Mastering Engineer Brian Gardner Interview In Mix

Here's a link to an interview from a year ago in Mix with mastering engineer Brian Gardner. He started out doing second engineering at sessions for Jefferson Airplane, Harry Nilsson, and others at RCA. He then began working as a mastering engineer at RCA and then Fantasy Studios for CCR, then moving on to Allen Zentz Mastering working on Donna Summer, Marvin Gaye's Midnight Love, and others, and more recently has been working at Bernie Grundman Mastering. I found it to be a good read:

www.mixonline.com/ar/audio_brian_gardner/

 

Great article. Thanks!

 

Thanks for the link, MMM. Very interesting reading.

So much care, so many expensive machines, so much attention to detail, and on top of it all the frank admission that the louder-is-better school of digital compression/limiting pretty much ruins it all. Doesn't this glaring inconsistency MATTER to anyone in the business besides Steve and a few others?

I mean, who cares about vinyl, CD, MP3, or even old tin boxes when the result is just so much shouting at the top of one's lungs?

Sorry, just got a wee bit depressed there. And on St. Patrick's Day, even.

 

This is the guy who had to master Crystal Ball and many other later day Prince CD's, most of which are compressed to hell. Further proof that mastering engineers are being forced to make all the wrong decisions these days:

Q: Do you mean that people are sending you stuff cut hotter than ever?

A: No, not necessarily how it comes in; it's just they want the end product to jump. They always wonder, “Can't you make this a little louder?” It keeps moving up and it's got to stop somewhere. [Laughs.] I'd like to put out a record sometime that's the lowest out there: “Oh, did you hear that new record? It's so low. It's so cool.” But that's not going to happen. Although Steely Dan put out a record that sounded good and it wasn't loud. It didn't have to just slam the levels.

Q: You're talking about losing dynamic range.

A: Of course. But a lot of today's music is enhanced by taking some of those things out — punching it up and giving it less dynamics. That's the nature of much of the music that's popular — it's just more intense.

 

That's right! It is intense to the point of ear and head pain!