Articles By owner Larry DeVivo

TapeOp 2008 - Paul Orfino & Millbrook Sound Studios
TapeOp 2007 - eSession: Interview with Gina Fant-Saez
TapeOp 2007 - Weiss DNA1 Review
Sonic Studio PreMaster CD
TapeOp 2006 - Dangerous Monitor (pdf file)
TapeOp 2006 - Dangerous Master
TapeOp 2005 - History of Electrodyne
TapeOp 2005 - Bob Irwin Interview
TapeOp 2003 - Malcolm Burn Interview
TapeOp 2003 - Tony Levin, Jerry Marotta Interview
TapeOp 2002 - Weiss EQ1-MK2 Review
TapeOp 2001 - Crane Song HEDD 192 Review
TapeOp 2001 - Z Systems z-Q2 Review
TapeOp 2001 - Requisite L2M Review
Weiss Advertisement featuring Silvertone Mastering

Silvertone Mastering Press

Capital News 9 Interview
Schenectady Daily Gazette - January 20, 2008
Metroland - November 2004
Audio Media - Sept 1999
MIX magazine - March 1999
November 1996
National Release

TapeOp Nov/Dec 2008
BarFunGul : Paul Orofino & Millbrook Sound Studio

I've know Paul Orofino for over a dozen years now. I first met him when I moved back to NY State and a friend of mine was doing a project at his Millbrook Sound Studio. I didn't realize at that time, the scope of albums he had worked on but I could hear he really knew what he was doing by the drum sounds he was getting. Not to mention his room was filled with every piece of gear that you would ever want to work with. A truly diverse and skilled engineer, his work can be heard on albums ranging from blues to metal. Bands like Cradle of Filth, Bleeding Through and Immolations have sought his abilities to get heavy hitting hardcore sounds down. Blues and jazz icons like Ahmad Jamal, Big Bill Morganfield and John Hammond seek his ability to get sweet, searing, soulful sounds. While long term clients like Blue Oyster Cult and Golden Earring have become friends over the years. On top of his engineering & production skills Orofino is also a savvy businessman. Millbrook Sound Studios is celebrating it's 20th year in business this year. While studio after studio in the area close, artists, engineers and producers flock back to Millbrook for the comfortable, creative atmosphere that Paul has created.

When I contacted Paulie (that's what we Italians like to call him) about doing an interview for Tape-Op he said "great, why don't you come down to one of the BCFM meetings?" Knowing most of the industry associations and organizations, I was curious as to what this BCFM acronym stood for and what it had to do with the music business. "It's an impromptu meeting of musicians, engineers, producers, equipment manufactures and the like. You know some of these guys like Eddie Kramer, Gary Burke, Paul Antonel, Joe Bouchard, Geoff Daking, whoever can make it. I email out, to a list, of like a hundred people and whoever can make it, comes and brings a dish." A dish? "Yeah we drink, eat, drink, eat, drink, drink, drink, pass out. I supply the beer and everybody who shows up brings something to eat. I call it the Beer Club For Men."

All right! Beer, food and geek talk, this was stacking up to be the best interview ever!

You would never guess such a hi tech Shangri-La hides behind the walls at Millbrook Sound Studios from the outside, or the inside for that matter (read on). Housed in a very nondescript blue barn (located right across from Alfred Hitchcocks sprawling estate) is the multi studio complex owned by Orofino. Upon entering Millbrook Sound Studios you realize it is quite unlike any other dedicated studio you've seen. I mean, you don't even realize you're inside a studio as the first thing you are greeted with is BarFunGul, Paul's own private bar which is stocked with pretty much every beer made on the planet. Complete with Jeff Daking schematic laminated bar top (a first if ever I've seen one). Most musicians will feel right at home. And indeed it has served the studio well for a number of years now.

What inspired BarFunGul?

"That was easy. At the time I was recording a lot of bands from Europe and at the end of their sessions back home (in Europe) bands would typically go out for a pint. So they were always looking for a place to drink. This town, Millbrook , nothings open past like ten at night. So the bands would have to drive over to Poughkeepsie (NY) to find a bar and then they'd end up getting arrested for drunk driving on their way back to the studio. They'd be driving on the wrong side of the road and shit, being from Europe, England or wherever. I got tired of having to call the record company and explain to them that I needed ten grand more so I could bail their band out jail. So I built the bar, so the bands would have a safe place to drink. I think it was inevitable, my first studio was called the Brewery. (laughs) But some guys see this and they get the wrong impression. They walk in here and think, great were gonna drink all day and record and I have have to tell them that the bar is only open at the end of the day. Once we've wrapped up the session for the day, everybody is welcome to drink. It's also quite an incentive to get work done."

So how did you come up with the name for the bar?

"About 6 months after I started the bar, I had the first gathering of what would become the Beer Club For Men. So these industry professionals could get together have fun, relax and talk. It happens about every 3 months usually on the first Monday night. My friend Eddie Kramer was living up here at the time. We had our first gathering and were looking for a name for the bar and Eddie came up with it. He said, "I know, BarFunGul, and we knew, it fit perfect and that name stuck ever since. Eddie's also one of the founding members of the Beer Club For Men. It's hysterical to see these guys, cause these guys will bring everything. Anthony Dimaria would bring salmon and cook it up. Eddie would bring a casserole during the winter months and he makes a hell of a casserole. To just hear these guys talking about cooking and how they made this and that. It's just nuts."

Sure enough, these BCFM are a blast. Though I could barely get up the next morning to do the interview. There were about 45 people there ranging from Joe Bouchard, the original bass player for Blue Oyster Cult to Anthony DeMaria from ADL. Anthony and I got into a two hour conversation regarding tubes, transformers (iron I should say, or the purity of iron) and his new remake of the venerable Fairchild 670 compressor. It was great and I'm looking forward to the next one.

What did we have on tap last night?

"Aventinus Eisbock, a German bock beer; 14% alcohol. The middle tap was La Chouffe, a Belgian golden ale; 8% and right tap was Scaldis, Belgian Ale. That one is 12% alcohol. No Miller, Bud, Coors or any of that other regular crap here. And you can quote me on that. You were mainly drinking the Aventinus." I thought to myself, well now that explains everything.

You got started in the business as a musician, right? A guitarist?

"Yes, classical. I was a classically trained guitar player. Really kind of the usual way. We had gotten a small record deal and went into this studio (Quadraphonic) with my band in the early 70's and every time I asked the engineer for something he said, you don't want that or you can't do that. So I'd reach over and do it myself and I figured if I had to do it myself, I'd build my own place. Then I wouldn't have to hear how it couldn't be done. So I built my own place to get what we wanted. The Brewery in Queens."

How did the whole Kiss connection happen?

"I had a good friend that was drummer in a cover band in the Queens area and one of my other buddies heard Kiss was going to be looking for a drummer. My friend played double bass drums and one of the requirements to try out was you had to be able to play double bass. That and you had to be an unknown. So we called Kiss management, Bill Aucoin. He said you had to learn these 3 specific Kiss songs. You had to send a cassette of the drummer playing two of these songs with Kiss on the right channel and the drums on the left. With the 3rd song you had to also sing the song "Beth" on it cause the drummer sang that song live. I think Peter Chris wrote that song for his wife Beth. So we did that and my friend Paul Caravello passed that audition. So the next audition was to go play with the band in the city and after that it was narrowed down to a few guys. Next they had to do a drum solo on cassette and also be able to play that live for them. So Paul practiced in my studio everyday for a week. We recorded that and he went in to play it for them. They gave him an address to go to and he thought he was going to a studio but it wasn't a studio, it was a tailor. He found out that he got the gig when the tailor said he would be fitted for 5 suits and the costume. They gave him the stage name Eric Carr. I guess his way of repaying me for the studio was that I got to do all the demos for the album "Lick it Up". I might have gotten the album but I only had 16 tracks at that time. Also since we were best friends, when he'd get off the road, he'd have his drums shipped here and set them up. He'd play them all the time. He ended up giving me all his drum sets. 4 bass drums to some of the kits, some of that just for show. Thirty six inch deep kick drums, you could never record with them."

You sold them all?

"Yeah, the last kit went last year to a kid in a Kiss tribute band." He must have loved that. "He went nuts, to actually own one of original kits that was used on their tours, he lit right up."

Do you think this is why you became known for your work with metal & hardcore bands?

"That and the whole Golden Earring recording (Millbrook USA). When I did that, suddenly I had all these Dutch bands and people contacting me wanting to come to Millbrook to record". I'm known for getting drum and guitar sounds. So I get all these hard core and death metal bands all the time. On the same hand, I do a lot of jazz and blues acts. Ahmad Jamal loved it in here. He felt right at home. I think that's why people come here, people really like the feel."

In capturing these great guitar sounds you pioneered a few unique and unusual techniques along the way. Can you elaborate on some of these, like your in the control room guitar amp head / studio cab / combo / and multi-mic set up?

"It's a shelf. (laughs) I designed it 'cause when working here I like to be efficient. So if I have a blues band coming in, I'll take the metal heads out and put up all the blues heads. These are hooked up to 4 different cabinets in the live room with different microphones on them. It's all wired to a patch bay that I can switch any amp head to any bottom. It's really about efficiency and making it easier to keep the flow going during the session. This is really for the overdub process as I still like to cut the rhythm section together if I can. But some guitarist just like to cut all their parts in the control room anyway. Whatever way they want to do it."

Are you the first to do this? I think you are the first to be published on it.

"I don't know. My friend Steve (LaCerra) wanted to do this article and I said come on, it's just a shelf with some heads on it. (laughs) So then it came out. The blues guys really love how fast we can change things around and never loose the vibe. It's all about the vibe. The vibe and the emotional content of the song itself. That's what I feel is lacking in a lot of music now. You know, I have the Stones original 8 track (one inch) of 'Sticky Fingers' right? When I first put on 'Brown Sugar' and pushed up the fader and here's the drums, in mono, coming at me and there's all this feeling and emotion and the song is just there in the beat. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Here we are recording all these multiple drum channels, 10, 12, 16, whatever, and he (Charlie Watts) has us all beat with a mono drum track."

Is that part of the reason why you started your own label?

"Yeah, in fact this is the first artist that will be on the Retrophile label that we're listening to. I came up with this idea of using a bit of the old, that's the retro and I've always been a bit of an audiophile and I wanted that reflected in the music hence the Retrophile. So the idea is my response to people not making decisions anymore, recording drums on 48 tracks and 16 tracks of guitar and all that shit . Never committing to anything until the mix. So my Idea is to captupe the bands and artist using the recording techinques of the past, the old concepts. Minimal mic's, vintage usually, those and the pre-amps and capturing it to the most accurate of modern formats - The Genex 9000 series DSD recorder. Now when I say old concepts I mean vintage, like 3 or 4 mics on the drums recorded to stereo. If we do over dub, having several parts playing at the same time, things like that. Working out the parts ahead of time. A lot of my favorite records as a teenager were recorded on 4 or 8 track machines so my Genex is outfitted with 8 tracks. The bands that record on the label are recorded only to 8 tracks. Finding bands with that mindset, that it's okay to record only to minimal tracks, they have to be into this vibe of cutting only to 8 track. 'Brown Sugar', 'Wild Horses' being in mono blew me away. The orignal 8 tracks and the drums were mono. Having that tape, playing it back made me decide that's what I was going to do with this label. Pre-production is now important again. It's key. I'm looking at not only having the vinatge recording quality but the vintage emotion - what connected you in the past. The feeling of the record. The cost would be minmal because of only having 8 tracks to deal with. I also a firm believer that location is very important to creating vibe, so I needed to make the system portable. So that's why I went with the Genex DSD. That and I need that for my own creativity, to get out of the studio. That's also why I bought the Evil Twin and this (shows me) one of the last Valvotronic tube DI's, for direct recording on location. The location is so important to caputuring the performance."

So are you happy with this Genex?

"Yeah this one is great and there are plans for editing software for this system and it should be ready within the month. The reason I actually purchased this one is that I was blown away by the sonics of my first one, the 8500. They had to redesign the architecture so that's what became the 9000, this one does everything that they promised with the 8500. They pissed off a few people with the 8500 because of that change, the old architecture wouldn't work for the new machine but I loved the sound so much I stuck with them."

How did the first Daking console come about? You financed that first board?

"I had a few of his pre-amps like everyone else. And I like to be different. Everyone had Neves and API's and I didn't want to have what everybody else had. At the time Geoff and I had been friends cause he lived up here. So I said, 'Geoff what would it take to make a console?' We talked about it at length. So I took a loan and the first thing we bought was the computer and software just to design the thing. We needed a way to design this thing and these programs were brand new, we had to figure them out. It took seven years from the time we started. The first board was so big I couldn't even reach the assignment buttons. We were showing it at AES and Ray Benson comes over and you know how big he is and says, "man, I can hardly reach these buttons!" I said to Geoff, 'I think we need to go back to the drawing board.' If Ray Benson had trouble reaching the knobs I knew we were out. It went through many revisions. We took our time and wanted to get it right. That's what's in my B room."

Speaking of AES, at last years show I ran into you with Mark Bingham from Piety Street Studios. Talking with the two of you, I learned that you had Marks family staying with you after hurricane Katrina. So you opened your studio up to the Piety Street crew?

"Let me go back about a year before I was in New Orleans last June at the TapeOpCon. I just love the whole music scene down there. Around here no bands are recording in the winter time. The record companies shut down and it doesn't pick back up till spring cause the big wigs are off in the Bahamas or the South of France. So my logic was to go to New Orleans for the winter months. I was going to buy a condo. I'm not independently wealthy. I need to work, so while down there I called around to all the studios. Ultrasonic, Piety Street , Trina Shoemakers place, but the only people that got back to me was Mark Bingham from Piety Street. It seemed like we were cut from the same cloth, how he felt about the industry down there and everything. So great, I go back home and go down a few months later and find a little condo on St. Charles Ave I'm going to buy. So I work out the details and I go back again this time for Tape-Op in June. Mark Bingham is having a party for Tape-Op the night before the start of it and I finally get to meet Mark in person. And he's great. We hit it off like I knew we would. Till then I'd only talked to him a couple times. His room was great, real funky, much like mine. So all the pieces are falling into place. I come back to NY again, get the mortgage all set - I'm ready to send the money down, then Katrina hit."

"A few days later I get a call from Paul Antonel from the Clubhouse [Studios]. Marks studio's down, he has no power and he needs a place to record. Mark & Shawn are on their way up to New York and they have no place to go. I told him, 'you tell Mark I have a second studio available here and a house attached and the place is theirs for as long as they need it.' They had already left New Orleans and only Paul had their mobile numbers. So sure enough an hour later an SUV with trailer attached pulls up and out jumps everybody, including the family dog. It was great. They lived here for about 6 or 7 weeks in the band house while doing sessions in studio B and a bunch of other studios in the city. The whole irony is here I am spending a year researching moving down there for the winter months and working out of Piety and just the opposite happens. I assume Mark & I will be friends for life now. He's also a great cook."
Larry DeVivo (for the full article visit www.silvertonemastering.com)
www.millbrooksoundstudios.com
www.barfungul.com

#1 LD: Any special tricks you use to get a good vocal performance?
PO: When we set out to record vocals for the new Cradle of Filth record (Thornography)with Dani Filth, I set up a few different mics...
Producer Rob Caggiano and I finally settled on an old 70's U-87 and the original version of Gefell's UM70s. Each mic had a certain something that we would use for different parts of each song. One was better for loud screaming passages while the other excelled in the sung or spoken parts. The mics were wired to a Universal Audio 2108 mic pre to a Distressor and the other to a Daking 52270 pre into a Daking 91579 limiter.
Now when we actually started recording, we noticed that the performances were lacking and Dani seemed uncomfortable singing into the vocal mic.
So we gave Dani a Shure Sm-58 to hold in his hand (not connected to anything) and sing into while he
was actually being recorded by either of the other two condensor mics!
And that's all it took to get the performances we needed.
Sometimes it's as simple as that.

#2) LD: What was your set up for getting that in your face clipping low end bass sound on that record (Thornography)?
PO: While recording bass for any of the Heavy Metal, Hardcore bands we do here, this is pretty much a standard set up. I usually record the bass with a tube DI....(Demeter, ADL, Valvotronics, or Evil Twin) and then into a amplifier. The bass amp is usually one of my old Ampeg SVTs with one 8 x 10 cabinet. Depending on the sound I'm after I mic the cabinet (only one of the 10 inch speakers) with either a Beyer TGX 50, Sennheiser 421, Neumann Fet47, or a Soundelux U95.
Using only one mic.
I place that mic pretty close to the speaker, then placed just behind that same speaker I use the Yamaha subkick. Now at this point I am printing the DI, the Mic, and the Subkick all to seperate tracks.
If the bass part has a lot of percussion (slaps etc) I will then tape a Countryman Lavalier mic to the body of the bass guitar to get all the slaps and resonance off the bass body and print that also to a seperate track so that can be blended in later in the mix.
(As to where this mic is placed, you just have to listen and find the sweet spot with the best sound)
Then during mixdown I usually take the DI track from the recorder, send that out to the Re Amp box into a Sans Amp Bass Driver which I use to get some grit and high end attack depending on what is required to get the bass to speak for that song.

#3) LD: And the drums?
PO: Recording drums for the heavy, hardcore bands, I'm probably doing the complete opposite then most of the guys out there?
I actually record with the least amount of mics that can be used.
Kick, & Subkick         (Audix D-6 / Subkick)
Snare Top                (Audix D-3 top, bottom sometimes with an Audix D-1)
Hats                        (Beyer 160)
Toms                       (Shure SM-98's only the top is mic'ed)
Overhead                 (Royer SF-12)
Room                       (Royer SF-12)
Ocassionally there will be a ride cymbal mic and that would either be an AKG 414 or
Neumann KM-84.
Almost every heavy record that was cut here in the last 8 years has been through the
TLA VTC console with NO EQ used during tracking.

And if it's not really fast up tempo material that the band is cutting, I will sometimes mic the kick drum as normal. With a mic inside the drum, and then I will place one of my very old large kick drums (32 or 36 inch) in front of the normal kick and mic that with the subkick for some unbelievable added
low end that just isn't there using the Subkick itself on the regular bass drum.
Great for slow grooves.

#4) LD: Can you elaborate on the amp wall?
PO: My amp wall....
Ok, here's the deal, it's no big thing really, but it does simplify the guitar overdub process greatly.
Basically I built a wall (shelf) in the back of my control room that houses 10 amplifier heads.
Under this wall of amps is a patchbay that allows me to wire up 4 seperate speaker cabinets to whatever amp heads I like, and switch between them in a few seconds.
Now while doing guitar overdubs I will have 4 different cabinets wired up, possibly in different rooms in my studio.
For example one 4 x 12 in the live room with another 2 x 12 next to it, maybe one cabinet with a single 12 in the dead booth, and yet another 4 x 12 cabinet in the live booth. Or any combination you might want.
Of course all these cabinets will be mic'ed and ready to go.
Now, depending on what band is here, and the style of music they play, I will place the amplifiers best suited for that style of music in the slots in the amp wall so that the proper amps are ready for that days overdubs.
(and the bands can choose from over 47 amplifiers we have here in stock or bring their own!)

#5) LD: Any unique trick of late that stand out in your mind?
PO: On a recent record I wanted the sound of a Hammond Organ in the chorus but didn't want to use the actual organ because there wasn't a keyboard player in the band.
So I cut the track, and as an overdub I had the guitarist play big open chords on an Acoustic guitar similar to what a Hammond player might play in the chorus section. I doubled the acoustic track.
I then took those tracks and reamped them on at a time into the studios Leslie cabinet just recording the top rotor each pass and there was our Hammond sound with a larger then life spread on the Leslie.
Sounds great!

#6) LD: The Ahmad Jamal session you did here really stands out in my mind. What was that like and how did it come about?

PO: Ahmad recorded here previously one time before I engineered a record with him.
At that time he used another engineer, and together they produced a beautiful sounding record.
Some time passed and I got a phone call from Ahmad about cutting a new record, and he was wondering if I'd be into doing it?
He had some reservations about the vibe of that earlier record, not really sounding like his trio.
He thought it was too clean, and sterile sounding.
So he asked me if I would be interested in recording his new record, and if I had a grasp on how to capture his bands vibe and spontaneous energy in the studio.
What could I say...
I remembered what the set up was for the previous record and thought that I would go for a simpler set up allowing for better sight lines and communication for the musicians.
During that first record the enginner wanted to isolate everyone as much as possible, which ment Ahamd and his Steinway Grand in the main room with Idris Muhammad (Drums) in the larger of the studios two booths and James Cammack (Upright bass) in the smaller booth.

But I was going to do things differently and try to address Ahmads concerns with the last record.
That being said,
I positioned the piano in the center of the room and had James with his bass stand slightly back behind Ahmads left hand in the doorway of the booth, but not actually in the booth. Obviously leaving the door of that booth wide open.
I then set Idris' drums up at a 90 degree angle to the piano with his kick drum just a foot away from Ahmads left hand. Leaving the door open in James booth helped to block some of the drum leakage into the bass mic.
And the window in the door allowed James to see Idris behind the drums at all times.
According to Idris this is key to him and James locking up with Ahmads piano!
So now both James and Idris could watch what Ahmad was doing with his left hand and see each other with no problems.

In the previous recording the engineer mic'ed up everything seperately.
For example:
Kick beater, kick front, snare top, snare bottom, 4 toms, over left, over right, hats, and room.
Bass neck, bass "F" hole, bass stereo, bass direct,
Piano stereo, Piano stereo room, Piano stereo close, Piano Stereo far....

For me...well I had another approach....
Drums:        Kick - AKG D-30, Snare - Neumann KM84, Overheads - Royer SF-12
Bass:          Fet 47 mic the middle of the body, and a DI just in case of an emergency
Piano:         1 Royer SF-12 stereo mic
Room:         Coles 4038 pair

The band rehearsed for a few hours, went to dinner came back and cut the entire record in a few hours.
DONE!
There was just the right amount of leakage in the room to give the recording the live sound that Ahmad wanted and the fact everyone could see each other gave them the comfort they needed to perform as they do live.
I gotta tell ya it was a blast to watch as they cut each track.
I was totally in awe of these guys.

Tape Op Nov/Dec 2007
eSession: Interview with Gina Fant-Saez

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 did you get started in the music business?

I have been writing music and playing guitar and piano since I was 11. I was in college at Texas State University in the early 80’s and I read in the school paper that a recording studio was moving into the old firestation, appropriately named The FireStation. I went to the studio opening party and convinced the studio manager that I would wrap cables, make coffee, duplicate cassettes, etc... so I got the job. They paid me an hour of studio time a week. The studio had one of the first Sony Digital Tape Machines – the 3324. It also had a Harrison console that came out of Warner Brothers and they had the 7 foot white grand that Jackson Browne and the Eagles recorded with in the 70’s  - (the piano that Desperado was recorded on). So I spent two years there, asking lots of questions, wrapping lots of cables, falling asleep on the couch, making lots of coffee and getting to help on albums for Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Eric Johnson, Joe Ely etc. I decided to move to NYC, finish school at NYU and start working in NYC studios to learn more. My first NYC internship was at Mike Miniere’s Centerfield Productions - where I helped recording jingles during the day and helped with Mike’s band Steps Ahead in the evenings.

What would you consider the turning point in your career, when you felt that level of success?

Success in the music industry is very inconsistent. There have been invaluable moments in my career when I am working with someone whose work I respect such as Shawn Colvin or Sting or someone like that – but just when you think you have a firm foot in the industry, you can be struggling the next month for a client. I’ve come to appreciate these moments for what they are and not expect them to be turning points. I think I feel that I am contributing the most when I put together Pro Tools systems for talented people and then teach them how to use it. I put together a portable Pro Tools rig for Mike Barbiero in 2000 and had the honor of teaching him how to use it while engineering a record he was producing and mixing. I just updated him to a Pro Toosl HD system in the basement of his home outside NYC last month. He’s become a dear friend and invaluable mentor. There are a handful of producers, engineers and songwriters I have done this for and to see their careers thrive because of my help, that feels like success to me. But, sincerely, I’m still working towards that moment where I feel I have reached that consistent level of success. I am hoping eSession becomes that turning point for me.    

So you owned a traditional studio, SSL and the whole nine yards? Blue World Music in Austin, TX correct?  So even back then you were thinking on a global basis?

I started Blue World in 1991 in Blauvelt, NY – outside of New York City. (Blauvelt is German for Blue World). I eventually ended up moving my studio into Greenwich Village and then to Chelsea. I moved Blue World to Austin in 1996 and opened in 1997. I wasn’t thinking global at all. I was thinking quality of life at the time.  Moving my studio to Austin was a very frustrating experience. I had a 48 i/o Pro Tools system and a 96 input SSL and I put this into a very 2” analog, retro studio town. It was not the wisest decision of my life, but I wanted to live in Austin and I thought I could convince everyone that this was the future. It was a few very lean years of being scoffed at by a lot people – I finally started giving away studio time to train the local producers and engineers which eventually paid off - it finally caught on and now all the retro studios have Pro Tools, many of which I set-up and trained them how to use.    

How is your studio different today?

Way different. In August of 2004, I sold my SSL, sold my 2” Analog Studer, sold all my outboard delays and multi effects except for my 480L and my AMS Reverb. I also obviously kept all outboard EQ’s Mic Pre’s, and compressors and I kept my Studer 1/2”. I just saw the way I was working. I rarely used the automation on the SSL. I would set the faders at unity and though I was using the console’s EQ and compression on some tracks, I used mostly plug-ins and Pro Tools automation for everything else. In a sense, my SSL was a big expensive summing mixer. Then bookings started thinning as the industry changed and I clearly saw that the future was not commercial studios but higher end personal studios. So, that was when I started creating the plan for eSession. I sold a lot of my gear (at the right time) to do it. I really love the new minimalist approach studio I have now. I think of my studio as the commercial studio of the future.

How do you feel the Dangerous summing boxes hold up against the old SSL?

I could not be happier with it. I tried the API summing system first and though it sounded great, each channel had an additional, un-notched volume knob and I thought I would be recalling mixes all over again. I wanted a system where I could go from song to song without worrying about external volume knobs. So, I tried the Dangerous and fell in love with it. I have the Dangerous Monitor, MQ, Mixer (for my 480L, AMS returns, my Mac output and my Korg Triton) and I have two Dangerous 2-buses. I have a 16 input, 32 output Pro Tools HD 3 accel system. I normalled all my mic pre’s to the inputs and normalled all EQ’s and compressors to the last 16 outputs. I have an Alan Smart C2 Compressor on the 2-mix and the main digital out goes to the Rosetta and then back into Pro Tools. I invited a few prominent producuer/engineer clients (to) come try a mix on the Dangerous before the SSL left and compare the two. In every test, the Dangerous beat out the SSL.
   
So what was the inspiration behind eSession?

I saw the industry changing. Budgets were smaller,  digital audio was finally embraced by the recording industry, the internet and ftp was making my Fed ex bill smaller while giving me a larger, world-wide client base without travel expenses.  Then I saw many of my musician friends struggling and I thought, why? These people are so talented and capable. Since the big budget albums disappeared, the only way they made a living was by touring. I was thinking that there must be a way to utilize all these talented individuals. They all had home studios that were only used for their own pet projects - not as a means to generate a consistent income. I started wondering, what if the internet allowed people to hire them? What if through a web site, they could start making use of their home studios –and this could allow them to stay at home with their families rather than tour? What if this website could handle the hiring, negotiating, financial transactions and file transfers? What if clients could work with legendary musicians without all the previous travel expenses and hotel and studio costs required to do so in the past? I called my friend and brilliant producer/engineer Kevin Killen and ran the idea past him. He was incredibly supportive and encouraging of the idea and so I started putting together a team to make it happen while selling most of my studio to start financing it.   

How do you think it will succeed where Rocket Network failed?

The Rocket network was a propriety technology built into Cubase, Logic and very briefly, Pro Tools. You could only work with the same software you were using. So if I wanted to work with someone using Logic, I had to be using Logic. I had to have the same plug-ins as well. Same thing for Pro Tools and Cubase. Rocket’s business model was built on how much bandwidth someone used. Do you really want to keep track everytime you log onto the internet, how much bandwidth you’ve used? It a was a brilliant technology built on an impossible business model. If I found someone to collaborate with and sent them a song, I paid to upload it, my collaborator paid to download it, then I paid to download whatever tracks my collaborator added – regardless whether I liked them or not. eSession’s business model is based on hiring talent. We take a commission of what one of our talent members charges their clients. We’re not just providing the means to collaborate as Rocket did, but we’re giving people a reason to collaborate. I was doing Beta for Rocket and I kept telling them, you have to combine the talent with the technology. You can’t give someone a telephone and then not give them a number to call or a directory where to find numbers. Through my experience with Rocket, I realized that collaboration is 50% how you do it and 50% who you work with. With eSession we’re addressing both of these issues.  

How is it similar?  

Sincerely, the only similarity in eSession and Rocket is the fact that you need an internet connection to make it work. While Rocket was limited by software to software – eSession is internet based and is built to allow anyone, regardless of software, hardware or computer platform to collaborate with anyone else. We’re asking people to post their work in Stems – to save download time and compensate for differences with software & plug-ins. Though clients can drag entire Pro Tools sessions if everyone is using Pro Tools – they can also upload stems of their tracks – So - if the bass player they hired uses Nuendo, the musicians would simply download and import these stems into Nuendo,  set the correct meter and tempo and play his/her parts. Then consolidate their tracks from Bar 1 and upload to the client. We also have a real-time plug-in we’re creating for real-time sessions which will simulate a real studio session where the artist and musician are separated by the glass partition. This plug-in serves as the glass partition. We also have a custom chart application we’re created called an eChart.

How many musicians are on the roster now?   

We have 377 musicians today and growing...  I asked Tony Levin what he thought about eSession. He told me "As for eSession, I'm not up to date on what they've done, but will be happy to pipe in with what little I know. (Hey, tonight I am doing tracks for two different people in different parts of the country, from here at home ... eSession is certainly hitting the recording industry at the right time!)" He also said he really liked the extra time he could take to try different parts without the pressure of the studio clock ticking. We call Tony the poster boy of eSession. He has been very generous with his time and letting us use him as an example. Tony is one of many musicians who are already making a portion of their living using the internet. eSession will allow these people already working this way to now have a world-wide client base, eSession will handle all financial negotiations and transactions, talent is paid 50% before a project and 50% afterwards, immediately – so no more waiting 90 days for a check. eSession will also allow musicians like Tony to do income reports for accountants and keep all their work on one secure server accessible and backed-up 24/7.  I would think that eSession would be an invaluable resource for todays computer savvy producer. I’m betting the SSL on it. I think it might be a slow start because we’re asking many people to change their working paradigms and try something new. Like Ebay, it took a while to catch on but eventually the buyer and seller found a valuable service and it is now the standard for internet auctions. We’re hoping to establish the same standard and valuable service for clients and talent.  

I know Kevin Killen worked out of your Blue World Music studio, how did he get involved with eSession?

Back in 98 when I was pursuing an artist career, I sent my music to Kevin because I loved every album he had mixed and produced. Surprisingly, he called me back and came down to Austin on spec to work on my music. Then he personally took my music to a few labels. It was an act of generosity that I will never forget. Kevin and I stayed in touch over the years and he was the first one I called when I had this idea. At first, he was just someone I bounced ideas off of, then he came back down to Austin to work on another project of mine in April of 05’. During this time, I showed him what I had started on eSession and I asked him if he would like to partner with me. In June of 05’ he agreed. His experience, intelligence, and wisdom are a huge part of eSession. This site has become so much more because of his input and ideas. We call him the “eSession voice of reason”. He has been instrumental in every graphic, every form, every page. I am incredibly grateful to be working with him again.  

What is your criteria for being an artist, engineer, or producer on eSession?

This first version of eSession.com is built with the professional music community in mind. We require each talent member to have 15 major label credits to be part of this database. We verify everything with AllMusic.com and ArtistsDirect.com We’re currently developing eSessionIndie.com – which will require 5 Indie label credits. We’re also developing eSessionWriters.com – a site for established writers and composers. Then we will probably be releasing eSessionLite.com for the masses...      I know you can't really allow just any caliber of musician or engineer be on eSession. But do you feel that you may be excluding some great talent in that, say (a so called) new artist such as Death Cab For Cutie, who sold 750,000 albums on their own label would be excluded because they didn't meet the major label criteria? Are there exceptions to the rule? We’re doing eSessionIndie for this demographic. I don’t believe that label credits define the measure of anyone’s talent but we needed some way to regulate the talent membership and to ensure that the eSession.com database was comprised of professionals only. We do make certain exceptions if someone has more post production credits than label credits or they have 10 major credits and 5 Indies with major distribution. We simply want this initial version of eSession to have talent members that will draw the clientele and we feel that their discographies will have the most influence on potential clients.

www.esession.com

Larry DeVivo, www.silvertonemastering.com

TapeOp Nov/Dec 2007
Weiss DNA1

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:
DNA1     Two channel Denoiser/Declicker/Ambience Processor     8975
DNA1-N  Two channel Denoiser/Ambience Processor                   7400
DNA1-C  Two channel Declicker/Ambience Processor                   7400
DNA1-K  Two channel Ambience Processor (K-Stereo, M/S)         5650

Larry DeVivo - www.silvertonemastering.com
Weiss Engineering - www.weiss.ch

TapeOp 2006
Dangerous Master

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)
www.dangerousmusic.com

TapeOp 2005
Bob Irwin / Sundazed Music Interview

"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.

At that time I was still working my 60-70 hours a week in the record store, and launching Sundazed. We soon had aquired access to a couple of catalogs that really interested me. One was the Challenge Records label which had The Knickerbockers and a lot of real interesting surf and hot rod stuff. Another one was the Abnak label based out of Dallas, with bands like The Five Americans. Abnak is a catalog which we now own. At the time, these catalogs were controlled by nice people - people who were amenable to doing a deal with someone who didn't have a track record in the business yet. It was the equivalent to the guy going to the bank, saying, "Hey, you know, I got this great idea". Our financing came directly from every penny my wife Mary and I had saved. We remortgaging the house, we were willingly cutting back, and these people at these different companies were kind enough and nice enough, that, unlike dealing with a major label at that time, they were willing to do business based upon a conversation and their gut-feeling, rather than examining your financial statement. I wanted them to understand my dedication to do the best job that could be done. And that's what got us started us in business.After the first two or three releases came out we received a full page review in Stereo Review Magazine. And, at that point in time there was no Sony Music - it was still CBS Records. There was a guy named Jon Birge, and his job was within catalog development for CBS. He was the guy that would field consumer letters and look over the catalog and ultimately determine what past titles should be issued on CD. He called me and I went down for a series of meetings. It started off with my suggesting things for reissue, but shortly thereafter, the Legacy division was formed. Fortunately, I was one of the first guys on the block. They hired me as a freelance producer, and I'm still with them to this day. Initially, it was a scary time. I was still working in the record chain, I was still playing in the band at the same time, I had Sundazed started, and now had the Legacy gig. I knew that even though playing music was my first love, I had to sideline it. I remember sitting down with some of my friends and saying, "I don't know what to do. I'm burning the candle at every end possible." My friends said, "Quit your job now, man! You can always get another job."

LD: Good advice.

BI: Good advice, but somewhat unnerving, as Mary and I now had a three month old daughter at home!

LD: Yeah, but that 'sometimes being really hungry' makes you want it and work for it all the more. How is the decision made to release a product on the Sundazed label?

BI: Well the company has always been reflective of my taste, reflective of everything that I loved. Sundazed has never released anything that I haven't felt passionately about. These days, it's certainly an open forum. We have 16 people working at Sundazed, and everyone is welcomed and encouraged to contribute. Naturally, there are some people working here who are much more musically savvy then others and that's fine, it's as it should be. I guess that I still have final say, because, sometimes even though something may initially seem like a it's good idea, there might be a reason why [we shouldn't release it].

LD: That's why I asked about the committee

.BI: We realized early on that Sundazed had to be self contained, in order to be able to do the kind of projects we truly loved. In order to make ends meet with titles that sell ten-thousand copies or less, you can't efficiently do that if you're outsourcing the mastering to an expensive house, or if your having your artwork done by a Fifth Avenue graphics' company. So, we made the investment early on; started doing all our graphics in house, doing all our mixing and mastering in house. And that gives us not only total control over a project, but also allows us the flexibility to be able to put out the kinds of music that we feel passionately about. We're also very fortunate because we have incredible distribution worldwide for Sundazed. And, because we try to always do the best job we can, we are highly regarded and embraced by our distributors and at the all-important consumer level. I always maintained that if we were passionate about something, we could do a better job with it than anyone else. Part of the joy for me is that we work very closely within the record-community and within the network of quality reissue labels. Friends like Rhino's Bill Inglot, Cary Mansfield at Varese Vintage, Rob Santos at BMG, and many others, we're the guys that talk every week. It's not necessarily viewed as competition. Yes, of course we sometimes bump into each other behind a licensor's door, but it's always worked out. On any given week, Bill Inglot and I have tapes going back and forth, records going back and forth. It's a beautiful network and I feel very proud and happy to be within a group of my peers like that.

LD: God, what a nice group of colleagues to be in with. Going back to distribution, is that something that was set up back in your days of managing the record chain?

BI: No, because even though I knew people there, I was also acutely aware of the inherent problems, such as attempting to get paid from an independent distributor, unless you had a consistent flow of monthly new releases. My friend, Dave Hall, the guy that helped me out in the beginning, owned a company called Sky Clad Records and took our first releases under his wing. He distributed my titles through his established distribution network. From there it grew naturally, we eventually went off on our own, and we fine-tuned and fine-tuned. Distribution is something that remains fine-tunable to this day!

LD: I'm sure it changes all the time.

BI: Yeah, you try to always just make it the best you can, the most powerful, the most penetrating. Thankfully, we're in the enviable position where people actively want our catalog. Koch Entertainment is our primary domestic distributor, in Canada it's Sony Music and Fab Distribution, Bear Family distributes us in Germany, Cargo UK and F-Minor carry us in England, Bertus in the Netherlands, Vivid Sound and Reverve in Japan, VEA in Greece, etc., etc.. Fortunately, we're available around the world. And within all of these companies, it's a luxury that we have such knowledgeable salespeople. And although we've been courted by major record labels for major label distribution, and we've had labels offer to buy us, it's still what I love to do. I don't want to give it up, I love what I do!

LD: Nothing worse than retirement in my opinion. What an exciting life, it doesn't get much better than this. Can you describe the process of licensing an album? Like when you say, gee I want this album and you, mister Sony has it and you don't want to put it out, but we do.

BI: The licensing process can either be very involved, or it can be very simple. Some things are just unobtainable and, from being in this business, you know what type of material is probably unobtainable from the outset. Other times you basically have to have big brass ones and just go knocking and ask! We also have, thankfully, many people bringing their catalogs to us, wanting us to take care of their recordings. There are times when an artist, licensor or label is concerned about the integrity of the project, and they know that we'll do the job they expect and beyond. Other times, it's just because they know we're going to pay them on time! I'm not kidding you here, all these factors enter into it. Certainly, if we go to BMG, Sony, EMI or Warner Bros., you have to basically guarantee a sales number to them. You have to agree upfront to sell "x" amount of units over the term of the agreement. That figure is ususally substantial, and often precludes a lot of independent labels from doing business with the majors.

LD: You have to guarantee the sales?

BI: You absolutely do. And, you have to sell that commitment number, or hopefully beyond, within the term of the agreement. When you're an upstart label it's absolutely frightening to go to a major label and have them say to you, "sure you can put out a record by "so-and-so", but you have to commit that you're going to sell ten-thousand of them in three years". When you're new and just starting with a distributor, that's a frightening number - and most independents just can't do that, initially. To this day there are commitment numbers we can't hit, there's still major labels that we stay away from because you simply can't hit their guarantee figure. And they usually don't differentiate. They don't differentiate if you're going to them and asking for the Standells' "Dirty Water" album, or if you're asking them for last month's hit album. So you have to be very comfortable with your reputation and your distribution. It took us years to get to the point where we could do business with a major label; they want you to put your name on the line - and it's not until you're comfortable with the strength of your sales and confident with your distribution, that you can support those kinds of numbers. That said, major-label policies are ever changing, so it's also a matter of keeping your finger on the pulse, talking with people, being good guys, and paying people on time that helps get you in the door. But again, you have to be comfortable with the guarantee. Even at this stage there are times when we just have to walk away.But, the cool thing is that so many people have brought projects directly to us. Looking back, we can see the high-water marks, where certain events that were a great step forward for us. I remember sitting out on my back deck one summer night, with a bottle of Corona and the phone rings. My wife, Mary, came out the back door and said, "Nancy Sinatra's on the phone for you!" Wow! It's wonderful when you kind of instantly hit the groove with someone like that - we hit it off so well. Nancy said "You know, my Dad always told me that you give your music to the people who will love it and take care of it." Buck Owens later did the same thing with us. It's just so nice when that happens!The days the Sundazed release schedule is much more precise than it's ever been, as we're looking at least a year out in front; at this point we've predetermined what most of our years releases will be for 2004 and into 2005. Not to say that there won't be flexibility for three or four months down the road. On paper it's sketched out, but if something with extenuating circumstances avails itself, we'll make room for it. For example, like when Wilco's management came to us and said, "We want you to put 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' out, but we really want the vinyl released within a month! Thankfully, an independent label like Sundazed can usually stop and turn on a dime, and we got the project done. On paper we're way out in front; when it comes time to access new projects, we have to be honest and tell a potential licensor that we are well into 2004.

LD: So Wilco came to you on that album?

BI: Yes, their manager did. First, the Uncle Tupelo anthology came out on vinyl on Sundazed. Jeff Tweedy and group manager Tony Margherita were so impressed with our vinyl releases that they came to us and said we want you to do Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.LD: Fantastic, because in the past I know it was all older material that you were releasing. I was surprised when I came today and saw you working on some newer material.BI: Yeah, but only when it's a logical extension, only when it makes sense. Because we spent so much time and energy deliberately building the image and personality of Sundazed, if you threw a hard curve in there someplace, it would serve to undo a lot of what we worked so hard to build. But now, whether it's the Chesterfield Kings, Wilco, Davie Allan, or bands like that, they're all people that make total sense for us to be working with. I mean, you can see that the Kings and Sundazed talk the same language...we own all the same records, and they're such great, wonderful, wonderful guys.

LD: Yeah, I noticed, they seem like real nice guys. You had mentioned selling between eight to ten thousand records and I can remember Tuck and Patti telling me that you can make a great living selling thirty thousand records a year in this industry. Yet most people think that to be successful you have to sell so many more numbers, in the millions.

BI: Well I'm very thankful that we've had titles that sold nearly a hundred thousand copies. That's a wonderful thing, but I always wanted to have the flexibility to release things that were only selling three thousand copies, if it was great music that needed to be heard.

LD: So do you have a minimum or is it getting back to the licensing agreement that dictates volume?

BI: Well yes, certain titles are predetermined by the agreement and you strive to hit and, hopefully, surpass that guarantee. And there are still times when we have to pick and choose whether to release an album. There are people who have come to us and we've sent them to another label that we think they would be better served with...another label with integrity, and is doing a good job building thier reputation and really could use a project like that.

LD: How important is it to recreate the original product?

BI: Case by case. My stock line is, again, there were great sounding records and there were crappy sounding records. If it was a great sounding record in the first place, I think we should do everything we can to emulate that sound. Whether it's on compact disc or vinyl, it's always been key to our mastering philosophy. If you have a great sounding record, whether it's a Simon and Garfunkel or a Lovin Spoonful record, you want it to be as vibrant and as wonderful as that first pressing of that record was.

LD: I read with the Simon and Garfunkel releases that you had to actually recreate the room and remix the project.BI: For certain titles we had to, as there were no two-track masters left. We had to recreate the original two-track masters.LD: Wow, why, over the years the originals were worn out?

BI: Played out, safetied, the safeties burned out, safetied again, burned out, some albums were on fourth and fifth generations.

LD: How about the artwork? Do you go for totally trying to recreate the original artwork or do you take liberties?

BI: A combination; it depends on if your doing an exact record repro or if you're creating a new piece, like a new "best of" or an anthology, or a new compilation. And I think that we have one of the best graphic departments in the industry right now - our artists live and breathe music. They love it, they have all the chops that you would want someone like that to have, along with impeccable judgment. As evidenced by the amount of major labels that are always trying to use our guys - right now, they are designing for BMG downstairs in addition to our work!

LD: Oh, so you sub them out. (laughs)

BI: Hmmm...they sub them selves out, they do just fine (more laughs)! But yes, it comes through Sundazed.

LD: What a great compliment.

BI: Yes, it is.

LD: I've read where all the records you put out are on 180 gram vinyl. What's the big deal about it?

BI: It's heftier, more stable. It's quieter, it affords you a deeper groove cut. And it's pressed on absolutely pure virgin vinyl. You are able to extract more dynamic range out of a 180-gram pressing. Not simply because of the thickness of the vinyl, but coupled with the right technology and the way that is working with that particular format of vinyl.

LD: So it's way better you would say, kind of like tape formulations?

BI: While I think the technology that exists gets better, I think that cutting a great lacquer is becoming a lost art. Most of the old-timers aren't doing it anymore. There are some young guys that are cutting and doing it well, but the people that were cutting all-analog when, you know, you were doing it with preview and by your instincts, your eyes, your heart and your ears, those guys are tough to find right now. Not many of them around at all. There are now are computer programs where you can lay something into a hard drive and have the computer determine the cut...that's okay, but that's defintely not what we do. We're all about cutting from analog, wherever possible.

LD: Do you have a cutting lathe here?

BI: No, I work with outside houses. Sony now has a beautiful machine with preview and they're able to cut all analog. So, Sony engineer Joe Palmaccio cuts our Dylan titles and other vinyl titles that are licensed from Sony. I also use two other houses that are still set up to cut analog. It works a couple different ways; if something is a relatively straight cut I'll supply my EQ and compression notes. Or there are times when I create my my own analog cutting master for a record that is very, very involved, and requires a bunch of different moves. I will do every bit of that here, all analog and print back to half-inch 30 ips tape and supply, in essence, my own analog cutting master for that particular record.

LD: Who does your vinyl manufacturing?

BI: The Universal plant does most of it up in Gloversville (NY). It is the old Decca Records plant from the forties and fifties.

LD: You know, I always knew it was around here but I didn't know it was right in the back yard.

BI: Yeah, that's the ticket on the east coast. On the west coast you have RTI and places like that who specialize in audiophile quality vinyl. But here, Universal is an hour up the road. It's nice to keep your finger on the pulse. I don't know how deep you want to get into vinyl...

LD: Well I know quite a few Tape-Op readers who are much like you were when you were younger, at the dollar an album stores, buying cut-outs and such.

BI: Amen, amen. That's great. We have always made vinyl, but in the past three and a half years vinyl sales have quadrupled. And I think we have the strongest, most substantial vinyl catalog of any label on the planet right now. Of the highest quality, and at the most reasonable price anywhere. My mission was not to make a $30.00 audiophile record, even though a place exists in the world for those releases. I wanted to create a great sounding record that would not just appeal to the audiophile-buyer, but also wanted to make an unbelieveably cool record that a 19 year old could afford to buy. So we do our best to hold vinyl at a 14.98 list price; 24.98 if they're doubles, etc.. So that means that our vinyl shows up at retail anywhere from 11.98 to 16.98. That's a factor that I really think has contributed to our success with vinyl. At the end of the day, I don't think that there's anything cooler than making a great record! Yes, sometimes it's problematic. It can kill you to get there but, after you reject the 9th test pressing, you finally get the perfect one, manufacture it and soon see it inside that beautiful jacket...oh, man!

LD: Being a mastering room I still have my turntable set up. That's what I put on when I want to relax and enjoy music, vinyl.

BI: Me, too. (laughs) This company provides the justification for my buying even more records (laughs), it's research!

LD: That's what kills me about mastering, staying current, having to buy the latest digital gear when it's the analog gear that sounds great and really excites me. With the exception of the Daniel Weiss gear, I've never had a love for digital. But Daniels' gear has that purity of tone.

BI: Yeah I really like the Weiss gear, too.

LD: Do you do any SACD? Thinking of doing any SACD?BI: Yeah, we are discussing it with the people at Sony right now. I laid back for a long time to watch the stability of the market and attempted to see where things were going. I think it is something that we will be addressing, probably in 2004. I do like the format. I love the idea behind it, I love the way it works, I love the way it sounds.

LD: Me to. Closest to vinyl.

BI: Yeah, it really is. I think it needs a little more time to settle down and have the software become a little be more user friendly. A little bit more accessible...

LD: Right, because now you only have the Meitner converters and hardly any outboard gear. Of course you can use the best of analog, which is a great.

BI: That's exactly it. For the first couple SACD projects I did for Sony, there were next to no editing capabilities. Projects sometimes had to be chosen by the integrity of the master. You know, "Okay, let's make sure there's nothing that we have to worry about fixing in post here". We did do a couple titles that way, and I know it's not that way anymore. I've been emailing and going back and forth with the people at Sony who head up the SACD department because I do think that it is a logical extension for us. That said, I've always felt the safe money was on vintage technology; I've always felt safest and most comfortable making a great LP. I knew that any issues of downloading or internet delivery didn't affect that consumer. Vinyl buyers tend to be much more savvy, they know what they're buying, they know how much to buy. And I like everything about that world. I think that SACD is indeed a format that's proving itself worthy, I want to see more players accessible, the universal players, and I want to see my friends start buying them.

LD: What's your favorite analog format beside vinyl? I keep an old 1" 8 track around to show young clients who've never experience these old formats and their jaws literally hit the floor when I play something off that format. it's huge.

BI: Yeah, I feel the same way about half-inch 3-track tape from the early sixties. It's just a format that sounds so good to my ears that my jaw continually drops. I had Mike Spitz from ATR build me this beautiful half-inch 3-track that resides in the other room, it's just so glorious.

LD: I bet. I've never experienced the sound of 3-track tape. Just having that center channel information...

BI: Oh my gosh, it's just incredible. Something about the format. And, I love 1/2 inch 4-track, too...but it's not quite as magical as a well-recorded, half-inch 3-track tape!LD: And most of those came out a mono recording?BI: No, it can be stereo as well. Nashville was using the half-inch three-track format right up to about 1968. All those classic George Jones and Tammy Wynette songs, they're mostly done on half-inch three-track tape. You pull up something like a Tammy Wynette recording from 1966 or '67 from Nashville, and you're like, "Oh, God!" And, all of my favorite surf and hot rod recordings were done on 3-track!

LD: Sonically can you cross it over into stereo CD as well do you think?

BI: Yes, absolutely. It's definitely a less-is-more senario, as many of those things were zero-fader-level recordings. Effects are usually printed right to the track and it's often stupid-simple; left,center, right, here we go... And if you know what not to do, as long as you do a great conversion, you're usually there! I think the most important thing is knowing that you shouldn't do certain things; don't brighten the upper mids just for the sake of brightening the upper mids, or jacking the level through the ceiling so that it stands up next to a current recording. That's not what this stuff was about. And you know, that's what you see these guys (The Chesterfield Kings) fighting right now, they're looking for that nice fat, round, analog kind of sound.

LD: Do you find you have to get different machines in to reproduce the tape accurately?

BI: Yes, I think so. We have one of the best vintage machine collections of anyone around...a lot of vintage gear. What you see in the two work rooms now are kind of like my work-horse machines. I love Mike Spitz' ATR's. (Shows me) Even within these machines I have the HD front end built in...they're all tube.

LD: Oh, the whole Dave Hill (Cranesong) electronics front end.

BI: It's program dependent. There are also a set of outputs direct from the circuit boards, bypassing all the metering. Across the street and downstairs I still have my Scully half-inch 4-track, I've got eight old 440's, I have old MCI machines stashed away, I have the gorgeous all-tube Presto half-inch 3 track, I've got a Presto quarter-inch 2-track. I've got Ampex 440's and a 300 set up just for full-track mono.

LD: I keep trying to get Eddie Kramer's off him. He has an old 300 and 350 in storage and also has an old EMT plate in storage. I keep saying give them to me, those things need to be put back into work not be kept in storage.

BI: Which I would love to have, too!

LD: What is Sundazed target market audience?

BI: Our demographic is wide, and very much includes the 18 to 35 year old music lover, which I think is great. I never wanted to be looked at like an "oldies label", I always wanted to be viewed as a "cool music label". You know, these days you see kids turning up on magazine covers wearing MC5 shirts, and I feel really good about that. With the success of The Strokes and The Hives and groups like that, they are espousing names of groups that 20 year olds might never had heard of before - and it serves as an introduction to our world. I want younger consumers to be able to go into a store and afford to buy a reissue of an MC5 album or a Sonics CD. That's the bulk of our marketing thrust and is our core demographic for sure, if I have to use those words! There are also artists whose demographic bleeds over into other areas. For example, I'm very happy that Nancy Sinatra's "Boots" album sells to a huge demographic. You have grandmothers buying that record and you have younger girls buying that record. But you can also see something more esoteric, such as Skip Spence's 'Oar' album crossing those boundaries, too. Folks our age buying it - because we had always read about it and yet had never seen a copy - and now with all the magazines reviewing it and heaping on the critical praise, you have twenty year olds buying that record, too. Which is so cool! And I've always said there are certain records, whether it's a Nancy Sinatra release, a Buck Owens disc, the Skip Spence 'Oar" album or a Gram Parsons release, they're what we refer to as "self-perpetuating records". Sales-wise, their histories never really end, because just as one group of people are done buying the title, there's a new audience whom are reading about it for the first time, and it just keeps going. It's why the Hendrix catalog or The Who catalog will never be out of print in our lifetime. The talent and the repeated visibility will always keep those types of releases self-perpetuating and vital, and that's one of the really interesting parts to me in this business. The artist doesn't necessarily have to have marquee name value, it just has to be music that grabs you right there, that when you hear it you just intrinsically know it's just never gonna end.

LD: I think that the Tape-Op reader is the younger individuals who are trying to learn more about engineering side and they're going back to the older albums to try and learn these techniques. They're the ones buying the used 1" 8 tracks, half inch four tracks and such and where better to learn about working within the limitations of 4 or 8 tracks these things than the Sundazed records. To hear how this was really done. They're the guys scouring the dollar records for these things.

BI: You bet, you're absolutely right. And, that not only happens on a record level, it happens on a musical instrument level, it happens all the way down the chain. You know, twenty years ago if you wanted to buy a vintage Telecaster or a vintage Strat, even though they were less than a quarter of a price that they are now, you could never afford them as a working musician. And now, there's this whole group of young musicians who are searching out other instruments, like Fender Mustangs and Duosonics and squeezing great music out of them; they're affordable guitars, they don't have to be museum quality, 'cause who really gives a fuck about that, just give them a guitar with soul; soul and tone. That, in my mind, goes hand and hand with the dollar record bins; who cares if the record isn't stone mint with the shrink wrap on it, you know, there's great music in the grooves, and you can learn from it. I mean, I'm so happy to be making music right now while that's going on!

LD: Well you kind of lead some of that revolution with Sundazed.

BI: Well, thanks. Boy, I'd feel so flattered if we had a little something to do with it, but I am just so glad it's going on.

LD: Well, I don't know of any label again, that is doing what your label is doing and to the degree your label is doing it.

BI: I'm very, very happy about that. And again, for the most part, it's simply being passionate about what you do and being honest about the biz; not lookin