Mastering—the work of transferring a recording to its final physical format—is literally the last artistic piece of a long process and one TVD is delving into over the coming months from a variety of angles with Scott Hull, mastering engineer and the owner of world-class and world-famous Masterdisk studios in New York City
Scott will be presenting a master class in mastering, from the fundamentals to the final product, as we count down to Record Store Day 2011 when a select few of you will be given the opportunity to win an in-person training session at Masterdisk.
If you missed last week’s introduction, you can find that here. For now, we’re onto Week number two:
How do we listen to CDs and MP3s? We hear them in the car, while jogging, over computer speakers while we blog (as I am now, listening to yesterday’s mastering project, Dave Matthews), and from the tiny little ear buds plugged into our iPhones.
How do we listen to records? We take the record out carefully, and often we’ll clean it. We double check the tone arm balance and anti-skate, we set the first side on the platter, cue the tone arm and sit back and listen,often playing an entire side, maybe even with our eyes shut.
It’s no wonder we have a different relationship with our records than we do with our CDs and computer files. The format engages us on many levels. Records have to be stored and handled carefully or the experience is lost. We’re rewarded with better sound when we spend a little extra time with an anti-stat gun or a record cleaner. The playback sounds nearly the same as it did years ago when we fell in love with music. And I haven’t even mentioned the larger graphics and interesting packaging.
So, I guess I am preaching to the choir, right? All of you understand why you are vinyl junkies. You can justify spending hundreds of dollars on a turntable and pre-amp since it helps you love the music even more. That really is wonderful and I hope all of you have had that experience.
We’ve all heard that the younger generation has rediscovered vinyl. I had a client in my room the other day who told me a story about a young man’s vinyl conversion. A son of a friend of this man was a huge Bob Dylan fan. In fact he believed that he possessed every single downloadable Dylan recording and was very proud of the history and folklore, which he knew by rote.
One day my client invited this friend and his son over to hear his very expensive and detailed record playback system. They left the room for a few minutes to talk, as the son was absorbed in listening to a familiar Dylan record. When they returned they saw he had been crying. And he told them that he had never really heard the album before. It was like everything he knew about Bob Dylan was only on the surface. He had heard the songs a hundred times before, but played back on vinyl it was mind blowing.
Next week I’ll get into the geometry of the record groove. It’s deep!
Scott Hull is a mastering engineer and the owner of Masterdisk (founded in 1973) in New York City. In his 25-plus year career, Scott has mastered records for Sting, Bob Dylan, Steely Dan, Os Mutantes, John Zorn, Uncle Tupelo, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings and hundreds more. Visit Masterdisk online or on Facebook.
