As Heard On ...
Noah Mintz
Senior Mastering Engineer – Lacquer Channel Mastering
Excerpt from NWC Webinars : Demystifying Mastering . For the full conversation , listen to the March 31 , 2022 episode or go to NWCWebinars . com .
PS : If you have a client that specifically wants to cut a project to vinyl , are you asking for quieter mixes than for the wider release ?
Noah Mintz : That ’ s what I try to tell producers and engineers all the time : if your mix is already loud , it ’ s never going to sound as good as it could on vinyl , and I ’ ll fucking die by that statement . It will never sound as good as it could . You ’ ll never know how good it could have sounded on vinyl if it ’ s lacking dynamics – the damage is done …
We ’ re a vinyl house , so I have the incredible advantage of being able to take a master to the room over there and say , “ Hey , can you do a test cut of this so I can hear what it sounds like ?” I don ’ t get to do that very often because he ’ s so busy , but we ’ ve been able to experiment and hear what sounds best on a lacquer , on vinyl , and dynamics always win out – always . A more dynamic album just sounds better on vinyl . But then sometimes ,
like punk rock , a little bit of limiting sounds a little bit better on a lacquer . But actually , -14 LUFS is a great target for vinyl , funny enough …
So generally , if I ’ m doing an analog master , the first pass is more or less the vinyl master , and then the digital masters are built from the vinyl master … And then , if I ’ m working inthe-box , then it ’ s just basically EQ and a bit of compression , and the volume stuff done after is taken off for the vinyl master . So , the vinyl master always has dynamics . And then you deliver one master for streaming , and that ’ s it . You can ’ t deliver multiple versions . Sometimes I ’ ll deliver a specific master for YouTube , because YouTube does allow you to upload just to YouTube . And YouTube does have built-in loudness normalization , and you can ’ t change that . So , it ’ s rare I ’ ll do that . So , basically there ’ s a vinyl master and there ’ s a streaming master and I deliver at 16-bit , 24-bit , and MP3 ; and the 24-bit is always delivered at the sample rate that the mix is .
Will Owen Bennett
Producer / Engineer / Mixer
Excerpt from NWC Webinars : Home Recording Fundamentals . For the full conversation , listen to the January 27 , 2022 episode or go to NWCWebinars . com .
PS : What to you is the main consideration when recording in a home or improvised environment ?
Will Owen Bennett : So , really the consideration is that you want to have control in the mixing stage . So , whatever things sound like when you ’ re starting to record , you ’ re going to get stuck with it . Now , that might be okay – say you ’ re recording an acoustic guitar , or even a singer recording some backup vocals , if you want it to be a little bit roomier in the mix , that ’ s okay . The thing is , you ’ ve made that decision at the recording stage if that ’ s just what your room sounds like .
The other big issue with having your room not really be treated is that rooms often have an extremely uneven frequency response in terms of the way that their reverb manifests , especially given the fact that we ’ re generally all living in rectangular rooms . In an ideal recording space , you would have no parallel walls whatsoever , because what happens with parallel walls is you have sound that travels from one end of the wall back to the other end of the wall , and it creates what we call a standing wave – which ends up being a resonance at a certain
frequency , and the sound will take longer to decay at that frequency . And then what you end up with is , let ’ s say you ’ re recording vocals in a room and you end up with certain frequencies [ in the recording ], they ’ re goi ng to pop out of the texture and it ’ s going to really be a nightmare once you ’ re mixing .
So , the key is not just to kind of blanket deaden your room ; the key is to also think about what frequencies you ’ re deadening and how you get something to sound relatively balanced .
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