digital audio genius Bob Katz

[Julian Knowles <j.knowles@xxxxxxxxxx>]

billjarboe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>  It could be more difficult to determine such things when the listening
>  space is shared with a "professional"; meaning some overfed jerk who sits on
>  his ass in a swivel chair most of the day in his little mastering boudoir
>  and makes a comfortable living by telling people "what
>  sounds good".

I understand the sentiment, but I think this may be a little unfair. 
There are intelligent people working out there and its dangerous to 
generalise. I'll give you an example. One of the top mastering 
engineers in the world is Bob Ludwig. I had several extensive 
discussions with him when I was working on the 5.1 mixes for a 
forthcoming Phill Niblock DVD release. I was particularly interested 
in his opinion on how sum and difference tones are handled by 
perceptual coding systems like AC3 and DTS as they were critical to 
the music I was working on and I did not want the music to be 
destroyed in the data compression phase of the project. As someone 
who has mastered more DVDs than you've had hot dinners (well almost), 
his advice was important. Not only did he provide reasoned advice, he 
provided it for free as he is a fan of new music. He avidly listens 
to experimental music radio programs via netcasts. So, while his 
reputation has been built on mastering top ten hits for decades, his 
interests and listening are much wider than that.

In relation to the black art of mastering, it needs to be recognised 
that it is not only an aesthetic/subjective job. There is a large 
amount of what you might call 'objective' work which needs to be done 
in order to make the CD sound as good as possible and to have it 
translate properly across speakers of all descriptions. There are 
many issues which stem from how loudspeakers behave when fed certain 
types of signals and on a certain level you are listening to the 
spectrum rather than the music. Funnily enough, however, many of the 
techniques used for commercial music apply to experimental music. I 
recently mastered a cd for no input mixing board artist, Peter 
Blamey, whose mixes had the most feral spectra imaginable, as the 
whole cd is basically mixing desk feedback loops and noise. There 
were plenty of 'close to DC' frequencies in there. His first problem 
was that the cd was soft and of course, there was no sense of bass on 
small speakers. Well, the huge levels of 2-10hz sines didn't really 
help, especially as you can't hear them because no loudspeaker known 
to humanity can project them properly. They are fun if you want to 
see subs trying to unhinge themselves however.... (personally,  i 
prefer not to watch our dynaudios unhinging....). Some judicious eq 
(i don't like brick wall high pass filters...) and some frequency 
selective compression tamed the sub 10hz stuff with the result being 
that the cd was louder without sounding compressed and the bass was 
much chunkier as the subs actually had a fighting chance. This 
process also allowed the spreading of bass into the nearfields so you 
heard bass on smaller speakers. So, as an example, this is not too 
different from mastering a more commercial release... in the end, 
frequencies are frequencies and signals of different frequencies and 
intensities do things to loudspeakers. I think the trouble is that 
the 'black art' label makes people blind (deaf?) to much of the quite 
objective work that needs doing. Of course, significant skill and 
experience is required to do this work and, granted, there are 
decisions which fit into the aesthetic realm (which is why the artist 
should attend the session), but the above cited example is far from 
an aesthetic decision - its a pretty pragmatic one and quite typical 
of the kinds of things that get done in mastering. A good mastering 
engineer is highly skilled and checks any 'aesthetic' decisions with 
the client. I have a huge amount of respect for good mastering 
engineers, more so than good recording engineers actually as there is 
very little recognition of their critical role (even among musicians).

Katz has done a good job of documenting the primary issues in 
mastering via his site and is incredible active in trying to get 
manufacturers  and the industry to agree to some standards in new 
formats to avoid the problems we have with overcompression etc.... 
Unfortunately it does not seem as if his K system for level 
standardisation in DVD music releases will not be taken up.... 
Pity... We can now look forward to a future of overcompressed 
DVDs............
-- 
______________
Julian  Knowles
Acting Head of School
School of Contemporary Arts
University of Western Sydney
Locked Bag 1797  Penrith South DC NSW 1797 Australia
ph: 0247 360 162
fax: 0247 360 166

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