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Articles By owner Larry DeVivo
Silvertone Mastering Press
Tape Op Nov/Dec 2007 I first met Gina Fant-Saez at the New York AES show last fall where she was showing her new internet based start-up company called eSession.com. This innovative venture allows clients worldwide the opportunity to hire world-class musicians, engineers and producers and the site provides all financials and file transfers required to collaborate with renowned talent regardless of software, hardware or computer platform. There was quite a buzz around her booth and since I was introduced to her by a mutual friend, Gina immediately sat down with me and showed me the concept behind eSession. She did such a great job of "selling" me on the concept that I immediately sought out the Tape-Op booth to ask Larry about doing a review. By the time the show ended Larry had agreed to the review (there really was that much excitement at the eSession booth all throughout the show). The only thing at the time that I knew about Gina was that she had worked on a record with Kevin Killen several years earlier at her Blue World studio in Austin, TX. Little did I know what a major player she was and the scope of the albums she had worked on for such high profile artists such as U2, King Crimson, Sting, Shawn Colvin, Jimmie Vaughan, Bela Fleck, Nelly Furtado, The Meat Puppets, Sister Hazel & Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum) as well as teaching engineers like Michael Barbiero the ins and outs of Pro Tools. This past March she had her book "Pro Tools for Musicians and Songwriters" published by Peachpit Press. Receiving 5 star reviews since it's release it has been pick up as a textbook by several major audio schools including Berklee. Her energy is infectious and is the driving force behind eSession. How do you feel the Dangerous summing boxes hold up against the old SSL?
www.esession.com Larry DeVivo, www.silvertonemastering.com The Weiss DNA1 is a two rack space audio restoration dynamo. The DNA1 is made up of several noise reducing devices along with ambience recovery and M/S routing in one box. It has 4 sections which allow for a great degree of processing; the DeClicker/DeCackler, DeNoise (noise removal), K Stereo (ambience recovery) and the M/S processing section. All can be used alone or together or any combination there of. What makes it really unique is it's ability to do all this processing in real time. Daniel Weiss never ceases to amaze me. When this unit first arrived he said that he was working to improve the DeClicker section of the unit. He suggested that I use the other functions but hold off on the DeClicker/DeCrakler till he could get me the updated chip sets. Of course I had to dive into this section first to see why it would need to change. The process of real time manipulation of de-clicking program material can be quite tricky as usually no two clicks are of the same intensity or duration. To this end it is suggested that taking a section of the most offensive click and looping it is the best way to determine height and duration and therefore achieve the greatest results. That's fine when you only have a few clicks and pops due to clocking problems or such in the source material, but what about DeClicking/DeCrackling a vinyl record? I dove in with the hardest material possible, an old scratchy vinyl record. To tell the truth it took quite some time to get use to the DeClicking section of the unit, it was pretty deep. The DeCrackler is a subset of the DeClicker section which has also includes Smooth parameter after it to capture the smallest of surface noises. Smooth is used to get rid of the fine crackle that may be in certain program material such as vinyl. There were many pages to go though just trying to get near satisfactory results. It took days if not weeks to come up with the magic combinations and to gage the sensitivity of the clicks without going too far and creating what are called 'false positives' in the program material. In other words, de-clicking something that wasn't an actual click in the source such as a drum side stick. However after a period of time I got fairly good at using the DNA 1 and after a half hour or so I could dial in some very satisfactory results. With parameters to control quality, sensitivity and click type you can dig in pretty deep in the semi auto or auto modes. There are also presets to help get you started. Well, in come the new chip sets from Daniel Weiss. I pop them in and notice where there use to be 10 menus to page down through in each button function of the DeClicker/DeCrackler now there is only 4. Over the months that I had the unit, I had got use to these pages and thought now the unit would be more limited in its function. Boy was I wrong. Now what use to take about a half hour to dial in while fiddling through the menus only took five minutes! Daniel said he wanted to make it easier and he did. Way easier in fact. This is the most powerful full featured click removal algorithm I have ever used. When you combine the DeClicker with the DeNoiser section, the unit becomes a power house. The DeNoiser has three basic modes - auto; semi-auto; and manual. This noise removal section originally developed by Pure Notes Technology is very easy to operate. In auto mode the noise floor (if you will) is represented by a line that goes across the frequency plot on the display of the unit. The line represents the threshold and anything below it will be affected by the noise removal section. Simply dial in more noise removal and watch the line move up. Listen while you are watching the display and you can achieve some pretty fantastic results in pretty short order. You have to be fairly careful when using the noise removal section as it's pretty easy to start removing things you don't want to remove. Such as in my case of restoring this song on the vinyl record. You could dial the DNA1 in and remove all the vinyl noise off the record. Where it produced very clean, noise free music it didn't sound natural at all. Dial it back and listen to the vinyl come back. Pretty damn cool. Whereas noise removal software only takes a small 'snap shot' of the noise and it applies it across all the program material the Weiss unit works in real time to remove as much of the noise as you want, not just a small static portion of it. I've never quite seen or heard anything like it. Keep in mind when doing any noise removal process you must weigh the benefits against the original material. It is very easy to go too far and to start dulling the material off. Let's face it, a lot of what we call 'air' as engineers can be seen as 'noise' by any of these devices. However sometimes to get the noise you have to lose a little air. Of course in the 'air' lies not only the high end of the material but also the reverb or nature ambient sounds. Trade-offs abound. Enter the ambient recovery section. The ambient recovery section of the DNA1 called K-Stereo was actually developed by mastering engineer Bob Katz. This section is used to recover ambience that may be lost due to the noise removal process. This feature was indispensable when doing any form of heavy noise removal as I was able to bring back much of the ambience and high end that 'went missing' while processing. Even when lightly processing, I found that I could easily make the finished track sound as natural as the unprocessed track. With added control over the depth (front to back sound stage) and width (how expansive the ambience may be) it is easy to dial back in just the right amount of 'room'. The addition of ambience filters gives this section even greater control, allowing the engineer to actually equalize the ambient portion of the material. The most commonly used control will probably be the high pass filter. With this control alone it is possible to tighten the spatiality of the bass instruments without affecting the ambience in the mid range and highs. There is also a great amount of overall level that can be achieved with very little negative artifacts created using this section (but I'm not suppose to mention that). Inclusion of the full featured M/S (mid/side) processing in the unit adds that much more power to the features described above. I wasn't sure how useful this feature was going to be until I processed a mono track with it. Need to only process the center with noise removal, you got it. Or just dial down the crackle on the sides of that mono recording, not a problem. How about do both at the same time? Options and combinations seem limitless. I know of no other box that offers this powerful feature set, let alone quality of restoration enhancement than the Weiss DNA1. Weiss also included the POW-R dither subset in the unit. For anyone doing audio restoration or forensic work, the Weiss DNA1 would soon become an invaluable tool to have the their arsenal. Possibly the only outboard processor they would ever need. I highly recommended that you audition one if your daily work needs require such tools. I think it's safe to say that the Weiss team really have a winner on their hands with the DNA1. List Price: Larry DeVivo - www.silvertonemastering.com
The Dangerous Master has taken my mastering console up quite a notch. Integrating it with the Dangerous Monitor (Tape-Op issue # 34) has truly given me the processing and routing capabilities I've always dreamed of but could never afford. That's not to say that the two pieces together don't come with a hefty price tag, they do but I shopped a similar setup some ten years ago and the prices I was quoted ranged from 25k to 50k. Yeah, no kidding, " for a glorified stereo pre-amp! ", I thought. Of course the power and control the Master gives you is so much more than that. For less than one third the price of those custom consoles the 'buy in' is well worth it. In fact just when I had perfected my digital chain and thought it couldn't get much better, (to the point of where I started to sell off some of my analog chain) along comes the Dangerous Master to make me question my decision. So what is this Master? Some magical piece of outboard gear that will fix any mix? No. Some wonder box to process the two buss beyond belief? Closer. A mastering engineer in a box? Nope. It's the perfect compliment to the Dangerous Monitor and the other half of the equation to complete the heart and soul of a mastering facility, the quintessential mastering console. The Master provides you with two switchable inputs with separate left / right level control, three insert loops, sum & difference processing, input monitoring level offset, stereo image width control (for the M-S section) and an output gain control. On the whole this doesn't sound like much, but add a couple compressors, equalizers and de-essers and you have much greater control over the stereo field than conventional left / right processing could ever give. This is the same control that the top mastering facilities have, with the same build quality and design expertise of the man himself, Chris Muth, who designs and builds the Dangerous line along with his partner Bob Muller, two of the nicest guys you'd ever meet in the industry. It's no secret that Chris was the technical director at Sterling Sound (one of New York's largest mastering facilities) for years. He designed and built many of the mastering consoles used by Sterling's engineers and countless other top mastering studios as well. So his ability to grasp just what the mastering engineer would need and distill it down to a two rack space box makes perfect sense. In reality the design of the Master is a combination of not only Chris' knowledge, but that of the many mastering engineers he has worked with over the years. This product is refinement at its best. So how do you work this box? First take a source from your D/A converter or analog tape machine and bring it into one of the two inputs; here you can adjust left / right balance and overall level of the incoming signal. Next in line are the three stereo send and return loops. Stick an EQ on insert 1, a compressor on 2 and another EQ on 3. At the push of a button, any of these are inserted into the chain. EQ before the compressor, or after the compressor, or both, nice and easy so far. Within the second insert is an additional loop that allows for sum and difference processing (also know as M-S processing or mid/side). Now this is where it gets interesting. Just hit the S&M button (cute, huh) and you have the power to manipulate the center field separately from the sides and vise versa. So what does this mean to the engineer? Plenty! When you stack, say an equalizer and compressor on insert two, you could compress just the center to control the kick and vocal but not pull down the sides; compress the sides to control the stereo panned guitars and cymbals and leave the center alone; EQ the harshness out of the cymbals on the side but never take the clarity out of the vocal; de-ess the vocal in the center but never touch the cymbals on the sides; or go ahead and EQ those cymbals but no need to touch that center image on the vocal you just perfected. You get the picture. The variations are endless and allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility compared to your typical left / right stereo processing. Want to take it a step further? The Master also gives a stereo image width control to move the sound "beyond the speakers" as they say, or to pull the center image level up or down. Need that vocal and kick a little louder? Or maybe tuck it back in the mix? No problem. Of course this is just a couple scenarios of infinite equipment set up possibilities. Choose your order, stack your gear, go. On top of this the Master gives you a level offset control so that you can raise the gain (or lower it if necessary) of the unprocessed signal to reference it against the work you are doing. No more getting fooled by level differences. At the push of a button a/b the processed path against the unprocessed path to get an accurate view of what you are doing. At the end of the chain you have an output level control to make sure that you hit that A/D at just the right level. So how does it sound? I always have trouble describing the sound of something that has no sound (or shouldn't have a sound anyway). That's not to say that is Master is sterile and lifeless, far from it. People who are familiar with me know that gear doesn't stick around Silvertone too long unless it has some form of euphoric mojo, vibe or funkiness to it. I can say without a doubt that the Master has truly breathed new life into my analog chain and that working with said gear has never been easier. Another thing I noticed was that I could hear the differences in my A/D and D/A converters so much easier than before, which took me by a bit of surprise. Now choosing which converter to go with for each session has become effortless. Just another way in which the Master has made my job easier. The only negative I've encountered with the unit, and this has more to do with the fact that levels are through the roof these days, is the monitor offset (used to compare mastered with unmastered signals) is sometimes not enough. Even with 8 dB of gain if the mixes are printed to low or the reference material we are trying to match to is too loud it can still be off by a few dB. This really has more to do with where levels are at today and/or improper engineering than the Master itself. In most cases the 8 dB is more than enough. After using the Master for the past several months I cannot imagine working without it (needless to say this unit won't be going back). If you want to achieve similar results as the top mastering facilities you need the Master, period end of story. There are those who would argue about the use of relays in the signal path and that only using passive circuts is the way to go, etc... and for everyone of those who would hop on that bandwagon there is a counterpoint to those design philosophies, it's endless. The bottom line is I do not hear any sonic degradation to the signal whatsoever when using the Dangerous Master, just the opposite seems to be true. In fact many of my clients have commented "they've never heard their songs sound so good" through the playback system, so that in itself is the real testament here. I know I've never heard my system sound better and in the past I've used both passive and active 'consoles'. With stepped controls throughout, accuracy and repeatability are not a problem for the Master. Again the boys at Dangerous spec'ed the Janco NASA grade attenuators, some of the best in the world along with other top of the line components to give you a build quality that will probably outlast anyone in the industry using this gear today. I really can't say enough on the quality components and sonic integrity that Dangerous uses in their designs, only that it doesn't get much better than this. Larry DeVivo (www.silvertonemastering.com)
"This
Isn't Rocket Science"Sundazed Music has to be the coolest record
company on the planet. If there's a classic tune running around in
your head, more than likely you can find the reissue of it on the Sundazed
Label. Owner Bob Irwin is one of those rare breed of record company
owners, who founded the company on a love and passion for great music
that continues to this day. In an industry that seems to be churning
out corporate music swill ad nausea, Bob is a music archeologist that
aspires to find the treasures of the past and bring them to the light
of day. Carefully preserving the original elements, Bob presents these
finds to a new audience that might never experience music like this
had it not been for a visionary such as himself.I began
preparing this interview on Sundazed and it's owner/originator
Bob Irwin by reading every article I could find about him and his
company. In researching these pieces, the same accolades were being
sung over and over again; "sometimes nice guys do finish first"; "one
of the nicest guy you'd ever meet". Certainly by the pictures
presented in these articles Bob Irwin looked like a amiable gent,
confident and always a smile. This really became apparent when I
first arrived at Sundazed Records. Bob had an unexpected visit by
the group The Chesterfield Kings. They had stopped by to reference
a tune in Bob's mastering room that they were recording with a heavy
hitter producer and engineer for a major television program. Rather
than make me wait in the entry lobby or put me in with someone else,
Bob asked me to come in and join them. As the group asked questions
regarding the sound of their project and what effect mastering might
have on the end product, Bob would turn to me and ask "what
do you think Larry?" Bob knew that open dialog amongst professionals
would result in the best advice on the project. Indeed the Chesterfield
Kings had no idea who I was (other then a writer for Tape-Op at the
time) and once Bob included me in the conversation, what I had to
say carried weight. This is the kind of individual Bob Irwin is,
inclusive and open with an enthusiasm for the music business as if
he got into it yesterday. I knew right away we were going to get
along swimmingly.We listen to the Chesterfield Kings on Bob's Dunluvy
SC IVA monitors and immediately our conversation turned toward gear.
Talking about the marrying of amps, speakers and the room.BI:
I'm in the process of changing over the power amps in this room.
I've just been waiting for that right moment when I'm between projects
to make the switch in order to not lose my frame of reference.
I have a beautiful Audio Sculpture "Equilibre" tube amp
that is so well married to the IVA's that I can't wait to get it
in!LD: Do you find the tubes color the sound?BI: No. I'm very very
use to working with tube equipment. I love the sound, love the glow
(laughs)! I've heard incredibly good sounding Solid State power amps
too, but I'm more comfortable working with tubes. Makes me feel better,
makes me work better.LD: I cherish my tubes on my analog chain side
too, but unfortunately a lot of the projects I get in can't tolerate
the conversion from D to A and back again.BI: Well, I'm very fortunate
and very happy in working with the kind of music that we do because
it's almost exclusively reissue or vintage-oriented work. What new
projects we do take on are similar to what you've seen, like The
Chesterfield Kings, Davie Allan, etc. - artists who are looking to
somewhat recreate a vintage sound and feel.LD: Being musicians who
have to also be engineers at the same time is unfortunate. Have them
cut to that one inch eight track in the other room.BI:
There you go - that's really true! The other side of the coin is
that as producers, or, as their own producers, such as the case
with the ChesterfieId Kings, I really don't think anyone can do
it as well as they can because they came up nurtured on the absolute
coolest 60's garage and psych stuff. They know and understand the
nuances better than anyone. Honestly, these are the guys who won't
stop at something that is just a reasonable facsimile of what they
are trying to emulate. Instead they will call Jim Lowe of the Electric
Prunes and say "all right, how did you get that sound?!?!?"LD:
A few colleagues were talking about the "Kind Of Blue" reissue
the other day. How several of the songs had a varispeed issue due
to one of the machines being slightly misadjusted. They were talking
about esthetically whether or not it should be corrected in the reissue
or not since it came out vari-speeded on the original release. You
must run across this kind of stuff all the time.BI:
That and about thirty other issues, you bet. I wasn't involved
in Sony's "Kind Of Blue" reissue but I do remember it being
batted about back and forth at the time. In the end, I think they
corrected it. It is something that we run into quite often. For-instance,
we recently did all the Lovin Spoonful reissues for BMG. Nearly the
entire original 'Do You Believe in Magic" album was vari-speeded,
purposefully, and frankly, you could hear why. I don't know if it
was producer Erik Jacobsen or whomever, but someone sped the mixdowns
up a bit and the whole program pulled together. And when we were
mastering the album, John Sebastian said, "you know, I think
that perhaps we should give the world "Do You Believe in Magic" at
the correct speed." But, I feel that when you're dealing with
music history, it would be difficult to take a hit song like "Do
You Believe in Magic" that everybody heard since they were 'kids'
and make that into a different animal. So, ultimately, what we opted
to do was, not to vari-speed that song, but we looked at the bonus
tracks appended to the reissue and revealed some of them at their
actual speed. Further complicating situations like that, you also
have to try and figure out what was done on purpose and what the
hell was just a mistake in the first place!LD: I'm sure that is part
of the more interesting part of the job. You have the job to get
in this industry, you're working with artists who understand the
process.BL:
I love the job! It's very cool because it's not limited strictly
to the garage-arena or even to the sixties-arena. I should preface
this by saying that we're not necessarily billed as a commercial
studio - I built the new studios to primarily address Sundazed
projects. From there, we've been very fortunate in having some
industry folks bring projects here that I absolutely can't wait
to work on. Whether it's a project for BMG like the Spoonful catalog,
or for Verve Jazz such as the Buddie Emmons "Steel Guitar Jazz" album,
which is one of my most favorite albums on the planet, I'm totally
excited!LD: Is that something where Verve contacts you cause you
guys are the kings of reissues?BI: Thanks! Yes, I believe initially
they had some of our Euphoria Jazz titles. Euphoria is a subsidiary
label of Sundazed that primarily reissues jazz guitar titles. Bryan
Koniarz at Verve, who is in charge of certain parts of catalog development
acquired a couple things we released and contacted me from there.LD:
That's got to feel good. That's the ultimate industry 'pat on the
back' right there.BI: Yeah, it's really nice. And the other side
of the coin is that some people are savvy enough to realize that,
reasonable rates aside, I won't let anything go out of this place
until I feel it cannot possibly be any better. I can't live with
it, I don't sleep nights! It can't be anything less than stellar.
And hopefully, that comes back to reward you in the way of more projects.
I guess it would be different if I was sweeping floors or hauling
concrete blocks, but I really don't mind being here all the time,
I truly love it. Problematic issues aside, at the end of the day
you're always glad you did things the right way!LD: Sure, and you
probably more than anybody, have heard so many bad reissues. Let's
face it when compact disc first started they slaughtered so many
good albums going to CD.BI: It's astounding. People continue to do
it. I'm sometimes alarmed at the mismatch of program to either mixing
or mastering people. I mean, it's a given - I'm just not the guy
to go near a hip-hop project, nor would I ever, not because I don't
respect it, but because I don't know it. Yet you see people attempting
to do reissue projects of immeasurable value and importance, but
when the mastering's done there's no referencing to anything. And
that's not to say that you have to be married to your reference -
I've always thought that there were great sounding records in the
60's and there were shitty sounding records in the 60's, but you
know that if you have a master that is absolutely stellar, living
and breathing, and you find that it was killed during the original
lacquer cut in 1967, you'll then want to show what that album could
have been. Other times, my God - you have all you can do to try and
aspire to sound as good as the first vinyl pressing!LD: It's funny
that you bring that up because I just read where the late Tommy Dowd
was saying that he was so upset that he was never consulted for the
Lynyrd Skynyrd records. That in some songs that they had double the
vocals and if Ronnie VanZant were alive today he would have thrown
a bottle of Jack Daniel's at the head of the engineer who did that.
It upset him greatly.BI: Why? Why would they do that? You mean there
were other vocals on the album they used?LD:
No, they simply doubled the original vocals in some of the songs.
They were supposedly making it "better" than the original.
Which brings me to my next question - do you ever consult the original
producer or engineer on the albums you're working on?BI:
Oh yeah - wherever possible we try to involve the original artists
and the original technical people. Not to the point where I have
to have the original producer sitting here or something like that,
but when I was working on the Simon & Garfunkel catalog for Sony,
I was certainly back and forth with Roy Halee, talking to him. When
you have an artist involved, it can sometimes be wonderful and sometimes
be problematic, but fortunately, the good usually outweighs the bad.
I've always found that if an artist is the least bit reasonable and
astute, you can say to them, "I'm gonna listen to you and we'll
work on this together, unless I think your leading us down the wrong
path. Then, I have to be honest with you and tell you that." Artists
appreciate that, they appreciate the honesty, they appreciate not
having smoke blown at them. I find that approach works best for us.
Yes, everyone is contacted. For better or for worse, even when you
have a band that is splintered into factions...LD: You want to go
to the main guy?BI:
Or go to all of them and explain that I'm the person here who is
going to try to make this music right, so "let's put personal
difference aside for a minute. You don't have to speak together,
you don't have to be involved together but I just want you to know
that this is going on and invite you to participate anyway you like." That's
just the right way to do things, because, besides the obvious benefit
it can bring you in the studio, that also gains their confidence.
An artist may then trust you with access to their photo archives,
might possibly make them available for interviews for the liner notes,
and makes them a vital part of the project.LD: That's great. Let
me go right back to the beginning. You started in the record store
business, right?BI: Yuuup, (laughs).LD: What inspired you to start
Sundazed the label, I mean did you say I want to start a record label?BI:
Oh yeah, basically! I mean, I guess it depends how far back you
want to go. When I was a kid I wanted to be a guitar player. Had
my first guitar when I was six. It's all I wanted to do my whole
life. Music is the most vivid recollection I have of my childhood.
Even the friends that I had were kids that were buying records,
and my life revolved around that much more then, like, playing
sandlot baseball. It was "Oh my God, so-and-so has the new Mitch Ryder
45" - those are the memories that I have! I got a guitar when
I was six, started taking lessons and grew into my own band in high
school and stuff, and I was the guy in the 70's playing out two or
three times a week while I was in high school. Monday afternoons
after school, my girlfriend and I would get in the car and shoot
up to Albany and go record shopping. I wasn't buying new music -
Eagles, the Doobies, and Steely Dan. I was haunting the Woolworth's,
Grants and J.M. Fields stores, buying the three-for-a-dollar albums
- all the things I read about when I was a kid and simply had no
money to buy. That, to me, was absolute manna...just going around
finding "Surfing with the Astronauts" for thirty-three
cents. And the prices also gave me the flexibility to try anything.
That's where my first Joe Pass album came from. Basically, I'm telling
you I bought anything that had to do with the guitar (laughs)!So
from there, when I went to college, I was still playing in bands
and started working in record stores at the same time. I was working
in a record shop that was adjacent to a guitar store in Albany
and I was intrigued by the cut-out department...intrigued by the
guy who was supplying the cut outs. I eventually wormed my way
into being invited to the warehouse which was, like "Okay, take me now,
I have seen it all!" There was really no such thing as record
collecting - at least that I was aware of at that time. I soon bumped
into a couple guys that were all about The Electric Prunes, The Seeds,
The Rolling Stones and not about Dan Fogelberg. Had a natural affinity
for these people, whom I remain close friends with to this day. A
few years later, I got married and started working at this chain
of record stores and over a period of months was promoted to the
general manager of the chain as well as the head buyer. We were purchasing
from all the majors and pocketed independents and importers. I watched
a friend of mine that worked for an importer start his own label
and I was totally intrigued with it. I had previously spent a lot
of time in recording studios but I wasn't necessarily aware of the
process of making a record or manufacturing a CD and, you know, at
this time digital recording was this magical, mystical world that
no one really understood! (laughs) When I first went to work for
this chain of stores, there were, literally, five or six CD titles
available. "Thriller", "Born in the USA", etc..
And that was the CD wall. So I worked through the transition, and
also had simultaneously started a friendly relationship with Richard
Foos, Harold Bronson and other folks at Rhino Records. Am I being
very long winded here?!?LD: No, go ahead, this is great, the more
information I have - you know it's like a recording, I can edit this
later on. Mute this section (laughs)...BI:
I'll shorten this for you. I watched it all get started, and it
was easy to see what was being missed by the majors and what was
not being addressed, and what was not being addressed properly.
By this time, I was doing a little detective work for Rhino here
on the east coast, in addition to my regular job. My friend at
the importer grew his label into a very successful business, and
offered to help me start my label. He invited me to meet with him
in Greenwich Village - "Meet me at this restaurant, bring your list of questions
and we'll sit down." We met at this cafe and he basically opened
his book for me. He said, "for LP mastering you want to contact
these people, to make your LP's talk to this company, you're gonna
need a good entertainment attorney, let me call my guy and see if
he can help you, etc.." That day, we basically started the infrastructure
of Sundazed.
2003
TapeOp magazine When I first approached Tony Levin about doing an article for Tape-Op magazine he said "sure, we love the magazine, but I don't know how much I can contribute to the world of tech-heads" and asked if I minded doing the article with both he and his good friend Jerry Marotta who "has a real studio, makes real records" and works with record labels all the time. I explained to him that Tape-Op is really a DIY magazine and since he had recorded in so many studios with so many great players, engineers and producers, I was sure that Tape-Op readers would be very interested in what he had to say. Bringing a musician/engineer/producer like Jerry Marotta in on the interview would just be icing on the cake!What followed was an impressive amount of information regarding the recording process for Tony Levin's new CD "Pieces Of The Sun." We decided to meet at Jerry's studio, "Jersville" in Woodstock, NY. An unassuming single story ranch turned recording studio sitting at the base of one of the Catskill Mountains. If Rip Van Winkle decided to take a snooze here, rest assured he wouldn't have been asleep for too long!LD: So, what are you running here for recording? Digital Performer?RF: (Robert Frazza, engineer). Well we run Digital Performer but for our recordings we are mostly running ProTools. We don't do a lot of sequencing so we are using the sequencer built into Pro Tools.TL: You met Robert, right? Robert did all the engineering on the album.LD: You originally started the album here, correct?TL: I'll tell you the whole process. I first started the album in my garage with nothing running and then started recording it in the worst of ways.LD: How so?TL: Cause it's the only way I didn't manage to get any midi files done at the same time. I don't mean sonically. It was just an ADAT and there was no way to record any midi files for syncing to. After I had the piece worked out, I came to Jerry's here and redid all the parts into Pro Tools in such a way that there was not only the sound files on it but also midi files. That way if we wanted to change things- maybe put a different synth sound, we could. Had I been able to do that at home, I would have.RF: We mapped everything out in ProTools, then we loaded it in when we went to Applehead Studio.LD: When you went to Applehead did you track the rhythm section together, bass, drums, guitar and such?TL: Yeah, this one I wanted to play as a band as opposed to my last album. Just for the fun of it, for the treat.LD: Makes it more fun for the tracking engineer too.JM: Makes it a lot quicker too.TL: This time we put bass and drums to analog tape, whereas on the last album we had to do that later on in the mix.LD: You don't seem to get quite the same sonics as when you mix it down later.TL: I was trying to save a step.JM: Have you ever noticed a difference?RF: No, we went to the 2" cause Pillars of Fire had 44 tracks on it.JM: Has anybody sat down and A/B'd the two, that this was recorded all analog then transferred to digital and that was all digital transferred to analog later?TL: Oh God, no!LD: I'll do that later at my mastering facility. (laughs all around) I still prefer the sound of analog, the way the transients hit the tape, especially with bass and drums.TL: Most of the recording I do is all over the place and it seems to be, not unanimous, but a lot of people want to put the drums and bass down on analog and the rest in ProTools. What's ironic is that it slows the session down. You have to load the tape in later, listen to all the tracks and decide which of the cuts is the keeper, etc...Anyway after the initial tracking at Applehead we came back here and did some overdubs.LD: Like vocals and such?TL, JM, RF: No, no vocals. We don't have any vocals.LD: Dog one, two three? (laughs)TL: That's true, they went down live. Doug what did you do here? DS: (Doug Stinger, engineer at Jersville studio) We did quite a bit of editing of the tracks. That's the beauty of the computer world. Tony had songs with tons of tracks. To go into a big studio and mix the record properly - really mix it right, probably would have taken a day to do each song. But with ProTools you can pre-blend stuff and kind of get a leg up on the mix. That way the mix engineer is looking more at the talent then sounds, that's were the computer helps out a lot.TL: That's were it was nice having Robert at the studio having been working on getting the pre-sounds. He had more time working on the drum sounds, the bass amps, and microphones, more time to come up with the sounds beforehand.LD: I see you use the JDI direct boxes. You credited them on the album.TL: I really like them a lot. I use them all the time. I use them on both sides. Bass goes stereo.RF: Actually bass is 6 or 7 tracks.LD: So you mic the cabs as well as...TL: To begin with, I always split my signal in two. I have for a long time so that whatever effects I'm using are only on half the signal. Because we were at a physically big studio, if I had stereo effects, I print these to two tracks along with the direct signal and the amps and such.LD: And the Stick too, you used the JDI's on them?RF: Same way. They were in line so we used them.TL: Of course the end sound is not mixed up that loud to say, OK here's the bass, look at me with 6 channels. It just sounds like a bass on the album. We were just able to be more elaborate because Robert was able to work on the sound.JM: And it's not like all the sounds made it to the final album.TL: Kevin Killen mixed the album. I like the idea of a fresh guy coming in who hasn't heard it, who hasn't been at any of the sessions.LD: I love his mixing, what a great engineer. Did you reference on your Linn system?TL: No, unfortunately we went to where Kevin wanted to mix in NYC, Shelter Island studio, so we didn't have the luxury of A/Bing and comparing. I like to listen on them, they give me a glimpse of what the mastering might reveal. Especially in the low end.LD: You mentioned you had quite a bit of time getting the drum sounds. What mic's did you use?RF: I used the Shure 98's on the toms.LD: The little condenser jobbies?RF: Yeah, lets see Shure Beta 56's on the snare, 52 on the kick.LD: Is that what you'd normally use?JM: You know there are so many good mics you can use, D112, D12E, RE20 and the Beyer one (Jerry goes and gets it), the 380 we used that a lot on the last album.LD: Nice mic, and you used the True mic pre's, on drums?JM: Yeah, they're great, real open.TL: And when we were at Applehead we put mic's in the loft and out in the entry hall. The hall sounded great.RF: We had 24 tracks just for bass and drums.LD: That's great, a luxury. With the hall and loft mics did you have to get into time aligning the tracks?TL: Kevin did move some of the ambient stuff.LD: So that you wouldn't have time smearing happening?TL: Yeah, I remember him saying, I'm moving this a bit.LD: So bleed wasn't a problem, it was your friend?JM: Yeah, especially with everybody playing together.LD: And you went back to a more aggressive sound on this one as opposed to the more classical sound on Waters of Eden?TL: Yeah, more the writing then the sound. What happened was Waters of Eden was the music that I wanted to write at that time and I recorded it with different players, each at his own studio, which was nice. But as we started touring, it quickly became more powerful and I got enamored of being in a band situation again. With great players that are my friends, and by the middle of that tour, which was two years ago, I wanted to write a heavier kind of CD and feature these specific players. Because we have a history of progressive rock, Jerry, Larry(Fast) and I had played together so much in the past I specifically wanted to make a connection to that history in prog-rock. I didn't want to make an old fashion sounding record but I wanted to connect the two and forge ahead with the new compositions. To that end I specifically found an old Peter Gabriel track, a really old one that we played on that never came out and asked Peter if we could use that. And I picked my very favorite of the old Synergy tracks, again asked Larry if we could rerecord it, but really Larry played the same thing and we just added to it.LD: Did you sign a multi-album deal with Narada?TL: That's an interesting question, nobody usually asks about that stuff. The first time it was just a one album deal to see if they would be happy with me cause I'm doing rock for their label and to see if I was happy with them. The first album did fairly well for them and so we signed a 3 album deal this time. The fear was that not only would my music wouldn't be suitable for them but that this time I was very clear that I was not going to do that mellow an album again and go back to a more pop and heavier and album and they're very happy with it, their very nice people.LD: Right , cause they were originally a new age label.TL: Yeah, they were but I really don't keep up on those kinds of things. I just keep up on the day to day things and what they thrilled about is they have an artist, an act will go out on the road, plays live, promotes the album and has a following. And that I do so many interviews while on the road. So they really don't mind what kind of music I do. We are in a genre' that radio stations won't pick up on and play it anyway.LD: Yeah, what's sad is most of the stations work off play lists.TL: What's good now a days is that we don't expect it so there is not a lot of disappointment there. The irony of the Narada situation is that it's not what kind of music they put out but how people perceive them - they're thought of as a new age label weather they do jazz, mellow jazz or rock. In a way it doesn't matter. A good example is that even though this absolutely is a progressive rock album and we had many meetings on how it would be promoted and marketed as a rock album once they send it to the record stores they can't control what the stores do with it.LD: I know I found your last album in the new age section.TL: Evidently so is this one because immediately in it's first week it charted in the new age charts at billboard.LD: You guys are new agers...(laughs)TL: The record company didn't label it as such but when it says Narada they tend to put it in the new age bins and when the album sells at checkout, as I understand it, the code will come up as new age so they know the distributor will need to stock that section again. So that's life, we can't have things the way we want. At the level I'm at we are just happy to be playing music that we like.LD: The reason I asked about the multi-level deal is that a percentage of the Tape-Op readers are shooting for the same brass ring of doing their own music and getting a label behind them to help distribute and promote it.TL: Well Jerry knows a lot more then me about that. I have my own little Papa Bear Records that I sell off the web with limited promotion on the net and such, but because Jerry produces, he deals with record labels and how they finance their artists and such. So why don't you tell him.JM: What do you want to know?TL: Tell the readers how they're going to get a record deal. (laughs)LD: You're dealing with a lot of artists and younger bands that are trying to get an independent label deal or self promote their own album or get distribution on that album, and might be floundering while trying to figure out the avenues to go down.JM: Yes. I think probably the best way to kind of do what you want and to get to where you want to go is to make your own record and put your own record out and if you're good, you're going to develop your own following and that is what will lead to a deal with a bigger label. There is so much. Everybody is out there making a CD, but with a following, major bigger labels will come to your gigs and if you can show them a packed club and maybe see some SoundScans that your selling your CD's. Then maybe you can...LD: What do you think the crossover point is? Say 10,000 CD'sJM: I don't know the number.LD: I don't know, it seems like a much tougher market then say 20 years ago. Is that true, you guys are in it?TL: It seems much tougher.JM: It is in some ways and in some ways it isn't. 20 years ago very few people put out their own record. Tony, you probably wouldn't have had your own Papa Bear Records. But let's go back even further before the Private music and Windham hill labels, where you might not have had these forms of distribution you have now. People would put their music in clothing stores and candle stores, have this music playing in the background and then when the customer was checking out they might see this music at the counter and because they had been listening it might prompt them to buy this music.LD: I don't want to admit I did that, but..TL: I think Jerry is right. It's a wonderful time in that people are able to put out their own music.LD That's what sustains my business. I couldn't have expected to open a mastering facility in Saratoga Springs, NY and expect to make a living at it if it wasn't for a lot of independent releases.JM: Exactly. Several years ago, there were only a handful of mastering engineers and nobody would have thought of going into that business and say "I can do that". It was a black art.LD: When I got into it 10 years ago it was still very much a black art.TL: I think it's good for the music business - the information that's out there now.JM: It just seems like these days there's so much more access to people, with the internet, especially. LD: It's still marketing , with the internet. I see that is a hard thing.JM: It feels like there is more access to people then there really is. In reality it's turned out more like television. If you want to have some real profile on the internet it's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like TV, if you could buy ad's on TV to promote your record, you'd sell a certain number of records just 'cause they see it on television. But you know, 20 or 30 years ago, people didn't think, 'I'll make my own record, I'll get it out there.' People really didn't seem to think like that.As the day progressed, we talked about mastering where I was asked several questions about what I felt mastering brought to the project. Why was it needed? What I would do in a certain situation? It felt as if the tables had been turned and now I was the one getting interviewed. I felt honored to be asked by some of the best in the industry what my opinions were. A humbling experience indeed. In a word I said, "continuity". I will leave the rest for my forthcoming mastering article.I was showed around Jersville. The main console was a Focusrite/Digidesign ProControl 24 surface console. Recording was done to Protools and monitoring was done on old AR18's that Hugh Padgram had turned Jerry onto years ago. I really like the sound of these. The English equivalent of the NS10M but with a smoother over-all sound, you could hear more low end in them also. A wide assortment of guitars and keyboards rounded out the place. And the room that housed just Jerry's drum set was quite impressive, a project studio owners dream in that the whole room housed nothing but the drums.RF: Have you ever checked out the Chandler, modules? They're like a knock off of 1073's (Neve).LD: No, I've seen the ad's and they look pretty cool but I haven't had the chance to try them. Although I own 8 channels of the real thing.RF: I worked on a project with a top engineer that I respect very much and just had them stacked up. He really loved them. He compared them to all these original modules that were there and he liked them better.LD: Oh, I would imagine much cleaner and open. The originals are 30 years old.RF: Yeah they sounded great, very open on the top.LD: Yeah but they lack all those wonderful carcinogens the originals were made with. (laughs)RF: This guy actually gets the old parts and uses as much as he can to build them.LD: Much like the Vintec ones.RF: Yeah.LD: I missed them at AES this year. Were you there?TL: No. We were in NY, but were mixing the album then.After the interview, Jerry Marotta took me over to Applehead Studio, a big beautiful new post and beam studio where the the "Pieces of the Sun" album was tracked. While there, I saw a lot of wonderful old gear combined with all the modern tools one could ask for in todays recording environment. The console was a nice old API with 550 modules and they had a Neve Melbourne sidecar. Tracking was being done to Pro-Tools with a Digi Pro-Control surface used for the mixing. The track that was being played back was slamming. And for the first time in a while, I saw Quested monitors (a personal favorite). They sounded wonderful with extreme detail and a smooth sound. Just what one wants out of a good monitor, and they could handle the level of Marotta's powerful drumming.All in all , it was a great day hanging with top musicians who made an average Joe like myself feel right at home. Pick up "Pieces of the Sun" and hear for yourself what the culmination of all these efforts sounds like.You wont be disappointed!Larry DeVivo (www.silvertonemastering.com)
.......2002
TapeOp magazine You
know, mastering engineers can dream too. I know what it is
like for Tape-Op readers to dream about getting that one special
U47 microphone or that vintage API console, but I am here to tell
you that we too (mastering engineers) dream of getting pieces of
gear we really can’t
afford. In the twenty plus years I’ve been doing this,
these “dreams” never
end they just change in shape and cost.Over
the past few weeks I’ve had the privilege to use the Weiss
EQ1 equalizer with both the LP linear phase option and the Dynamic
chips set option. (I say privilege because once you have worked
with such a quality made, over the top engineered digital processor,
you can really see how ones job can be made easier using such tools,
please read on). The EQ1-MK2 unit can operate in either LP
or DYN mode by swapping firmware chips (unfortunately you
can’t
do both at the same time). In either mode, it can also function
as a straight eq with all the wonderful phase shift that goes along,
which can be very useful in and of itself depending on what processing
a track may need.Besides
the availability of having two very different and extremely powerful
equalizers, when you include its ability to do M/S (mid/side) encoding/decoding,
the unit becomes that much more powerful. Add to this the fact
that the unit up samples at twice the rate (44.1 to 88.2 and 48k
to 96k respectively) to do it’s calculations, it operates at
40 bit floating internally; and automatically dithers down to the
desired output resolution (16, 20 or 24 bit). It’s one
of the most powerful, versatile equalizer on the planet. Daniel Weiss
also informed me “that
the latest versions of the dynamic and linear phase EQ1 have the
POW-R dither included (at no extra cost, free upgrade)”. Some
may ask why bother to do this? I would say “just listen”
and the reason becomes very clear. Never before have
I experienced such purity of tone. What you put in sounds exactly
like what you get out (if no processing is done). Even when
processing heavily, the program material still sounds like the original. This
is not always the case with most digital processors (or analog for
that matter).
In fact, I would go out on a limb to say that up until now I
have never heard a digital processor work with out altering the
sound of the material being processed. Until I heard this unit
I would never even think about making such a claim but I will stand
behind it.
Now lets get to the goods.With
the linear phase option installed, the unit does exactly what the
name implies. You can EQ without any phase shift to the adjacent
frequencies.
No time smearing of the outer bands. This is very hard
to explain but once you hear it you can see just how much phase
shift affects standard equalizers. It has the ability to clear
up a dense mix.
If you have overlapping frequencies creating the ‘masking
effect’ it allows you to carve out the offending frequencies
and bring a clarity back in the mix quite unlike any other EQ I’ve
heard before. It allows the instruments to retain their original
tone even though you are equalizing them. Amazing!This
stereo unit has seven bands per channel with individually configurable
low cut, high cut, low shelf, high shelf or peaking filters for each
band. The Q (bandwidth) of this unit covering an amazingly
wide range, “from a near whole bandwidth-covering 0.20 to a
needle-like 650 in 128 steps, allowing everything from subtle coloring
to notch filter tone removal.”[1] You can notch down
to -39db or boost up to +18db. One of the coolest feature has
to be the touch sensitive knobs. As you grab each individual
knob the CFL LC display changes to the particular parameter you are
working on. This is
one of the most useful displays I’ve had the pleasure to work
with. Just about all pertinent information is available on
the display at all times and the ones that aren’t are just
a touch of a knob away. This is ‘over the top’ Swiss
engineering done at it’s finest. Frankly, I wish every
piece of digital gear had this as it would save considerable time
in having to page through menu’s. “A further new
feature is the setable “shape”
parameter for shelving filters, which has the same resolution and
a similar effect as the Q parameter for the presence filter type”.
You also get 3 x 128 non-volatile snapshots where all parameters
are stored and A-B workspaces for quick comparison between settings.
Of course it comes with a full midi complement for system dumps,
snapshot automation recall, and midi controllers. Plus full dynamic
MIDI automation (i.e. each parameter is controllable through MIDI).
This is especially convenient for those mastering engineers who process
on load out.Once
I installed the dynamic chip set I was in for a whole other treat. I
really didn’t know what to expect. As the name
implies this feature allows you to dynamically control any selected
frequency band. What this means is that you can equalize,
compress and expand all within the same unit and all while visually
watching the same display.
Imagine being able to take a song with a stale lifeless drum
machine, expand the low band to get the kick moving, compress the
bass to keep the level even, de-ess the vocal and EQ the top to
give it some air and it would still leave you three bands per side
to do whatever other processing may be left. It gives you the
ability to correct musical instrument imbalances within a mix with
ease. Unbelievable!
It’s wild to see the compressor work within the selected
frequency range on the display of the unit. Very intuitive
and informative at the same time. The possibilities seem endless.
As a mastering tool it is quite amazing, never before have there
been such a powerful processor available to recording and mastering
engineers. This is a serious digital tool only, there are no onboard
converters and the only digital access is on AES3 connectors.The
bands for the dynamic chip set are set up a little different. Of
the seven bands, bands 1,2, 5 &6 are the freely adjustable bands
(they also can be linear bands if necessary) and bands 3, 4 and
7 are ordinary linear bands. Daniel Weiss did this for a very
specific reason: because gain reduction may affect the overall
sound of the individual band that these linear bands in between
can then be used as a corrective type EQ if necessary. As
the name implies, a dynamic band is sensitive to the level of the
input signal. Sometimes
it is desirable to first add some EQ, and afterwards dynamically
add some more. Or
vice versa - first do some dynamic corrections and afterwards add
overall EQ. Because the EQ bands are connected in series,
this is the only possible if there are linear bands before and after
the dynamic bands.I
must say I was truly sad to see this unit leave my facility and missed
it quite a bit once it had gone. I was quite bummed and thought I
would have to go back to day dreaming about owning a unit like this.
Then Fed-Ex showed up with the Weiss DS1 (de-esser/compressor) unit...but
that’s another article in and of itself! Stay tuned.
Larry DeVivo (www.silvertonemastering.com)
2001
TapeOp magazine You may have all heard the Chinese proverb ”may you live in interesting times”. In the world of audio this seems to be the mantra all of us engineer/ musicians live by. One of the more interesting signal processors to come along has to be the HEDD 192 from Crane Song LTD. HEDD stands for Harmonically Enhanced Digital Device and is quite unlike any other processor on the market that I know of. As its name implies, the HEDD 192 allows you to bring out the inner harmonic detail of the musical content associated with analog tubes/ tape that we all love and miss in this cold world of zeros and ones. Unlike analog tape, there is no wow and flutter, noise and alignment problem. To quote the manual “Hedd is engineered to provide musically pleasing sound with the capability of generating tube/analog sounds in the digital domain”. “Musically pleasing” are the key words with the HEDD processor as this unit puts a smile on my face every time I use it. I like tools that make my job easier and the HEDD definitely delivers.I first heard the HEDD several years ago on the AES floor in New York. Now I don’t know how many of you have ever been to AES but trying to audition a piece of gear on the convention floor is ambiguous at best. However the HEDD stood out even in light of the deafening noise floor. Owner/ designer David Hill just dialed in a few qu |
