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

What's your favorite version of The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert by Benny Goodman?

 

@Steve Hoffman

I may regret this question, but did you ever experiment with using noise reduction software/applications back in the day? I assume you didn’t.

Why did experienced mastering engineers drink the cool aide? Was this mandated by the labels? Did they not know that they were removing the breath of life from the recordings they were mastering by using something like No Noise?

I’m listening to disc 2 of a 12 CD Wes Montgomery box of all his Riverside recordings. The liner notes mention that noise reduction was used on some of the recordings. I can hear it, especially on the Incredible Jazz Guitar recordings. Didn’t you mention that master is missing?

I also hear NR on other tracks too. They sound boomy, for lack of a better descriptor. Awful.

The mastering engineer was Joe Tarantino.

 

Thanks Steve

 

You would think with AI that noise reduction tech would have gotten better - or at least more transparent - by now, although I doubt anybody is spending money developing better noise reduction at this point. At least not in the audio business. Maybe it'll filter in from some other realm...NASA or wherever.

 

Noise reduction is one of the most expanding areas of audio tech in the past few decades! Just look at Izotope's RX suite and others, including CEDAR. What they're doing is like magic for post production. And another field where it's increasingly important is conferencing and livestreaming. Check out How Nvidia's magical RTX Voice app eradicates background noise in calls and videos and Pipeline on Twitter for great examples.

Of course, tech like this is always vetted in context. I would bet in music mastering it is still not acceptable, but for certain applications, it's wild.

 

I always wondered why the tape hiss was so loud on Graveyard Train in the first place. It never bothered me but it certainly stands out in that respect, specially considering how extremely well recorded all the CCR stuff is.

 

Do you hold out hope that they will find the Pet Sounds master one day?

 

I saw that! I’m trying to keep that on the down low, who told you?

 

That's way cool! Did they cite any of your work in particular or was it based on reputation? It would be cool to know what they heard when they thought "we want it to sound like THAT".

 

That's a great story. Thanks for answering my question faster than I can boil water!

 

Steve, have you encountered this problem often where it turns out that the monitors used for mixing at the time weren't up to the task and now it's painfully obvious?

 

Though I enjoyed early Red Hot Chili Peppers back in the '80s (Freaky Styley, Mother's Milk, etc.), eventually I had lost track of their music, in part because their releases became increasingly so brickwalled and LOUD. I remember buying and quickly selling a couple of their CDs (around the Blood Sugar Sex Magic -> One Hot Minute -> Californication run) because the mastering kept getting worse, before I completely gave up on them.

But then because it was Hoffman/Gray mastered, I bought the Stadium Arcadium box set last year, and recently listened through all four LPs for the first time. I had put off opening up that box set, because I worried it might be a drudgery, assuming that it would be their music and not the mastering that wouldn't be appealing to me, but I ended up being pulled into the music because it was so dynamic and easy to hear.

Thanks for presenting at least one of RHCP's albums in a way that is inviting and enjoyable!

Craig.

 

Hi Steve. First thanks for this forum. I have learned much. Q: I wondered if you were familiar with ELP's Brain Salad Surgery album and if so, and if you've heard any of the plethora of mixes, does anything stand out to you as to why it always sounds muddled. Is it strictly the instrumentation fighting against itself or just low quality source tapes, or what? Thanks.

 

I agree the LP was fine. It's just that no one seems to get it right digitally.

 

Tom Dowd was supposed to be one of the best engineers but he wasn’t that great on 1960s rock music or 70s for that matter.