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

What a great post! You are a lucky dog!

 

Steve, what's your favorite post-loudness war album? So like, post 1995 and such. What brickwalled-on-release album would you like to remaster the most?

 

I assume the baked in compression applies to my beloved “The Verve” and Portishead albums...

 

Do you have a favorite album post 95 then? And by the way, wasn't Audio Fidelity trying to get the rights to the Oasis catalog? How would you go about mastering them? They're all squashed to hell

 

Thank Owen Morris for ruining the Oasis and Verve recordings.

 

I mean a lot of those late 90s alt rock albums were recorded on analog tape, so nasty digital compression can't be mixed into ALL of them. Mastering engineers have to make 'em sound good when they press vinyl records. If you can make a Rick Rubin produced LP sound good, then there still is hope!

 

Financial and or locating?

 

Of course it could be. Just because I recorded something analog doesn't mean I didn't run it thru massive digital compression during the recording process or afterwards during mixing and mastering.

 

Actually I was referring to our host's posting regarding his work on this project.

 

Just read through this entire thread. What fun!

I don't think I'll ever be a "true" audiophile - don't have the interest (or the income) to build a system, and I don't have the ears to appreciate the subtleties that many here love - but my time here has made me fascinated with audio mastering. I love remastering the CDs that I own for better sound. And I've actually convinced one of my favorite artists to send me his albums pre-mastering so I can take my own stab at them. His first album was released in 1994 and sounds like it; the rest was released after and he seemed hell-bent on winning the loudness war. I may not be a professional, but I think I'll do a better job. Even though it might just end up being a personal project, I'm glad my obsessive reading of this site has the potential to produce good (or at least better than bad) results.

Back on topic: @Steve Hoffman, you've mentioned a few times when people have asked which album by X artist or from Y genre you'd most like to master, and you've suggested it would be your favorite album by them/in that style. Are there any instances where, if you had the choice to pick one, you would choose an album you prefer less in order to do it better justice? Or would you always go for the album you like better? (Again, this is if you had the choice - I realize that often you didn't.)

 

That was my goal too.
Was post university, post Travel-Around-The-World before I really achieved it.
My seven year old has no idea how lucky she is...
When we play The Monkeys Uncle, original 45 mono single, Woo Hoo!!!!

 

There must be different levels of license. When I was still in high school (1979-1982), I used to like hanging out at the university's FM station at night, and occasionally they would let me go on the air and spin records (which was a thrill when I was 16 or 17).

Eventually someone insisted that I get a license from the FCC. I remember sending off a form - I don't recall having to pay a fee (I had no money besides my $5 weekly allowance) - but I received a card with my operator's license. I still have it somewhere.

It looks like this:

 

Thanks for confirming what I remember from 1981!

 

I had a similar experience in the early 80's. I believe it was an FCC 3rd class radio-telephone license. I had to take and pass a test.

Until then, I was not allowed to DJ at my tech school without a licensed operator in the room. Once I had the license, I could run the station my self. Side note: If I needed to leave the DJ booth to visit the men's room, In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida was very handy.

 

Readymade for radio, LOL.

 

Nonsense. Your radio posts are a wonderful read.

 

Hey, I did the same thing back in '79. Still have mine. Cool.

 

“A speaker that is only good for one kind of music is a speaker that is no good at all, if you ask me.”

Perhaps not the most ideal place for this quote from you, Steve, but I so agree with it because natural sound is natural sound is natural sound! I apply your ideology to headphones too.

 

My father had that dream quite often after being a DJ when we was younger.

 

Yep. My dream like that is having to be on stage, and I can't find my bass. I ask hundreds of people walking around, and no one seems to know, or care.
My Dad's other dream like that was about not being able to find his Corvette in a parking garage. He had a 1965 convertible and only had it for 3 years. The dream stayed with him for his whole life!