SH Spotlight I'm asked stuff: Favorite mastering engineer, best BOSTON CD, best TRAVELING WILBURYS CD, etc..

And one question, any recommendations for Billie Holiday on record or CD?

 

and the "BING CROSBY SINGS AGAIN" CD for the mid-range...

 

For Verve look for Dennis Drake mastered cds. One favorite in this forum is The Silver Collection. For the older stuff look for the Teddy Wilson cds on HEP Records and the Jazz Greats comp on MC, all mastered by the late J.R.T. Davis. And of course From The Original Decca Masters, mastered by our host.

 

I find this in all the engineering disciplines - audio or otherwise. I've got kids working under me from VA Tech, CMU, Penn State, etc... and it's surprising how much they rely on the technology without really doing the engineering.

With sound design, I find a lot of what's on network and cable to have post work where it's obvious they really don't understand how to mix dialog, FX, and music. For instance the physics that voiceovers have a lot more peak info and that a lot of the synth generated FX and music they use contains higher RMS levels. When that hits the final dynamics processing you can hear obvious issues.

I recall back in the day that a Sony Trinitron broadcast 19" monitor was used to qual post audio for intelligibility. If you could understand the dialog on that and the FX/music was balanced you were good to go. My one friend does a lot of post work down in GA and mentioned how many times companies get what I think he called asset rejection from production houses.

In the other engineering I do, I recently had one of our younger ME VA Tech grads in my lab/shop. I was showing him an adapter for mic stands and mentioned the weird 5/8-27 internal thread I had to single point cut on a lathe. He asked, "How do you make threads?"

All the machine shops here in DC always tell me stories of of stuff people send to get fabbed that's either really expensive or just not possible.

"Well, Solidworks let me do it..."

Uh... yea... OK...

One of things lacking in post facilities as well as the other disciplines seems to be the lack of mentoring under a true craftsman of the trade.

"What makes an expert is not knowing what to do
It's that you've done it so many times wrong that you know what NOT to do..."

As to DAWs allowing things like autotuning, beat slicing it seems to at times get i the way of the magic. And it effects not only the engineers approach, it really seems to have affected the players themselves - where they rely on the tech. There's little vibe left in a lot of the recordings. I do a lot of metal sessions and when I mentioned to one of my day job engineers how they meticulously adjust the double kick MIDI data from triggers, it really bummed him out.

 

+1 on the Silver Collection. Drake is king.

 

Damn! And they both sound phenomenal!

 

Yeah, me too!

 

What do you think of the effects, positive and negative, when upmixing stereo music with Dolby Surround (or similar) to play back on a 5.1 system?

 

Steve you replied “Every time”

Has it ever been a nightmare to get a first pressing as a reference copy?

 

I found a mint unplayed Billie Holliday Story double LP last week on original Decca label from the 50’s that sounds pretty terrific. Remarkably clean and great presence on her voice depending on the track.

 

Steve, have you ever mastered for streaming or digital download? I mean, itunes, HDtracks etc. If not, would you be willing to? Would you master for a lossy sound format? (not being a movie, but straight music). In such a case, would your approach to mastering be different?

 

FWIW, John R. T. Davies mastered a comprehensive series of Teddy Wilson CD's for the Hep Records (a highly-regarded jazz label based in Scotland, now sadly defunct), and pretty much all of her Brunswick recordings are included. This is because everything she recorded with Brunswick was done under Wilson's name, while everything that's credited under her own name was released on the Vocalion label. They're all worth getting, but be warned later pressings were done on CD-R's - nice looking CD-R's but still CD-R's. Things got pretty lean for Hep towards the end...

 

Dear host, could you imagine to remaster/improve the sound of Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

 

Speaking of Eno, do you also like Ambient music?

 

Other than the previously mentioned legal issues with The Rolling Stones catalog, which artists' work presented the most difficulty as far as remastering it for DCC or AF?

 

Are there any standout albums you would like to do a remix of? If so what ones?
Also, is there anything in the near future for you that you may remix?

I have really loved your work on mastering so many great albums (and I have quite a lot of them over the years), your work has expanded my musical appreciation- exploring many new things that I may not have checked out had you not been associated to it. Thanks! And thanks for "the forum" and its members.

 

Steve - Thanks again for this thread (and for the whole forum, for that matter). So informative.

Are you aware of any instances where individual songs from your masters were used in compilations, or soundtracks, or promos? (Anything other than the original intent that you went into the project with)

If so, do you know if they were just straight digital copies, or were they edited in any way?