At long last Phil English’s ‘Full English Podcast’ is here!

This brand new podcast runs for an amazing two and a half hours so make a flask of coffee or tea and settle down to the latest issue.

This month Phil joins new co-host Neil Morgan to look at monitoring and mastering.  After discussing the latest monitors Phil’s been trying out with Neil, Phil heads over to leading London mastering facility Fluid Mastering to talk with mastering engineers Tim Debney and Nick Watson about stem mastering, loudness, dynamic range and lot’s more .

Fluid Mastering Studios

Click here to get the podcast and catch up if this is the first time you’ve been here.

WATCH PART FOUR OF THE INTERVIEW RECORDED AT ABBEY ROAD

Part Four of our exclusive video interview with legendary recording engineer and producer Ken Scott shot at Abbey Road Studios with Russell Cottier asking the questions.

In this fourth part we looked at Mastering, working with technology and working with limitations and how they can actually help. Come back soon for the next part of our interview!

All of the Ken Scott Features

I had a blast last week, mastering a new project for Big Al Wagner of Big Toe Studio – the album was “Whispers from Infinity“, by the Anahata Sacred Sound Current.

Which means a deeply listenable collision of Indian, Egyptian, Israeli and hip-hop influences – featuring Hossam Ramzy, percussion player for Shakira, Page and Plant and Peter Gabriel amongst others – and guest appearances from Rasul Allah and ATMA from the Lost Children of Babylon (a chamber of Wu-tang Clan).

Not surprisingly it sounds fantastic, though I do say so myself !

And, I got a great reaction – producer Anahata said in an email

“All I got say is WoW! WoW!! WOW!!! -I love it!!! So amazing!! A dream come true -thank you Soo much… I am now officially a fan!”

- which is exactly the kind of reaction we all want to get, right ?

Well yes, except when people make comments like this it always makes me feel bad for everyone else involved.

These recordings were five years in the making, and they sounded fantastic when they got to me, thanks to the incredible work Al, Karl and the performers put in. All I did was apply the finishing touches – balance the levels and apply the right EQ, multiband compression and light limiting to each track to bring out the best in it.

But as often happens, because mastering is the very final stage in the process, and it’s the first time people can sit down and hear the whole thing as an album, exactly as it will be when released, the overall effect can seem huge, almost magical.

So, am I saying mastering engineers don’t deserve the credit they get ?

No ! Well, not exactly – I work really hard on every project I get to make it the best it can be, and as I wrote recently I think the process of assessing and optimising every song individually is the very heart and soul of mastering – making the whole much greater than the sum of it’s parts – and when you get it right, it is a bit like magic.

But I would never want that to take away from the fact that you can’t make a great master without great material – and for that, mastering engineers can’t take any credit at all. Working on people’s music is a privilege, and the fact that we get to present the artist with the final polished product that can make them go “wow” is just the icing on the cake.

Please file under “I love my job”…

Forward Studios has announced the opening of the first Italian “World-Class Mastering Studio”, designed and realized by the renowned Acustic Designer “Francis Manzella” (FM Design LTD – NY, USA). He previously designed the Sterling Sound Studios, the new Universal Mastering Studio and MasterDisk in NY, among the over one hundred studios he designed worldwide during his career.

During the last 10 years Mr. Manzella was nominated many times and won the famous “Tec Award” for the design of acoustics in critical listening environments, and is now a reference for room construction, acoustic design, practicality and elegance. After our Sound Engineers spent over three years selecting mastering gear, cabling, conversion techniques, downgrading and fine tuning, we felt the need for the room to be “helpful” to the listening and mastering process.

Mr. Manzella was the best choice: with his critical room design our Engineers are now able to be extremely precise when processing the signal, down to 0.25 dB differences on specific frequencies. This allows us to be up to the highest international standards for mastering, delivering flawless products.

For a free mastering demo and infos: booking@forwardstudios.it or call: +39 06 9454 6481

Visit Forward Studios website

WATCH THE VIDEO TOUR OF FORWARD STUDIOS

The game has changed – forever.

It’s no longer about sounding great on CD, it’s no longer about sounding great on the radio.

It’s about sounding great on Spotify, and this is fantastic news for anyone who loves great-sounding music, because it means the so-called “Loudness Wars” are about to become an irrelevant footnote in history.

If you live outside Europe, you may not be familiar with Spotify yet, but trust me – you will be.

Spotify enables you to stream almost any music you like to your computer or mobile device, in return for simply listening to a few ads, or for a modest monthly subscription fee. (Required for the mobile version.)

The interface is great – slick, professional and easy-to-use. The music sounds good – better than any mp3 thanks to the use of the Ogg Vorbis codec – and is available in even higher quality for subscribers. The catalogue is huge, and growing every day, and mobile users can even listen offline.

But what does this have to do with the Loudness Wars ?

The answer is - Spotify uses “Volume Normalisation” by default.

It adjusts the playback level of all songs so you don’t have to keep adjusting your volume control.

Which means that a genuine pop classic like “Billy Jean” will play at the same volume as the flat, fuzzy distorted mess that is Cheryl Cole’s new single.

And that anything off Kasabian’s latest album will play at the same volume as anything by Black Grape.

Or that “In Bloom” from Nirvana’s masterpiece “Nevermind” will play back at a similar level to U2′s recent Loudness-War-casualty “Vertigo”.

Guess which ones sound better ? The modern, brickwalled, crushed-to-death clipping victims, or the lower-level, more dynamic, open, punchy, older stuff ?

You guessed it. To take that last example, Nirvana wins – by a mile. The kick kicks, the guitars bite, the whole thing rocks. Vertigo is a limp, mushy lump by comparison.

Don’t believe me ? Try it yourself ! Fire up Spotify and pop those two into a playlist. If you don’t have Spotify, just line them up in any audio editor, and turn the U2 version down by 5dB. Or compare any of those tracks, making sure you use the TT Dynamic range meter to level-match them first.

Listen to the kick drums, the snares, the guitars, the bass.

(And while you’re listening, pause for a moment to think – have you ever heard anyone complain that “Nevermind” was too quiet ?!)

QED.

Every track has it’s playback volume adjusted according to “ReplayGain” values which give a decent estimate of a song’s apparent volume and therefore how dynamic it is. Very dynamic material will be compressed somewhat to boost it’s average level, but almost all recent, heavily compressed and high-level material will simply be turned down a little.

Now some of you will be saying – “ReplayGain ? I’ve heard all of this before – so what’s the big deal about Spotify ?”

Easy. Spotify is going to take over the world.

Think about it – the first evening I paid my £10 subscription and installed Spotify on my iPod, I downloaded over 200 songs. 100% legally. A week later it was over a thousand. Some are old favourites, some are new experiments. None of them are things I would have bought on CD or even mp3. And as long as I pay my subscription, I can listen to them wherever and whenever I want.

Pretty soon, this is how everyone will listen to music. (Except it’ll be with a lossless codec ) Eventually nobody will own any hard copies at all, it’ll all just sit in the cloud waiting for them to call on it.

More importantly, Spotify is where everyone will listen to new music first.

And all those people listening to music for the fist time on Spotify will have volume normalisation enabled by default.

Meaning if you want your music to sound great and leap out of the speakers at you, it doesn’t need massive level, it needs great dynamics.

Game Over.

PS. Metallica aren’t on Spotify yet, but when they are, do you think they’ll still be impressed by the 2dB-dynamic-range sound of “Death Magnetic” ?

Ian Shepherd is a mastering engineer and producer at Sound Recording Technology. He writes the respected Mastering Media blog, and runs the Production Advice website.