Questions for Glenn Meadows

Did you enjoy working on the Jimmy Buffett CDs that were done in the 1980s of his 1970s-mid 1980s albums? These CDs are excellent sounding. A lot of people here do not like your work on the MCA Gold disc series. Your work on the early Amy Grant LPs is excellent as well. Did you also do at least some of the early CD mastering of the early Amy Grant catalog? If so, those discs are excellent sounding as well

 

Wow. I wasn't really aware that Glenn was taking questions. What was the biggest challenge when you remastered the Steely Dan recordings?

 

Here's the thread where he appears, asking for questions about his Steely Dan remasters:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=146677&page=2

I assume BradOlson has opened this thread to avoid threadcrapping there. And to Brad... please excuse this threadcrap

 

Hey Glenn,

Since leaving Masterfonics what have you been working on? Any plans to open a new studio? Where do you work out of now?

 

Yea, the Buffett stuff was always fun to work on, working with Norbert Putnam, the producer was always an "experience"..

I did master much of Amy's early vinyl catalog, but don't recall doing any of the transfers for that material to CD for release. It's probable that they just used the EQ Tape copies that we made during mastering, as many of the labels did at that time. Mostly, when those were done, unless there was a real need to go back and re-do the CD masters, they were left alone.

Back in that era, there was no goal to strive for "maximum level", as there is today. CD was still treated as a quality format, and we tried to provide the full dynamics of the original recording, since we were going from the limitations of vinyl to the better dynamic range of CD.

Glenn

 

Getting the masters to play!!!, and being concerned that I had been given the opportunity to work on what are still considered classic recordings, and not mess them up.

There was a bunch of apprehension on my part as I worked my way thru the projects. I took a ton of time working on them, since at the time, I was given an almost open ended time frame by Roger Nichols, as well as Donald and Walter.

Donald was in Hawaii working on Kamakiriad (spelling??) during the entire re-work time, and I was sending CD Ref's over to them. We had one of the original Yamaha CDR burning systems that Gotham Audio in NYC packaged. The whole system cost us 75,000 for 2 drives, the encoder, and the software burning package. When we first got that system, in 1989, blank discs cost $80.00 each.

I'll prepare a full overview of the re-mastering on the Steely CD's and post to a new thread over the weekend.

The facts are, that they were what they were given the technology at the time, and the "directions" I was given by Donald, Walter, and Roger (who was still the engineer working with them). It's an interesting story, for sure. LONG story.

Glenn

 

I'm looking forward to hearing about it Glenn

 

After working in the "commercial" sector for so long, and then having to fight the battle I did with Emerald, I was out of work for 6-7 months, and legally undera non-compete with Emerald, that was court enforced. (The legal battle went on for 2+ years before being resolved).

I ended up getting an in-house mastering job at a company then called Compendia Music, which was the successor to Platinum Entertainment. Platinum had purchased various labels, including Intersound, Light Records among others, and had started several of their own. Platinum had gone into Chapter 11, and Compendia was the resulting company that took over the Platinum assets. Intersound had always had inhouse mastering, and they continued the same with Compendia, but that mastering was based out of the distribution center in Atlanta, and was handled by long time engineer, Gary Rice.

With the re-opening of the company, the A&R base moved to Nashville, and over 1 9-12 month period, they realized that they needed mastering to be here in Nashville as well (at the time, the company had over 8,000 masters being used for catalog re-issue, as well as new projects in Pop, Black Gospel, Jazz and Country being released). Gary was unwillig to move here, so a friend of mine saw an advertisment in the local paper for a company looking for "entry level pro-tools operator". After being out of work for 6 months, I was getting a bit desparate, so I applied.

Of course, they felt I was a bit "over qualified" for the job, so I sold myself to them telling them I could also take on all the computer/network admin responsibilies. At that time, they were paying an outside computer consultant $150.00/hour whenever he was called.

Anyway, long story short, they combined money from several budget areas, and offered me a job, which I took.. That was over 5 years ago.

In the subsequent years, Compendia was sold to Sheridan Square Entertainment, a NYC based company that also owned Artemis Records, Tone Cool, Triloka, Karuna, and has the license to the entire Vanguard Classical catalog. We were folded in as the Nashville office of Artemis, and ran under the label names of Artemis Gospel, Artemis Records, and Artemis Classical.

About a year later, SSE negotiated to buy the North American operation of V2 from Richard Branson, and the end of 2005, that label was rolled into our operation, and V2-Artemis Records was born. I also picked up doing mastering for that group as well. They (along with Artemis) had never had an "in-house mastering facility", and the cost savings were obvious, so all of that kept me busy.

In the fall of 2006, after several very bad releases/returns, the company decided that V2-Artemis (NY office) needed to be closed, so in January of 2007, that entire operation (except finance and corporate people) were let go, and V2 basically became another catalog imprint of SSE, no new releases. All operations were moved to Nashville, offices closed, and remaining staff moved to smaller offices.

Later that year, SSE was again sold to a new investor, who has continued to allow us to go forward, and morph into a new label model, and focus on what we do well, catalog/special products, as well as the Black Gospel market, where we're doing quite well.

So, my job now, at SSE, is handling all mastering for re-issues, new releases, ALL the IT management, all encoding/delivery for online digital sales, as well as being able to utilize the facilities here for select outside projects, as time allows.

With all the changes going on in the mastering world, where the quality of delivered mixes continues to get worse and worse, and the only goal appears to be "how much distortion can we live with vs how loud the music is", I've got to honestly say, I have no real desire to jump back into the competitive side of mastering in a public facility. I've been offered several options to build/open a new studio, but having been around and doing this since the early 70's, NOT having to worry about the business aspect of a facility is a great relief.

My focus is more on my new family, spending time away from the office, doing a basic 9-5, 8-6 day, and going home. It's not a total "leave the job at work", as I've got all the network/server responsibilities, (we've got 10 servers going all the time), and we have people remote accessing those from home, and from locations in other cities where our finance people work from their homes, so access has to be near 100%, so I do a bunch of remote access from home <smile>.

My home focus these days is my step-son, who is a vocal performance major at I.U., plans to sing opera. (and he's really good)

Probably more than you wanted, but many people have asked, and I've tried to really keep a low profile.

Glenn

 

The River North catalog is also owned by SSE.

 

Thanks!

 

At least you aren't completely retired from the business.

 

Glenn: thanks for posting!

 

Welcome aboard Glenn. Glad to have you here! Post often.

 

Not sure what I'd do at this point, I've been doing this for too many years to actually do something else.....

 

What Jamie said.
Welcome Glenn!

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

Welcome Glenn and thanks for the history update. You are in some good company here...and then there's the rest of us to deal with.

Glad you are still in the business and look forward to your "stories" of the way it was. Yeah, we still live in the past a lot here. So tell us about new stories as you can to balance it out. Thanks!

 

I was listening to a Joe Ely CD this morning and the liner notes said mastered by Glenn Meadows. Since I didn't know who he was I did a forum search.

What happened to Glenn Meadows? He hasn't posted in three years. Who ran him off?

Great information. Thanks Brad for starting this thread.