblackwood]

Innominandum wrote on Sat, 15 May 2004 01:15

I'm also not sure I want to do two versions for every job thrown my way. If they're happy with the way it sounds, that's great. But one will never know how much further it can be taken without trying, right? I also don't want to earn a reputation as a "butcher of albums." So I guess I'm reposing the question about how far things should be taken.

And that's the point of the original question...

I agree doing two versions is a drag - twice the work for you and I imagine it would cause clients to question your ability to make decisions.

At the end of the day, if I know where the client wants the record to be, I'll do anything to get it there. The tough part is knowing if they really love it the way it is or if they really want it to sound like Maroon5 (you know, midrange drivers don't work, sub is set too high, 3 extra tweeters...).