Stephen Marcussen

many to mention. Let's start from the beginning. What exactly is mastering? You know? Mastering is uh, it's this gray art that people don't really understand. It's do you understand it? I hope so forty years in right, I think I got it. But it's sort of it's your last creative stage of making a record. It's it's a chance to take all of your work and put it together in a cohesive manner. You can change the sound. You can change tempos of tracks, you can enhance centers for vocals.

You can do any number of things to get a consistent sound that flows from beginning to end. There various tools you use whether it's you can play it back on tube type tape machines, if you're fortunate enough to see things like that. Uh, files come in mainly these days, but occasionally we see tape. So you can pick and choose how you look at a project. And I shouldn't say you, I should say I and uh I put

it up. I listened to it just as it comes in, and I think about what would do, what what I could do to enhance this project and make it make it deliberable to you know, a man us, I should say numbers of ways to play it, whether it's radio, whether you're listening to a c D, whether you're listening to hires files, m fits. So it's I don't know

what m fits are. M fits are mastered for iTunes, and I don't know there was an acronym on that there is and it's uh it's interesting because m FIT they tried to set a standard of quality to reduce what they call inter sample overs and uh, well, let's slow down here. What are inter sample overs? I'm not going to get into interstatt a little bit. Well, when you're working in a digital scale, there's zero within the scale. You can have these inter sample overs, which are these

spurious peaks that essentially can clip. They don't, but they can. So Apple decided to try to enhance their format. The A C and badget M F I T and it gives the mastering house, or Apple gives the mastering house an Apple it to drop it on. You can measure your inner sample overs, and they don't really want to see hundreds of thousands, which you can on a you know, a hot rock record. They want to see it brought,

brought down and contained within a reasonable amount. They don't define a number, they just want you to use good judgment. So an m FANT can typically be as much as a dB, quieter than a c D or a digital file source. So okay, let's just stay with there. If you're mastering for iTunes, that's a downloadable track, do they want the same track for the Apple Music service. That's a very good question and the answer is yes. Um, I'm going through something right now because all of these

services are looking at different features. Apple has the complete my album feature, Spotify wants it to mirror the CD UM and I literally got the email a half hour ago, so I'm going to start dissecting it. When I'm done here, but they they they want to have a standard that is consistent with their platform. Okay, just going for left field for one second. Prior to these streaming services, there were the loudness wars, which will get back to. But now since these I know they basically I don't know

the technical turn off the top of my head. They basically average the sounds or everything is the same volume normalized normalized, thank you, and uh does that affect the loudness wars? It does? It's uh. Loudness is measured on a left scale l ufs, and depending on you know, who's releasing or playing your your your file, they like to target a certain number. The lower the number four

point three is louder than seven point two. Our testing has shown that if you bring a CD level down a few dbs, and a few dbs is a lot. Remember six d b s is twice the volume. So if you bring it down three d b s, they're normalizer isn't kicking in as much, and consequently your program sounds better. There's you know, an example that comes to mind is there's a piano vocal track that gets played

up against you know, a slamming hard rock track. Well, the hard rock tracks got stack guitars, it's got bass, it's got bombastic drums. Yet the piano and vocal so much louder because it isn't as loud physically in the digital medium as the slamming track. So the normalizer doesn't kick in. Normalizers can really bring your level down. You know a lot of dvs. So in addition, getting technical for a second, if it's normalizer brings it down, obviously

it's going to be quieter. How does that affect the sound It's not beneficial. Let's go back to the beginning of our discussion. Theoretically, especially in today's d I Y world, Uh, could you just make a record on your laptop and send it straight to a streaming service? People do every day. That's very common SoundCloud, you know, people that put post their music up on services like that. It's a complete d I Y. In many cases they get a little action.

Then they want to actually master it or finish it, remix it, depending also, you know, it just depends on the kind of action they get. So I think a lot of people that are you know, breaking in as it were, go ahead d I Y at if there's uh, if there's notice. They then maybe get get get noticed by a professional and indie somebody that wants to you know, join forces with them, and then they'll go rework the project. Okay, asking something that's not quantifiable in a quantifiable way, what

percent can mastering effect attract? Yeah, you know that's that's kind of an impossible question, but I'll attempt to answer it. If you've got a track that comes in and you were working in a studio or just in your own studio, and your speakers weren't giving you reality, reality means the balance of frequencies lows, mids, highs were you know, terribly skewed.

You take if you know, you take your track to a professional mastering facility, you're in a room that your engineers worked in for a period of time, in my case, twelve years in my particular studio, I know the room like the back of my hand. I put your track up and I say, this is dull, or this is boomy, or what what what? Whatever the correction needs to be. You take my judgment because you've now come to me for my services, and I say, well, we can open

it up. In the vocal now is coming out of the track and clean and clear, and the bases and muddy and you know whoofing out your bottom end. So that really is a big change and well worth doing. Um okay, so since I've known you almost forty years, you're working precision. Then you worked at A and M before you established your own facility. I didn't really work at A and M A and M. I meant to say work in a general term. That's where you your worked reinspired. You did not work four AM and am.

You rented the space. But my question is all three rooms are different. Is someone like you so professional? How long does it take you to adjust to a different room. Mastering engineers are nervous types. Uh. To make a shift in just your chain, in your chain as your processing to plug in a new new piece of gear can be daunting because it could change something. And you know, back to the gray area of mastering. If you put something in that you think sounds good, and I can

be fooled. Anybody can be fooled by sound. Its sound is an elusive dragon. But you put something in your chain and you don't notice it immediately, and it changes your sounds. So you go from room to room, moving from the place I learned to work to A and M. I took in my own loud speakers. Uh that they were kind enough to let me place in a mastering room and a lot of my own gear. So uh, it's it's always scary making a change like that, going from A and M to the first facility I I

built for myself. I fell in love with bing W loud speakers and really bought them site, you know, without having evaluated them. I knew that they were good speakers. Then how did you fall in love with them if you hadn't evaluated them? Good point, I had heard them in places I had never worked on them. The you go to a hi fi shop and you listen to them, and you take your favorite CD and you go, oh,

I can relate. The center is a little off center here, The vocal sounds this way, the sibilance is what it should be. So, and I've listened to a lot of speakers. Believe me, they were the only ones in a store I could say that's good. Okay, let's go back to the speakers. Forty years ago, there was a transition. There was something called the aura tone, which was one speaker

meant to mimic the car dashboard. Then seemingly everybody went to the Yamaha and as ten M and they might take off the grill and put a little piece of tissue paper over the tweeter. But obviously car radios have become more sophisticated and less important. But every mastering room you go to, everybody is using different speakers. It's it's a taste. You know. Some people like a t C S,

some people like homemade speakers. You know, there are many facilities that incorporated a woofer here in the mid range here and put them in big, big cabinets. It's really a taste. Okay, let's go just a home audio for a second. You know, the big thing on home audio is these digital testers. Now, Okay, you buy something and it comes with a little microphone. Whether that's good or bad, that's not really my point. Are you so sophisticated that

you could set up a room just by ear? That's how I did my last room, and I think it's my best room yet, I mean, I don't think you could get a better place to listen to music loudsoft, direct, indirect, the back of the room, the front of the room. And I've worked with acousticians George Ocksbird namely for decades now, and I brought him in just to help me. Um. Just you know, you're building a new room. You've got a lot of things on your plate, so it's good

to have professional help there. But by and large, you set the room up to please yourself. Uh. You know, I've got good equipment. I built a phenomenal room. George designed the room. It's trapped properly. It's incredibly for the people who don't know what it's contained, the low ends contained. It doesn't boom. It's uh, it's natural. It decays naturally. It's not splashy. There are no reflections from left to right. You know, imagine a loudspeaker playing loud in a barn.

That wouldn't be a good room. Uh. You put a loudspeaker in a room similar to what we have here, you can see their sound dampening on the walls. It just breaks up reflected sounds so that you can, you know, focus on the direct sound in my case, the direct sounds coming out of loudspeakers. Okay, Now, there's been a big transition in the Internet era. Back prior to the year two thousand, there were a limited number of professional

mastering engineers. Literally you could count unless than five fingers people in Los Angeles, and there were people in New York. But suddenly, since the digital revolution, everybody thinks they're a mastering engineer. There's a good amount of that. Okay, and I know I'm trying to think of way Roy would ask this question, But is basically all the newcomers, or any of them, any good. There's always going to be

somebody younger, hungrier, and better. So I'm glad I asked that. Uh, whether or not they're discovered remains to be seen, but don't discount anybody that's young and trying hard. Okay, let's go. There's Lander. Why do you explain for the people who don't know what lander is. I'm not fluent in lander, but to the best of my knowledge, lander is a computer algorithm that looks at your sound, analyzes your sound.

You say you want it to sound like X y Z. I think you can actually plug that criteria into the computer. It will look at the frequencies, it will look at the level, and it will make sonic adjustments to your track. But let's to be over, I should have put it. Lander is essentially automated mastering. Right. I think there are actually a couple of programs out there that are doing automated mastering. I think there's another unit in Florida. I

don't really keep up with that. Would any professional use one of those automatic I mean professional act Would anybody use one of those services? I would doubt it. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Now, you've had quite a peripatetic life. You were born in Africa and a country that no longer exists. Well, it exists, it's just changed its name. Okay, So how many years did you live in what was then Rhodesia. I left Rhodesia at a very early age. The pattern was we we left

Rhodesia moved back to Northern Europe. As my parents were Northern European British and Danish. Realized that what they had experienced in Rhodesia was very different than being in Northern Europe. Northern Europe where Denmark and England, and they sort of followed the sun, if you will. So living in Rhodesia, it's it's beautiful. It's like California. The climate's magnificent. You can grow anything. It's a marvelous place. California was in my in my parents sites, and so we we flew

to well, let's just go a little bit. So you were in Rhodesia to what age three or three and a half, okay, and then you moved to northern Europe. Correct. We floundered there for about a year, six months in uh in England, six months in Denmark. We arrived in Los Angeles on my fifth birthday. Okay. They were literally following the sun, they were, and that was their last destination. They never left, okay, but they sent you different places. I was sent to boarding school in England for my

formative years. And so when did you start boarding school in England? I started when I was ten and a half and I left England when I was I think just about fifteen, maybe just fifteen. And was there anything good there? It was everything good there. It was a great time to be in England. Uh. From four it was fantastic. We turned onto music and I went to a very progressive boarding school and we one of my classmates got a cassette, which was a portable way of

listening to music. It was mono, but we taped out well, he taped albums and we would be out, you know, in in the fields just with music and hanging out with people. I mean, music was a really really big part of my life. And this boarding school was were a relative to London. It's forty miles southwest of London. Did you go to London? Like? Positively? London was an hour train ride from Frensham, and uh, we we get to London as often as we could. You have to

remember we're boarding school. We don't We didn't have unlimited budgets. Once you're in London, you know, we'll see these cost money and you could bum around London and we did and stayed, you know, dropped in on people that we knew. But it was just a marvelous time to be in London people, you know truly, you know, think of Austin Powers and Carnebie Street and that's really what it was. Like. Let's go back. Your father was a butcher, right, correct. So he moved to Los Angeles and where does he

go to work? Uh? He went to work for a supermarket chain. And uh, you know, my my parents really didn't have much to be to begin with. We came to America having left Rhodesia, um with not a lot because Rhodesia was in a downturn, so selling your house it wasn't you know, it wasn't easy for them to literally uproot and come here. My father worked at a supermarket. My mother worked as you know, they referred to people like my mother in those days as secretaries. You can't

say that anywhere, um. But she worked for a company called the American Gem Society, which was a standard. It was a company put in place for standards and jewelry. She worked the balance of her work life there. My father ended up migrating from one chain to the next, ultimately landing it a shop that I'm sure you remember, Jorgensen's, which is a very high end grocery store. And I was forced into an early retirement. Okay, but a couple

of questions. If you're going to school in England during the winter, spending your summers in Los Angeles, I would come back twice a year. I'd come back for the Christmas break and I'd come back for summer. Now, the English school year was divided differently than America. You got a month off for Christmas and you only got seven eight weeks for summer. So did you make any friends when you were in l A over the summer. Well, I had my friends that were here, but England was

a very, very uh changing experience. I left as a fairly straight child and came back with my eyes opened. And you come back to l A and you go to high school in Lafe. I negotiated my way through high school from boarding school. I had my eyes set on being in the music business. How did that revelation there was? I think it's the third Yes album called Close to the Edge, and there's a picture on the back cover of Eddie offered in front of a console

and you know, we we love music. I saw that and I said, this is for me, this is what I want to do. So I finished high school. You say you negotiated your way What does that mean? Because of the English education and l A Unified, there was no way to access what where I really was in my education. So they brought in specialists from u C. L A to evaluate me and uh. I was actually going to graduate when I was fifteen and a half, but they couldn't allow it, so they forced me to

stay an extra semester. I I did the one semester. I then did summer school to take care of some required courses government in history, US government history, and then my last semester I had to take the the early course for the advanced course I had already taken just to fulfill. So I made an arrangement with the teacher that I wouldn't show up and take the final. Meanwhile, I was working in to nine in grocery stores. Okay, but then you do graduate, you have a dream of

being in the music business. What's the first step in when um, I was working in a grocery store. I then decided I wanted to be in the music business and had to get out of that and had to pound the pavement. I found, Uh, never a thought to go to college. I went to college j C to really fill time because I was at loose ends and I had to get out of my parents house because I couldn't be hanging out. UM. So I did that.

I I took some electrical engineering courses, but I pounded the pavement and got a job at a radio commercial duplicator. So I think it was a J. Walter Thompson was a big ad agency McDonald. So literally we stuffed a two cards which were like eight tracks, except they were thirty second or one minute spots. And from there one of the guys I worked with had I should say, he came to work there. He had just left what

was Richard Perry's studio, which was studio on Melrose. I heard that and I thought, well, that's the door I've got a knock on. So I noticed that there was a studio across the street called I think Radio and Records or something. It's still there on Melrows is gone. I knocked on the door. The receptionist had been involved in a car accident, and the Carol Child's who ran Richard's publishing company at that point, let anybody in because

it was seventy four it's a great time. And I waited, waited, and the studio manager interviewed me and then called me back and started, you know, from from the toilet up and okay, So the first job, I'm sure there was not a job description, but it be what janitor? There was a job description. Really, you were the janitor, truly, you had literally had the foot in the door. Had the foot in the door, couldn't have been happier. And that was the job of the guy was working to

the grocery store janitor. No it was. He wasn't working in the grocery store. He was working at a T and T. That's I think that he had played his cards wrong and said he was qualified and he wasn't. So I knew that there was a void, So okay, so tell the people that didn't no longer exists. The history of studio Studio fifty five was I think it was Decca where being recorded White Christmas. We always said

the ghost of being resided in the attic there. Um Howard Steele, who was Richard's engineer, had owned it with and Howard, by the way, it was a part of a console manufacturer called quant him. He had you may remember the name Vanjie Carmichael. She did all the jingles.

He was married. Howard was married to Carol, so Carol's mom, Vanjie sort of funded this studio for Howard and it just didn't happen for them, and somehow another Richard got involved, and part of the agreement was that Howard would be Richard's engineer, and Richard so that as a benefit because he knew the room and and all of that, and Richard developed the studio. He rebuilt the big control room A made a beautiful studio out of it, and there

was B which was a smaller room. Both had quantum consoles, and it became an incredibly successful studio. Toto came from that studio. There was just a lot of great music made in those rooms. Okay, so you started out as the janitor, how do you get out of the ship hole? Well, Howard was He was interested enough to ask me to come and assist him on on some demos he was doing on a weekend session. So I'll never forget this. I knew nothing of what I was doing, and I

mean nothing. I didn't know that you had to tell him microphone was in number sixteen or any of that. So we we get this whole thing going. And in those days you ran a tape machine and he says, okay, record, I didn't know how so that so I, you know, I just started assisting Howard and uh then you know, you just get more gained more and more experience. In those days, you could hang out in people's sessions and observe and people weren't offended by that, and so I

made myself useful. And still still cleaning up, still cleaning up, still go fering, go you know. So, Okay, if you're working there, theoretically you have janitorial hours, how much do you working there? Are you essentially living there? I was essentially living there. I'll I'll put some numbers in place for you. When you're in the union and you're a checker in the supermarket, which I was, you make incredibly good money. I left that job to go work for

a hundred dollars a week. I worked over eighty hours a week and took home seventy six dollars on a paycheck and was thrilled to do it. Okay, so what's the next step of the ladder there? Um? I started second engineering, then I started first engineering. And when you're first you're running the session, you're doing the vocals, you're tracking the drums, you know, whatever it is. Um, how long did it take to go from janitor a first engineering?

That's a good question. It wasn't that long, relatively speaking. Maybe a year and a half, a couple of years. Um. I remember, my my first real date was working with earth Window basically earth Wind and Fire as the band without Maurice. We're doing uh, was it Denise Williams demos or something? It was really it was like as completely out of my league, but you know, you just wing it, and that's what I did. So from there, I uh got involved with a producer, Bob Asteen. We made a

lot of disco music. He was part of Neil Bogart's camp and Neil treated him really well. And over the course of making disco music, we would start mastering and you couldn't really get the sound of what was on the tape on a phonograph record, which was the medium in those days, and there had to be a re reason. So the people I was working with, we we were trying to figure it out, and we discovered that there was a lathe, which is what you cut phonograph records on,

was made locally. It was a unique machine because with a phonograph lathe, the computer needs to know what it's going to cut before it cuts it, because it's turning a lead screw and moving a cutter head across the disk. This lathe didn't need that, so suddenly you could use a better tape machine. The next part of the equation were the cutting package, which was an order phone package. I'm using one today. Actually, I would do a lot of work with Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welsh when we're

committing their catalog into vinyl. So the order phone could cut what no one else could cut, very delicate system. UM but ended up hearing that Steve Wonder, Stevie Wonder was having some problems mastering hotter than July, and people I was working with had the wisdom to send him a brail letter and Steve was interested and we cut a ref for him. Okay, let's go a little bit slower. So you were working at studio bybe Bestie and you have this problem with mastering, do you then commit yourself?

I'm on the mastering dream or is just like a side project, a side project. It's totally a side project. The lathe and the cutting amps were set up at the back room at fifty five. It was on a table. You know, we were just learning, learning, learning, but we knew there was something good about it. Okay, so you had one of these leaves. You said it was made in Los Angeles. Did anybody else have one? There were

five in the world. UM one that was at the place that made it so that they could keep it running. UM two went to a company called Future Disc that's now gone and Precision had the other two. So they were finicky, delicate and really a miracle that they went from day to day. So it was again it was a learn while you earn experience. UM ended up building Precision well before you. But first you got ahold of Stevie Wonder before Precision. No Stevie came at Precisions. Okay,

So you ended up building Precisions. So you say, we're going down this path. We're committed, We're committed. There were three partners in on it. One was an experienced mastering engineer that ended up not not coming through in ways that should have, and so it was really it fell on me, so you were learning on the job by

the seat of my pants. Fortunately, Richard started his record company at that point, Planet and Michael Solomon, who I've just reacquainted with, put together one of the very first compilation records of punk bands. It was called Sharp Cuts, and you know, we were all in the family and Michael came to me and, uh, you know, the plim souls were I don't remember who all the acts were on it, but Michael came to me and, uh, to master it. And I really didn't know what I was doing,

but it sounded pretty good. At the end of the day, the equipment wasn't so great, the meaning the lathe, but I mean, truthfully, there was there was a lot of tears for me on that because it just it was frustrating knowing that the potential was there, but I just couldn't get get it going right and it took a while. But Michael worked with me. He brought me Mark Saffin's next So I got a little education doing that. But the best education I got was your friend Harold Bronson,

who had Ryan before we do that. This is before or after Stevie Wonder. This is actually after tell us to Stevie Wonder story. Stevie was interested. There was a gentleman by the name of Arnie Acosta that was brought into Precision to help teach me to master um. Arnie it was really a gifted mastering engineer, and I mean a really gifted mastering engineer, and Arnie helped put that

all together. Arnie though did not live in Los Angeles, he lived in San Louis Obispo, so he would commute down for four days a week and we'd work so the other three days in the week because in those days. You know, it was a seven day haul. It was me and so I would be in there on the weekends just trying to figure it out, and you know, slowly people would come and well I finished the story with Stevie Wonder though as well. We Steve came in. We mastered Hotter in July. Um, he was he's a

critical customer. He really knows what he wants. Um, I should say he didn't come in at that point, but we kept sending refs to him. And this, incidentally was the infancy of digital audio. Stevie worked on these Sony systems called sixteen hundreds, and Sony built Steve a braille editor, forum and stuff like that. So it was a lot of pioneering on my part, Sony's part, Steve's part. Uh, it was it was just um, it was really the order phone system that really spelled the difference. And Steve

could hear that. So he was ultimately happy that you were doing a better version. Thrilled, thrilled. And we cut the parts for the world. We you know, in those days, you cut lacquers, you cut who sets for Portugal, Spain, South Africa, you name it. We cut Stevie Wonder till the cows came home. There would you'd get at the end of the day, there'd be a stack of boxes to be picked up by motown and careered off to

the to the regions. Okay, so then okay, so then you do Stevie Wonder and you were telling this story with Harold Bronson. Another thing, well, Steve sort of put Precision on the map, Harold who was one of the co founders of Rhino correct Harold. I don't know how Harold got to Precision, but he did. And this was really at the beginning of his reissue world. He was coming off the wild Man Fisher stuff and the Barnes and Barns, and he struck a deal with Precision that

we would work together for a rate. But meanwhile, you know, I'm doing naz nas nas nas nas nas off off of the master tapes with Harold, and it was really, uh, it was a great learning experience. I mean, Harold, who's a fantastic music fan. You know, he would have all the originals to reflect on and then look at what we were doing and he'd make corrections and it was really it was a great vehicle for me to learn

how to master okay, so go on. I was gonna say, when I was learning to master, it's about a ten year process until I think you were okay to good. I mean, let's be real. You start something, you're never great at it unless you're gifted. And Harold worked with me through that. And I did a lot of work with Harold over many years um mastering his catalogs, and I think it made me better. It certainly gave Harold

a good product to sell. And uh also now, because of the Stevie Wonder connection, those days, people would look at album credits and by the way, we were so late in the game. On the Stevie Wonder credit, they had to put it on the actual disc label as opposed to in the artwork in the package. But they credited us, which was the main thing. So I started doing a lot of Solar Records, Gap Band, just a lot of really great music, and again learning as I went along. I mean, it was in those days reading

the album art sort of helped your career tremendously. So you weren't working at you were waiting and you're waiting to pick up the phone, right, We're waiting for the phone to ring. I mean, that's I've never been good at selling myself, and uh, it was just word of mouth that just you have the soul records, then how do you break into the rock records. Well, as I'm transitioning out of engineering, I'm really full time mastering. Jimmy

Ivane and Shelly are coming to Los Angeles. That Shelly yakus. Shelly his father was in the business, and Jimmy started out as Shelly second, and then Shelly ended up working for him, right, I think that's the way the story goes. But they were coming west because Jimmy was doing Stevie's first record, Stevie Next, and uh, Shelly was staying in New York finishing up. I think it was damn the Torpedoes of Tom. Jimmy needed an engineer. I got thrown

in for two weeks with Jimmy, which is just great. Um, and we started tracking the Belladonna record I was mastering, but needless to say, I wasn't swamped with mastering work, so I could do this work with Jimmy Stevie Nicks, and uh it was time to do a single stop dragging my heart around. By this time, Shelley had come in and I had shown Shelley the studio and what we were doing, and I'm not sure where they mixed that.

I think they may have mixed that in good Night l A. I don't really remember, but it wasn't mixed at fifty. But Shelly and Jimmy gave me the shot at mastering that track. Um, I'm fairly certain it had been mastered at the facility they were used using up to that point. Once again, the order phone came through and put on the disc what was on the tape,

and Jimmy and Shelly both heard that. So that was the beginning of a great run with Jimmy and Shelley and you know, which led through Jimmy's work with Tom Stevie obviously, and then Jimmy started his label and I did a lot of the really fun stuff on Jimmy's label before he really got deep into the urban world. So I did a lot of work with him over many years. I it was a good run. So at what point does it's to turn where you've got not

enough time to do? Everybody's looking for you, you know, I never said no. So I can remember doing three albums in a day, which was unthinkable. Um, But I was hungry. I was eager. I really loved what I was doing, and it was great. It was so okay. But now let's say if you go to a regular recording studio, of which are limited number these days, they're loaded with equipment. Okay, you go into a mastering room, there's a lot less equipment. Well yeah, because first of all,

you're only dealing with two tracks. You're dealing with the stereo, so you don't need all the limiters and the pre ampts and the microphone, this, that and the other. Excuse me. So it's you know, I think I use the word chain a little earlier in this conversation. Mastering engineers like chains, and the chain is I come in off the tape machine. I like this wire, I like these connectors. I mean it gets really pretty minutia. Like I like to go into this piece of gear first. I like to have

this piece of gear come in second. I like to have and that's a great place to start. You may change it up, but you're using the same stuff all the time. It's not like, okay, we want to a funk, distorted guitar sound that all those types of pieces of gear don't really apply. In mastering master ring is you know David Manley, who's a name a lot of people will know built equipment. Now Havanna's running the company. But David, David really taught me a lot. He said, if you

don't have a clean chain, you've got nothing. You can always make a dirty chain. And he's so right. You know you you don't need to turn something down to turn it up later in the chain. You have to figure out a series of equipment of tools that you work with and that worked for you. So the question was why so little gear? Well, in my opinion, there aren't that many good sounding equalizers. So it took me three years to find the last piece of gear I I wanted in in an analog world. And it wasn't

for lack of trying. So now, if I remember correctly, you met David Manly because you came in he said, I have special wire, right this wire for those people. This is something that's debated in the Stereo magazine that infinitem to what degree is why are important? Um? I'm going to take a very unusual position on this. If wire is making a big difference for you, you've got a big problem. Okay, I believe that. But for someone like you or someone like Stevie wonder, can you hear

the difference in the wire? You can if there's a problem. If if you're working with gear that's really good. I'm not saying a piece of zip coord from a lamp is what you should be using. But whether if you're using a Macgami wire or a Belden wire or you know, what are the quote studio standards, can you pick the difference? I'm not sure this is this is a big problem in our audio world. People think they can pick the difference until they do a double blindfold and then they're surprised.

Stunned is the word I to use. Okay, So once you have your chain established, what are you actually working on on each record? What are you changing on each record? Well, it's it's on a case by case basis every terms in terms of equipment. Well, I'll talk about a project I just I'm in the middle of right now. I had probably not the right take on the project. I thought that they may want something that was a little more forward commercial loud, if you will, But that's not

what they wanted. And so the producer I spoke to on Monday said, and we've worked a lot together. He said, it just seems like maybe the attack time on your compressor needs to be you know, slow, or to let more of the transience through. Well, that to me, men, there's you know, I have my favorite pieces of gear that I like to use. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I said, no problem, I'll take that

piece out. I'm only getting a dB out of it, and I'm just actually in the middle of finishing that record right now. But I completely understand what he was saying. I completely understand what the artist was saying. It made it too different than what they gave me. And so what they gave me was excellent to begin with. And so you know, my my my task is to put

a little frosting on this cake. Okay, generally speaking, I've certainly been in the studio with you where at one point you had a box that was basically, you know, push it up for a little of this sound, push it down for a little of that sound. Is that general what you're doing? Absolutely? But you know, if um, just from a creative perspective, some people want to eq before they compress. Some people want to EQ into a compressor and EQ afterwards too. So these are all choices.

There's not a right or wrong. It's how you want to set up your workflow and how you or how I think I can achieve my best result for the criteria in front of me. Um At every tape that comes or every file now that comes in, it is different, and I mean it's different. Some of them come in they haven't used a limited on the recording at all. I just did this record for this isn't any thing, and it was incredibly great music. Uh, and the guys

really really talented. He doesn't even know what a limitter is. I saw his files and I thought, oh my goodness, this is gonna be hard work. And it really was hard work. But it was putting the right pieces to put the good color in place for him preserve what was great that he presented, which was the fact that it was really dynamic. It was full of transients. But he also wanted to compete. You know, in a modern ish rock world, it's not the loudest record in the

world and it shouldn't be. Well that brings us to the loudness wars, which I really think of being the nineties. No, it's ongoing still ongoing never ends, okay, So explain what's going on there and how you address it. People do their mixes, mixers a mix and at the last part of the process they'll strap a plug into plug ins in to mimic a CD. That does two things. It makes it super loud, but it now becomes part of

the sound that the artist hears. So whatever their choices are of tools to make it loud, I think, become integrated into what really is the master. So somebody will come in with a file that's good to go. It takes a lot more knowledge to know good to go than it does to touch it. So it just depends. It's some of them come in so loud you can't do anything. You just literally can't do anything. Doesn't want to go through an analog chain, it doesn't want to

go through a digital chain. It doesn't want to go through a plug in chain. You try them all and at the end of the day you think, well it's got It's a little harsh the high end, but this is part of the sound that everybody's married too, and they may hear it, they may not hear it, but if you change it, they for sure hear it. Okay, but the way the customer would look at it is the loudness wars were based on making your record as loud as possible, so it would jump out on radio.

No go back a little further, so it would jump out on the jukebox. Okay, So we've all been in bars with jukeboxes and a great Motown come track comes on and it's just loud and fun and boisterous, and then something that's uh a folk California, it's not as loud, and suddenly you know you can talk over it. So loudness wars started there where you got noticed if you got a loud you know, they called him a hot track coming in on a jukebox. You heard it made

you want to go buy it. So that is translated for sure into radio and now streaming as well as c d s and the all important feature called shuffle, meaning one when you put your library or take your library on shuffle and here comes you know. But based on an earlier part of the conversation with this normalization, well, there's an off switch for that, and I suggest you use it. Most people don't dig deep enough to find it,

but there's they all have an off switch. Okay, so in other words, the loudness wards are forever seemed to be but the loudness wards were amplified both metaphorically and literally when we went to the c D, because the c D could hold a whole bunch more stuff, right, It wasn't a question of holding a bunch more stuff. There were tools that we will call brick wall limitters that would stop you from going over so you could

push it to the point of distortion. And we can all cite distorted records not gonna um, but people were found that sound pleasing, so um, what was unusual became usual. So now suddenly you've got a lot of really loud records out there. And again, the shuffle feature really makes an artist not want to be quiet. Artists are competitive in in strange ways, so this is as about a problem as ever. It's not improving. Let's switch it to vinyl. Okay,

what do we know. There's a Vinyl gets a lot of ink, even though literally the number of sales are small and a lot of people are paying them on crappy systems. You obviously started out in vinyl. I'm still doing vinyl. But let's start with raw sound. Okay, assuming you know, you kids, vinyl sound better than if it's a file to begin with, it is supposed to be cutting on tape. Can a file sound better on vinyl

than it will on a streaming or purchase service. I think the answer here is if you enjoy it, it can sound better. I don't think there's a real answer. Technically, no, it can't. It's a bankrupt system. But it's very pleasing. I put on some of the phonograph records we've been cutting, and I've been selectively doing vinyl on some of the artists I've been working with. UM, I don't want to cut you know, bombastic stuff because we're using an order phone.

It's very fragile, but it's incredibly pleasing. UM do you get the same if you didn't know what you were playing, If you could eliminate the ticks and the pops and the surface noise, would you find the same satisfaction off of a file? I think you would. You know, the surface noise adds something to it. I like the conversion of electrical to mechanical and mechanical back to electrical. There's

something that's good about it. But technically no, it's not better. Okay, So let's go back to stuff that was cut on tape to begin with, Are you gonna hear it better on vinyl than you will on any digital system? Vinyl is let's just talk about vinyl for a second. Vinyl has its has really strict limitations. Okay, the low end doesn't go as deep as subs do off of a file, and the high end is rolled off, but it's rolled off musically, so tape does similar things. Tape is not

an exact image of what you've got. It's a color. It can be very slight, it can be very very big. Um. Back to David Guilt, they're complete analog people. We master their stuff off the tube shooter. It's uh, it sounds spectacular when we put it in vinyl. Their music doesn't have a lot of high frequency component. Um, there's air, there's dimension their space. If you're going to put in uh, something that's done with files, it's all digital all the

way through comes in lout as ship. It can sound okay on vinyl, but I think it sounds better off the dig Okay, let me just ask you this though. If you're mastering off the high REDS file straight from pro tools, Okay, to vinyl. Is that gonna be better then the commercially available file? You know, I can't qualify better if you like it. It's better if you you know it's it's it's a first of all, you've got

to have a great system to play back final. Okay, you can't put in a cross USB turntable and think you've got something good because you don't. So no, that can't doesn't stand a chance. You're come into my room. You've got a fancy turntable, You've got a fancy preamp. You've got some nice speakers, very clean path, noise floor, very low in the room, so you hear the rumble. You can hear all kinds of crazy details in the vinyl, but you will also hear those in the file because

they're not invented in the vinyl. You know, the vinyl is just a capture medium that back to the electrical to mechanical to electrical it there's something very good about that. Okay, I'll ponder that. What is the So if I'm an act trying to develop, what's the best thing to send to you? If you're working on it, something that you've mixed that you like and you say I feel really

good about this. So it doesn't matter what formatic comes in, whether it comes in on a piece of tape or it comes in and hires file or forty four, it doesn't matter. The best thing to send me is something you like and are happy with it. It's satisfying. So you've gotta you have to work at your mix until you're happy. Don't don't come in with something that's limping and think you're going to be a you know, a

thorough red racehorse. So what is the futuring of the mastering world, Well, it's, uh, I think it's very much a in the box future. I think that define that for those unfamiliar. It's working with computers and plug ins. Um. I think there's always going to be room for what i'd call traditional mastering and analog chain fancy analog gear, good great converters, um. But that's a special client to that.

You know, budgets come into this too, more than ever now somebody that wants to take the time to do a real, full on analog recording where they've got a great machine, fantastic tape, and you have to remember they don't make tape so much anymore. So good and bad batches, and so you know, if you're fortunate enough to have a budget that you can work like that and you want to mix it down through your pristine NIV or SSL console and put it on a fantastic piece of

quarter inch or half inch tape. Takes a lot of time times money. It's so if someone is doing that and they're doing a full on mastering, what would be the rights for that? For my services, I charge an hourly rate and then the goods um. You know it gets expensive. Okay, so today, when you're finished, what do you actually send to the manufacturer or to these varying outlets. Well, we provide multiple files sources, so the m FIT, so we we conform to Apple standards for the m FIT.

We're an infant sanctioned studio. There's the digital, which is your Amazon um from the digitals. I think Amazon makes their two fifty six MP three and a half. And then there's the CD which is getting less and less. And another thing I'm noticing is is that we get less call for the super high res K two. It's getting it's reducing. Yeah, we don't we see fewer requests for that. Yeah, I think that I may not work

in the genre of music. I think that that's maybe more jazz classical oriented than it ever you know, has been. But we used to provide those high res files for I forget the name of the company in New York, the HD tracks or something. Okay, what about for a long time, especially in the CD era which started in Night two or so, remastered what was going on there? Wow? In two not a lot of good stuff. But fast forward, Um, I've been around long enough to have the privilege to

do people's twenty five year anniversary albums and stuff. So I just did the last I did Monster and Out of Time for R e M. And in those cases R e M is really into quality be We actually get the half inch tapes from the vault and uh I remaster them. I got to say, it's kind of a daunting task because I put on those old CDs and they're incredibly good sounding, and it's you know, it's always different, and different can be good, different can be bad.

It just depends on who's just is. It's such that there's been improvements in technology such that a master like you can literally do things better. Yeah, I mean, I experiences is a big contributing factor. I think that if you're dealing with somebody that works in the in the world I work in, nobody's really got second rate anything. We've been around long enough to pick and choose what it is we want and can use the tools to get out of the project what I'm looking for, and

hopefully the client is satisfied with. So in a perfect world, if you could snap your fingers, what would you change about today's music industry? I wish loudness wasn't such a factor. I like my loudness. I certainly get slagged by the the people that like to finger people for making things loud.

All of those people forget that somebody approved it. Um. But my personal taste would be for music to come back a couple of notches, because you never run out of volume on your volume control, but you sure run out of patients when it's too loud. You know. I we had a car when I when our son came into this world, we got a Mommy Mobile and it was interesting the first click of volume. You couldn't talk over with a modern c D. Wow Wow is right, okay,

but inherently nal will be quieter. You know, Vinyl, you know you're you're at the limits of time and frequency, so to reproduce a fifty cycle wave, and vinyl takes up space physical space on the disc. So if you've got something that's got a robust low end, you're not going to get it super loud without overly compressing or compromising the audio in ways. It's not to say it can't be pleasing to do some of that, but that's

the Vinyl has those types of limitations. Um. You know, if you remember, there are numbers of your favorite records that are nine tracks, you know, maybe thirty four minutes, you know, seventeen minutes aside sixteen eighteen, whatever it happens to be, which is sort of an ideal time to for for a vinyl disc. When you get up into these twenty four minutes sides, they're okay because you know, again the level is not overly pushed. The problem is

you start start having signal to noise problems. I did I did Leonard Cohen's last record, and it was before I was cutting vinyl, and I remember saying to the guy that was cutting it that could we hear it a half dB quieter because I thought it might sound a little better. And he said, well, you know, we can do that, but you're gonna start noticing the surface noise. And he was so right, you know, he was just so right. So it's all a delicate balance. Uh, you know,

audios a, it's a funny thing to chase. It's a sure a lot of fun and well, especially today because people are not younger generations not into stereo like the boomers, so they're playing it back through earbuds and a lot of crappy systems. Yeah they are. I mean, that's that's the downfall of add O is is that there's no resolution. You know, you're listening with such limited reproduction, you know, reproducers meaning earbuds, even good headphones. There are very few

good headphones. I know a lot of people take issue with that. I should say there are very few good affordable headphones. Um. And when the you know, the common denominator is the handheld device, i e. Your phone. Um, you know, if it jumps on that and that makes you happy, great, And I'd like to make it jump on that and make you happy. That's your job. You've been listening to Steven Marcus in Mastering Engineer Extraordinary here on the Bob Left Sets podcast. We've gotten technical, you know.

I think a lot of people are intrigued. Some people are knowledgeable about this already. Other people can learn. I certainly learned a couple of things. Stephen, Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Bob. It's been a pleasure. Until next time, I'm Bob. Left sets