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In Reply to: RE: AFAIK copying an analog tape to digital is a transfer, not remastering. posted by magiccarpetride on May 09, 2017 at 11:04:13
First of all, not every recording/mixing engineer is highly accomplished. The same can be said for producers and artists when it comes to technical issues related to achieving desired sound.A guy I used to master one of my cd's (Alan Silverman at Arf Productions) is not normally hired as a recording engineer, and the engineer I used to record and mix (Gary Chester) is not normally hired as a mastering engineer. Actually, I'm unaware of either of 'em doing the other one's job. Guys like Sax/Grundman specialize in mastering, others specialize in recording (some also mixing), and still others specialize in mixing. This often explains why different engineers (often different studios too) are listed for each category - recording, mixing, mastering.
"Then comes along some asshole with an inflamed ego and pooh-poohs all over that precious jewel, and starts compressing the shit out of it, messing with it, destroying it."
No, that ain't how it works. No mastering engineer is gonna do anything contrary to the wishes of his/her employer unless he/she is inept. That employer may be a producer or an artist or an independent like me who is both. Blame producers or artists who control production for bad results - unless the mastering engineer is incompetent. Of course it can happen that a less than great mastering engineer is hired, the producer/artist is unhappy with the results but doesn't have the bucks to redo the mastering with a different engineer, and the result is that the final product satisfies neither the producer/artist nor the consumers like us. I think complaints we have about mastering like compression and the "loudness war" are more often due to conscious "business decisions" made by producers, not because the mastering engineer fucked up and didn't give them the sound they were looking for - especially for pop releases.
You are concentrating on NEGATIVE results. Sax/Grundman and other good mastering engineers are obviously not sought out due to fucking up the final mixes they receive. They are hired because the results of their mastering are excellent, and achieve the fine tuning ("sweetening", as Tre calls it) producers/artists desire.
I spent a lotta time mixing my cd's. But mixing is often so intense that subtle details relating to EQ'ing are missed, and/or the best equipment for that purpose is not available in the studio used for mixing. Additionally some excellent mastering engineers like Sax/Grundman have exceptional ears as well as exceptional knowledge/command regarding how to achieve fine tuning desired by producers/artists - more so than many recording/mixing engineers.
The final mixes I gave Alan Silverman to master were pretty good. I did not want much altered. But there were spots where (for example) I felt the trumpets were a tad harsher than they sound live, and I asked if Alan could something about that specific section. I also gave him a basic instruction for the whole cd which fortunately he understood -- make it sound a bit warmer, a bit less "digital". These are subtle EQ issues that good mastering engineers deal with all the time. The final mix given to mastering engineers often is not exactly what the producer/artist hoped for, and this can be addressed in mastering to some extent.
Obviously the end result varies according to the desires of the people employing the mastering engineer, equipment used and the ears/ability of the mastering engineer.
Edits: 05/09/17 05/09/17Follow Ups:
Hmm, we seem to be talking past each other. Let me try to boil down what I'm getting at:One way or another, the production team (the musicians, engineers, producers, whathaveyou) finishes the work on the album. The deliverable of their effort is the so-called 'master tape'.
It don't matter for the purposes of this discussion how did the team get to the point of holding the final master tape in their hands. Maybe they did it all by themselves in one sitting, maybe it took them years of back-and-forth with some super duper fancy chief sweetener of master tapes, maybe it even took them decades of back-and-forth, shipping the tapes across the continent, then shipping them back until that precious moment when they all got satisfied (or ran out of money, or both).
Whatever the case may be, the entire charade occurs UPSTREAM from where our discussion begins. So once that magic tape is good and ready to go, it needs to be packaged for sale. Meaning, somehow the signal that is stored on the tape needs to be magically transported into the vinyl grooves. So the jist of this discussion is: how to do it?
Of course, you need to send it to some alchemy lab. Some mysterious alchemists will be cutting the lacquer while manipulating the EQ, twiddling some knobs. No one knows how are they doing it, but we do know that they specialize in making the grooves sound the same as the signal stored within the magnetic particles on the tape.
So the question is: why would, at that point, the owners of the product want the final deliverable (i.e. the vinyl record) to sound any different than the super precious master tape on which they've already spent untold hours and thousands of dollars? It absolutely doesn't make any sense that at this last, final stage, it would be all left to some bozo alchemists to do whatever they please with it. It would only make sense that the quality control at that stage be adamant that the resulting vinyl grooves produce the sound that is almost exact replica of the sound they hear when playing back the master tape.
So please, let's forget about sweetening and all the other bullshit that may or may not be happening upstream from the delivery of the master tape. I want to focus on how does the master tape, being the 'blueprint' for the vinyl record, transfer its signal into the vinyl grooves?
Edits: 05/09/17 05/09/17 05/09/17 05/09/17
Ya know I originally replied to something John Elison said, and it related to digital and mastering, not the mechanics and vagaries of vinyl lathes, cutting heads etc. which is something I'm not well versed in.As for non-vinyl cutting mastering you still don't seem to get it. You apparently think all the so-called "sweetening" occurs before mastering and is included in the final mix handed to a mastering engineer. Both Tre and I have explained that is not the case. You can either re-read my posts above or ignore them. I don't have anything further to add other than..... calling mastering engineers who make alterations to the EQ-ing etc. at the request of their employers "bozos" is lame.
Edits: 05/09/17 05/09/17 05/10/17
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