here - Howie Weinberg Mastering

®
NOVEMBER 2012
USA $5.99
CANADA $5.99
VOL. TWENTY SIX
NUMBER TWO
$5.99US $5.99CAN
0
09281 03050
11
8
Q&A With A Master:
Howie Weinberg
A world-famous mastering engineer
talks about the history and mystery of mastering
Interview by Paul Vnuk Jr.
Howie Weinberg is a mastering engineer with a career
span of 35 years. Clients include: Nirvana, Beastie Boys,
Pantera, Public Enemy, Slayer, Muse, The White Stripes,
Sonic Youth, Run DMC, Tom Waits, Garbage, Smashing
Pumpkins, Prince, Cypress Hill, Björk—and the list goes on.
Recently I tracked and mixed an indie rock band from
Chicago named Camera. When it came time to have their
album mastered, Howie’s name was at the top of their wish
list. The band and I were ecstatic that he was able to take
on the project and give it his final touch. He was also willing to take the time to give us his advice and stories as well
as a look into the evolution of the mastering process.—PV
You recently mastered ten tracks from the Chicagobased band Camera that I had the pleasure of mixing
and recording. What are your thoughts on the tracks?
Howie Weinberg: It sounded good, really nice. The
mixes sounded really big and tight. I like stuff that has a
vibe already, where the basics are already there, rather
than having to add or create something that doesn’t exist.
I know the band was a little nervous about getting
back to you with some changes to track times and the
overall bass level on one of the songs, because, well,
you are Howie Weinberg!
That’s OK [laughs], that’s what I do! Never be afraid to
tell somebody you are hiring what you want. That’s very
important, because in the end that’s why you hire them.
After I master something, I want people to put it on and
have it do something to them. Like “Wow, that’s got a
great vibe or feeling”, not just “Oh, it’s got more bass.” I
thought it went really well. Was everybody happy with the
results?
They were blown away! We all were.
That’s what I like; I never get tired of hearing that
[laughs].
Do you get a lot of work from indie labels or bands?
About half and half. I like the indie stuff, because even
though some of the recordings aren’t as good quality as
some of the major-label stuff, it can often be more cutting
edge. In the end, if it’s good music, I don’t care where it
was done or who recorded it.
You got your start at Masterdisk in New York...
I started in 1977 and I was the company’s first messenger. I also
spent much of my time making one-to-one dupes of the 1/4", 15 ips
Dolby master tapes from Mercury and Polygram. Doing that I really
got to start hearing what was out there in the world, and the music
was great!
One of my earliest memories—when Saturday Night Fever came
out, I spent all night making tape copies for every country in the world
that was going to release it.
Did you go to school for mastering or audio engineering?
No. When I was 18 or 19, I left college and got a job at Masterdisk
delivering packages, and I was just there watching everybody. Bob
Ludwig was like my boss and he would show me around. After I graduated from tape copies, the company moved to a different space, and
about four or five months in, a mastering room opened up, and lo and
behold, here is my new mastering room. It was like, OK, here it is!
Come on in... [laughs]
To be frank, the first few months I was a newbie and it was “practice makes perfect”! But I was young and had a brash attitude and I
would do anything! And I did!
You were one of the first guys to master hip hop records.
I still remember, around ’81–’82, someone brought in the first real
hip hop project. I think it was Kurtis Blow or one of those,
Grandmaster Flash, and they just kept on coming, and all of a sudden in the first few months I had five or six gold records immediately.
They didn’t call it hip hop at the time, it was called rap music and
I became the guy in town who would do rap music. And for about
five years I did all the rap records in the area, working with guys
like Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons who were all about the same
age as me.
Excerpted from the November edition of RECORDING Magazine 2012
©2012 Music Maker Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119
For Subscription Information, call: 1-800-582-8326 or www.recordingmag.com
How did you make the switch from being the hip hop/rap
guy to your work with rock bands like Nirvana and the Chili
Peppers and such?
Doing hip hop just got my foot in the door and got me noticed.
A lot of the guys who did hip hop in the beginning, like Andy
Wallace, the Lord Alge guys, they were all doing dance records
and hip hop-type records before they ever did any major rock
records; there is no real difference—great music is great music.
How has mastering changed over the years?
In the early ’80s, 15ips 1/4" Dolby A was the format, 1/2" was
not invented yet, certainly digital wasn’t. In those days it was all
analog, vinyls and cassettes, and then CDs came into play, and
I remember it was like, “I can now put some more bass on here
and if I put more bass on here it’s not going to under-cut, and if
something comes in out of phase it’s not going to ruin my day
where I will have to keep re-cutting it.”
There was a little bit more of an art to it then, some of that has
disappeared with digital media. I would say that 98% of vinyl
cutting now is done from digital tapes where you just push Play
and you try and fit the music on there, rather than master everything from scratch—let me tell you, that was some work!
So what does a typical session look like now? Do you have
clients there or not?
I might get a project from France, another from Germany, followed by one from England and then maybe two from New
York, so it’s a lot less client-attended now and a bit more like file
management, which I kind of like and don’t like.
When clients come in they also want to hang out, which is not
exactly conducive to me focusing really well; but I do like it
when the clients are there, because I get the feedback from the
client immediately.
But since most clients don’t show up these days I have learned
how to work by myself really well and at my own pace. Since I
can’t get feedback from a client I just get feedback from my own
head [laughs], “This will be right, this is what I like...”
About how many albums do you do in a week?
I work on about five to eight albums a week now.
Do you have a general workflow or even a typical chain you
stick to?
Obviously I do have a chain that I know works really well, some eqs
and curves and all of that other stuff, and eventually I will share that
with the world and make my own plug-in, but that’s next year... [laughs]
Generally speaking I have a lot of different variables I can
work with. Sometimes it sounds better with the eq before the compressor, sometimes the compressor before the eq because the
compressor will do a certain thing and you want to eq off of that.
I have an SPL Master Bay, so all my gear goes into one box
and then it goes into the mastering console, so I can take my
compressors or eqs or whatever and put them into any direction
I want. It makes workflow really easy.
What about your personal gear choices?
When I started this studio here, I set out to have the best
equipment money could buy and charge very fair rates.
Obviously the equipment is key to everything.
I have an SPL mastering console, which is one of my major
weapons. The 120V consoles that SPL makes have much more
headroom than a 60V analog console and you can cut really
hot records a lot cleaner. When I was in New York I had a
Neumann console, which had a big sound, but it had limited
headroom. I also use the SPL eq.
For digital gear I have Pro Tools 10, I have three Antelope
Audio clocks and I also use their converters. I try and convert this
stuff to analog really well, do all the processing in analog and
then dump it back into digital, and I use a Merging Technologies
Pyramix system for that, which I think is the best digital workstation in the business—I have two of those.
So your main DAW for mastering is the Pyramix?
Absolutely, they really did their homework, it’s very easy for
editing, very logical and it sounds great! I want my analog
chain reproduced as close as I can, and the Pyramix system
does this.
You have a Focusrite Red Compressor?
I use that once in a while, and I have a custom-made SSL compressor, I have an L2. I have the big Sontec eq, the mastering
one, and I have the smaller GML type from Sontec which is much
more vibey, and I use the SPL eq which is very much like a Pultec
with a big-ass bottom end and a big wide sound; and I have two
EQP-1A Pultecs in mint condition. I have a lot of processing.
What about your digital side?
I have a Weiss digital console that has de-essing, and six
bands of eq, and the Pyramix has eqs and compressors that
sound amazing and most people don’t even know about. I have
the Slate Digital tape plug-in and mastering plug-in on my system that’s really good.
Some mastering engineers are either all analog or all digital...
Some analog stuff sounds really good, and there is a cost-versus-effectiveness to analog recording that’s beyond a lot of people’s means; and the digital stuff has gotten really good. The
plug-ins are great and you can blend both worlds really well.
It’s the way a lot of people are mixing nowadays, they mix in the
box, but they have tons of analog outboard gear as well. I don’t
Excerpted from the November edition of RECORDING Magazine 2012
©2012 Music Maker Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119
For Subscription Information, call: 1-800-582-8326 or www.recordingmag.com
Howie Weinberg
master in the box because I have the SPL
console and everything goes through there.
Basically I am an analog guy, but I have
done projects in the box that still sound fantastic. It’s all only as good as the operator,
you know. You can have all the gear in the
world and if you don’t push the right buttons
and twist the right knobs it ain’t good.
Now that CDs are nearing the end of
their life cycle, where do you see digital
audio going?
I usually master at 24/44.1 but lately there
is a big market for hi-rez stuff, so I have been
mastering a lot for 24/96. I have been doing
a lot of mastered-for-iTunes stuff and a lot of
HD tracks. This is the future of audio; eventually a consumer will be able to download a
24/96 file. When I play back tracks I have
done at 24/96 it’s just a perfect mirror
image that 16/44.1 does not give you.
Any dos and don’ts for clients, or common mistakes you see from
project/home studios?
The first do-and-don’t I have come
across too many times is: If you are making records and you are happy with the
way they sound, it’s not a good idea to
compare your records against commercially-released records that could have had
a $200,000 budget using the best mixers
in the world in some of the best studios in
the world, and then go “Oh, my mix does
not sound as good as that.”
Or clients send me their music and say,
“Well, you have done these kind of
records, can’t mine sound like that too?”
I try like hell, but you have to be realistic
on what you have. What I am trying to say
is you don’t necessarily have to compete
with them; you just have to make good
music, OK? I think in the end people are just
way, way too concerned about certain production values rather than musical values.
What about the current debate on final
mixing levels?
I just got a project from a really wellknown producer and I called him up and
said it sounded great, but you know what?
Your files are too small.
A lot of times if your files are too small,
you are not using up all your bits and numbers. You want to have a nice fat file that’s
not overly done, so somebody like me can
get the files and have room to move on it.
Then the opposite is when I get files that are
totally slammed and squared out, it gives me
fewer options. I like nice loud files, but I don’t
want them crushed. There is a happy medium.
You want to get files back from me that sound better, and if files that I get are so
loud and crushed, I can’t even match their levels and that’s going backwards. My
advice is, do two versions—one that you give to the client for listening that’s a little
more crushed so the client can hear it louder, and one that’s nice and dynamic but
not too compressed, that gets sent to mastering.
What is your opinion on adding bus compression to the final mix?
Just do it artistically, it’s really important not to use equipment just for the sake of
turning it on, you know what I mean? Use it for the benefit of the music, not just
because you have it; like “I have five different plug-in eqs—I should use them all!” Go
by the adage “less is definitely more”!
You want to record stuff that has what I call the turn-up curve! You know how you can
play some records and as you turn them up they just keep sounding better and better,
where as some records, you get to a certain point and it’s ARRRGGHHH!!! You can’t
turn them up, you know what I’m saying?
What about low and high end? Which one is the more problematic?
I think it’s both. The problem is a lot of people are working in home-type studios
with not the most perfect monitoring systems or recording environment. That’s OK in
the end if the record has a vibe. I have noticed that a lot of the albums I am getting,
people are doing really good jobs. They watch videos and they read the magazines
and the forums and they practice and I think people are doing their homework.
I think in this day and age the equipment has gotten really good, and skills have gotten really good, and there’s really very few records that I get in that just sound like crap.
Do you ever turn anything down?
That’s a big grey area, because sometimes I may think something is crap, but the
band loves it and you have insulted them [laughs]. Generally speaking, if I get something in that isn’t very good I will let them know.
Do you have any advice for the budding beginning mastering engineer?
If you are really into finished audio rather than recording, try it! A lot of guys these
days who try this also have a really good knowledge of recording and mixing as well.
See, I didn’t do any recording or mixing, I just don’t have that background, I am
not a musician, I am a specialist. I basically listen from the standpoint of your average Joe Shmoe consumer who takes the record and puts it on and listens in their car
or their boom box or iPod. I approach it like that.
What is your take on the dreaded Loudness Wars?
I think people need to start thinking about other things! If an artist wants to make
their record a certain way, they should! You as a consumer should not be worried
about it. It’s gone a bit overboard! I have done records where people have complained it’s too loud and I play the thing and think, “It doesn’t sound bad to me.”
Excerpted from the November edition of RECORDING Magazine 2012
©2012 Music Maker Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119
For Subscription Information, call: 1-800-582-8326 or www.recordingmag.com
Howie Weinberg
I have been on both sides of the coin and I
can go either way, in the end it’s what the
client wants. If they want it super loud to compete with the next guy, I am fine, if they want
it nice and dynamic I am fine with that too.
Last question—the Howie Weinberg
mastering philosophy?
Be less concerned with technology and
more concerned with artistic endeavors. The
equipment is great, but it’s only as good as the artist who uses it. Having great-sounding equipment does not necessarily mean you will have great-sounding or great-engineered records!
But, but...! Suffice to say if all the combinations work, if you have great equipment,
great engineers, great artists and great music... then you have magic!
For more information, visit howieweinbergmastering.com. Photos by Evans Vestal
Ward, courtesy of Howie Weinberg Mastering.
Paul Vnuk Jr. ([email protected]) is a recording engineer, musician, producer, and sound designer living and working in Milwaukee. Paul would like to thank
Howie for his time and cooperation in the interview process, and for his work mastering Paul’s mixes of the Camera album (see the sidebar).
Camera’s The Panic and the Permanence
Personnel:
Justin Scro: Lead vocal and guitar.
Ryan Aylward: Bass guitar, synths and backing vocals.
Joseph Scro: Drums, percussion and keys.
Recorded and mixed by Paul Vnuk Jr. at Moss Garden Music
Assistant engineer Steve Ciliak
Additional overdubs at Clinical Sound by Steve Ciliak & Ryan Aylward
Produced by Paul Vnuk Jr. and Camera
www.cameraband.com, www.facebook.com/CameraBand
The band’s and the engineer’s opinions on the featured tracks:
“Pop Radio 101” and “A Place I Know”:
Ryan Aylward: Hearing Mr. Weinberg’s mastered version of our album for
the first time, after being so close to it for a period of over two years, was a
revelation, and I knew every intricate detail. Going from one song to the next,
even if it switched to a completely different genre, I felt as if the album had
a sense of cohesiveness to it. Instruments seemed to inhabit their own space
and they had more clarity.
Comparing both the un-mastered and mastered versions of the album, I
noticed in the song “Pop Radio 101” the snare drum had a bit more “crack”
to it and I believe he removed some of the lower mids, which took away a
slight amount of the reverb reflections we had from tracking in a large room
with high ceilings. It gave it that extra punch that made the louder moments
of the song more powerful.
On “A Place I Know” the most noticeable change I heard was the main
vocals. To me, it seems as if they are heightened and the instruments seem
pushed back a bit more, and it heightens the feel of a singer out in front of
his backing band, but the vocals are never “on top” of the music, which is
exactly what we were going for.
Because this song is relatively calm with a loud
ending, I was able to get a sense of how the mastering process really enhances the dynamics of different sections of a song. The distorted guitar that
enters at the climax now helps the song be more
powerful because it sounds like he made more
room for it. The bass guitar seems to have had
some of its midrange cut to allow for more clarity
in the distorted guitars.
These are just some of the details I noticed upon
comparing both versions of our album. Hearing
what a great mastering engineer like Mr.
Weinberg does to your work taught us a lot and it
was a great experience.
Justin Scro: The difference between the mastered
and un-mastered version of the album is that the
album sounds brand new again. That’s a very
impressive feat when we’ve been working so
intensely with the same songs for years.
What made it a priority to work with Howie
Weinberg was that he genuinely has always
seemed interested in his work. His catalog is unbelievable. You can find great works in almost every
genre of music in his discography. His talent is his
care for his craft and it is apparent on every album
he’s mastered, and it means a lot to us that one of
those albums is ours.
Paul Vnuk Jr.: First of all, I am thrilled that the
album is loud and modern but not crushed. I put the
tracks up in my DAW and I can see that the dynamics are preserved, but using Howie’s vernacular,
it’s now a big fat wave!
On “Pop Radio 101” the bass is punchier and
made my original mix sound a tad softer and a
touch boomy by comparison. Overall I hear
improved presence, detail and clarity.
“A Place I Know”... this was significantly louder,
and probably one of those too-quiet mixes Howie
mentions above, as I fell prey to the “keep everything
in the DAW at –12 to –18 dBFS” trend that is rampant on the forums. Once I matched the volume levels in my DAW for comparison, I found Howie’s version added a more forward midrange which made
the song bolder and more powerful. It sounds a bit
more punk now and a little edgier, but not slammed.
You can hear the two songs discussed here,
before and after mastering, at www.recordingmag
.com/resources/resourceDetail/392.html
Excerpted from the November edition of RECORDING Magazine 2012
©2012 Music Maker Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119
For Subscription Information, call: 1-800-582-8326 or www.recordingmag.com