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[Ronny]

Bob Olhsson wrote on Wed, 06 July 2005 10:14

I think attended ones tend to come out better although I do 90% unattended.

I'm about 85% non attended. Most of my clients I haven't met in person. I feel that I do better work when I'm by myself. It's hard for me to get on a roll when I have a client that wants me to explain everything that I'm doing, it slows progress down and takes concentration away. Especially when I'm tailing a fade and listening to very minute levels and they are jabbering away. I find that when I do the project, than they review it, I have to make less changes than if they attend.

Tom, I don't let the master leave my hands until I'm paid in full, that's listed in my contract, so I don't have the problem of not getting paid. I also require half payment on the estimate, before I start.

[Technotechno]

Theres an in house mastering engineer in holland I used a couple of times.  I attended twice and was told he only had fifteen minutes to spare despite booking one hour. Happened both times. Obviously he was uncomfortable with attented sessions. which I can understand/

Maybe this is something to do with the fact he used an Alesis Quadraverbs digital ins and outs as his convertors. He played the tracks from CD, patched in to the qudraverb and cut the plate there and then. I dont know if this is standard DA convertors in ME houses, but I didnt like it. Still, th ecuts did come out fine.

Another couple of times in London, it was again obvious the ME's didnt like me attending so its quite good to hear that you guys prefer attented sessions.




Ps
I edited this post after realising it was rather uncool to name the mastering house

[lucey]

mostly unattended ... with files by FTP back and forth

yet having clients here is usually good for them and disrupts nothing for me


either way works, as long as it's the right way for that project.

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Ronny wrote on Sat, 09 July 2005 07:08

Bob Olhsson wrote on Wed, 06 July 2005 10:14 I think attended ones tend to come out better although I do 90% unattended. I'm about 85% non attended. Most of my clients I haven't met in person. I feel that I do better work when I'm by myself. It's hard for me to get on a roll when I have a client that wants me to explain everything that I'm doing, it slows progress down and takes concentration away. Especially when I'm tailing a fade and listening to very minute levels and they are jabbering away. I find that when I do the project, than they review it, I have to make less changes than if they attend. Tom, I don't let the master leave my hands until I'm paid in full, that's listed in my contract, so I don't have the problem of not getting paid. I also require half payment on the estimate, before I start.

Different strokes for different mastering situations.

I personally do not have a problem with clients in attendance at a mastering session UNLESS they are asking me a lot of questions or want to write everything down that I do (just for the record-sure right - and so they can do their own mastering the next time around <grin>)

I had a problems recently with a client that had sent me some work to do and he and I were obviously listening to different monitoring setups since he was hearing the polar opposites of what I was hearing. At one point I asked him to check the phase on both speaker since the comments he was sending me would lead me to believe he was listening on out of phase speakers. I kept doing what he asked and he kept saying I was going the wrong way. I put in a lot of time and energy into the project, just as I do for every project, but he and I were NOT hearing the same signal and the long distance communication and lack of a unified listening setup was hindering the whole project. He finally admitted he was listening to the material on his computer speakers which "simulated" surround sound and in his car in rush hour traffic. Since this was "world music" and featured lots of acoustical instruments and since he did not want me to "over compress it" I did what he told me to do. I have worked with this particular musician before and was very pleased with the professional relationship we had during that previous mastering experience. After this go round I would not consider doing any of his work again UNLESS he and I were in the same room.

How you guys do it by "remote control" is a mystery to me and I stand in awe of your prowess in mastering with out a client present.

[Nathan Eldred]

All unattended here.  I like being able to work at leasure, and take breaks when I want to and come back to it with fresh ears and brain....maybe in an hour, maybe in 6 hours after taking a hop over to Disney World for the evening.  They can demand tweaks the day after after they play it for every family member, friend, and internet forum member.  

[Ronny]

Thomas W. Bethel wrote on Sat, 09 July 2005 14:48

Ronny wrote on Sat, 09 July 2005 07:08 Bob Olhsson wrote on Wed, 06 July 2005 10:14 I think attended ones tend to come out better although I do 90% unattended. I'm about 85% non attended. Most of my clients I haven't met in person. I feel that I do better work when I'm by myself. It's hard for me to get on a roll when I have a client that wants me to explain everything that I'm doing, it slows progress down and takes concentration away. Especially when I'm tailing a fade and listening to very minute levels and they are jabbering away. I find that when I do the project, than they review it, I have to make less changes than if they attend. Tom, I don't let the master leave my hands until I'm paid in full, that's listed in my contract, so I don't have the problem of not getting paid. I also require half payment on the estimate, before I start. Different strokes for different mastering situations. I personally do not have a problem with clients in attendance at a mastering session UNLESS they are asking me a lot of questions or want to write everything down that I do (just for the record-sure right - and so they can do their own mastering the next time around <grin>) I had a problems recently with a client that had sent me some work to do and he and I were obviously listening to different monitoring setups since he was hearing the polar opposites of what I was hearing. At one point I asked him to check the phase on both speaker since the comments he was sending me would lead me to believe he was listening on out of phase speakers. I kept doing what he asked and he kept saying I was going the wrong way. I put in a lot of time and energy into the project, just as I do for every project, but he and I were NOT hearing the same signal and the long distance communication and lack of a unified listening setup was hindering the whole project. He finally admitted he was listening to the material on his computer speakers which "simulated" surround sound and in his car in rush hour traffic. Since this was "world music" and featured lots of acoustical instruments and since he did not want me to "over compress it" I did what he told me to do. I have worked with this particular musician before and was very pleased with the professional relationship we had during that previous mastering experience. After this go round I would not consider doing any of his work again UNLESS he and I were in the same room. How you guys do it by "remote control" is a mystery to me and I stand in awe of your prowess in mastering with out a client present.

FTP works wonders for receiving material, sending the refs and the final after any client requested retweaks, Tom. You can down or upload at the same time you read this newsgroup. I have return clients in Oz, Scandinavia, Europe, Japan, London and other cities in the UK, a couple in South America, no way that all can attend. The farthest that attends is a fellow in Greenville SC, he drives 12 hours round trip and stays a couple of days. Local jobs come mostly from self producing bands and I also do remote recording for the local high school bands and a couple of orchestras. That makes up the other 15%. Brunswick and surrounding islands only have 70,000 peeps and too small to support a large music scene, most of my work comes from people on my recording newsgroups and from people that have heard their cd's. Last count I had just under 5,000 members, everything from home recordists to a few pro facilities. If I remember correctly, you come from a small town yourself, how you get enough local mastering work, not being in a large city is what mystifies me.  

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Ronny Morris said "If I remember correctly, you come from a small town yourself, how you get enough local mastering work, not being in a large city is what mystifies me."

We have had to diversify a lot. We do radio shows, on location recording, restoration, reclamation of water or fire damaged tapes and records, forensics, small run CD and cassette duplication,lay-backs for video, video restoration and copying to DVD from obsolete video recording formats plus our normal mastering. We now have two full time studios and I have added two part time interns.

I think diversity is the key to staying with the game in today's market where every high school or college student has a computer in his bedroom and is using it to record, mix and master his or her own recordings and those of their friends.

[genericperson]

what do you do for forensics?

i watch Court TV crime mystery shows once in a while, and i find that stuff fun to watch.

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Mostly cleaning up tracks that were recorded in bad situations such as having the recorder buried in the bottom of a women's purse under a lot of stuff and sitting on her compact where the noise from the cassette decks motor transferred though the compact to the microphone in the recorder and the motor noise was louder than the voices. Or where someone thinks parts were edited out of a conversation on their copy and we have to compare the original with the copy on a word for word basis. Or cleaning up a bad trans Atlantic telephone call with lots of flanging and phasing going on enough that you could hear a husband threatening to kill his wife when he got back from England. (That one had a very happy ending as the FBI and police met him at the airport.) Most of the stuff is not to entertaining to listen to and most of the time when we have to process this I have a sheriff or Marshall sitting here so the "chain of evidence" is not broken. Some of the stuff is pretty gory like the 7 hours of self testimony from a serial killer we had to copy to CDs and make copies of for the judge, jury and attorneys.

Most of the stuff is just boring but it helps pay the bills.

By the way most of the stuff you see on TV in shows like CSI is made for television and the software does not presently exist.  The TV shows would make you think that you can take out all the background info and only leave the voices. We are not there yet. Maybe in a couple of years.We don't have all the forensic "goodies" but do well with what we have.

[Ronny]

genericperson wrote on Sun, 17 July 2005 12:14

what do you do for forensics? i watch Court TV crime mystery shows once in a while, and i find that stuff fun to watch.

I do some forensics myself, Tom, but there just isn't enough work and it's a small sideline for me. Most of what I do genericperson is restore illegible sections of phone recorders and answering machine converstions, cassette,  mini cassette and chip recorders. Some of the digi recorders use telephony and only 8k sampling with 4 and 6 bit word and it's a task restoring low res material compared to 16/44 and above. Than I record the material to cd's with 2 second pauses at the beginning of the specific sections that they want to use, so they can skip to those parts when they play them in court. These are mostly civil cases, the big time murder and corporate stuff goes to one guy up north. New Jersey, IIRC.    

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Forensics probably makes up less than 5% of our total work. I would like to do more local mastering but as you pointed out we are in a small town and there are lots of $20.00 per hour mastering place around the Northern Ohio area. Most of the people who run them don't really know what they are doing but they are CHEAP! and that is what a lot of people today are looking for.

[dcollins]

Thomas W. Bethel wrote on Sun, 17 July 2005 14:57

Forensics probably makes up less than 5% of our total work.

Do you have to have some kind of certification to do forensics, or can anyone just hang out a shingle?

Quote:

Acoustik Musik, Ltd. Room With a Veiw Productions

eye b4 eee 'cept afta vee?

dee cee

[masterhse]

dcollins wrote on Sun, 17 July 2005 20:31

Quote: Acoustik Musik, Ltd. Room With a Veiw Productions eye b4 eee 'cept afta vee? dee cee

Acoustic

Music

But now I'm just being pedantik.  

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Thomas W. Bethel wrote on Sun, 17 July 2005 17:57

Forensics probably makes up less than 5% of our total work. I would like to do more local mastering but as you pointed out we are in a small town and there are lots of $20.00 per hour mastering place around the Northern Ohio area. Most of the people who run them don't really know what they are doing but they are CHEAP! and that is what a lot of people today are looking for.

Thanks for pointing that out. I guess that is why you are as good as you are - you catch the things that no one else does. I have changed my profile. It was a slip of the finger when typing it in. Thanks again!

[Thomas W. Bethel]

masterhse wrote on Sun, 17 July 2005 20:53

dcollins wrote on Sun, 17 July 2005 20:31 Quote: Acoustik Musik, Ltd. Room With a Veiw Productions eye b4 eee 'cept afta vee? dee cee Acoustic Music But now I'm just being pedantik.

Acoustik Musik, Ltd. was suppose to be a play on words. We wanted to limit our mastering to acoustic music (that never happened). I chose the European spelling to give it a more continental fare, if you will. The name works well,  the spelling is actually German and we do all kinds of music mastering but I liked the name and the spelling and our logo so much that we stuck with it. Hope this helps!