Many of you will already know Jonathan from iZotope's excellent educational videos on mastering - he's also an experienced producer and recording engineer, head engineer at M-Works mastering, a lecturer at Berklee and has written a book on mastering. In this interview we talk about many different aspects of his career, including:
* The delights (and perils) of analogue tape
* Re-mastering David Bowie
* Digital mastering tools - and the risk of over-using them
* Humans versus machines in mastering (again) and
* Getting the best of both worlds
Links
How to load a pancake on a reel
Loudness war myths - do some genres NEED to be crushed ?
You Are Not So Smart podcast - Connections
A thought on your comment on autonomous vehicles vs. automated audio processing:
If the autonomous vehicle grows to become the rule rather than the exception, the freedom to drive your BMW down the road and be in control will eventually end up limited - or removed. Today's automobiles already do that to some extent whether you notice it or not - and the results are often not good. Those with more significant driving skills often look for ways to remove or disable these "features" to improve the function of the vehicle. I won't go into describing any of those features as that would end up in an unrelated and widely scattered discussion.
Do you think that this will eventually happen to any extent with audio processing?
Hi Ian
Interesting episode, as usual. Just one question on Jonathon's remastered Bowie catalogue, and to me it is one of those mysteries of remasters. Why is it that (most) of the original 1980s Bowie RCA CDs are still considered to be the best sounding digital versions? This is a broad consensus on forums such as the Steve Hoffman site but also reflected in values on the used CD market. Take for example the Hunky Dory album as discussed in your interview. The RCA is much more crankable and smoother in presentation than the 1990s Ryko remasters.
I'm not saying this as a criticism of Jonathon's work, and his remasters certainly are not crushed as many remasters are, it is a genuine question. The RCA CDs were not perfect, indeed one of the engineers involved with them has said that the best tapes were not available so they used cassette dub masters, but they were largely a flat transfer and sound very good. Of course sound quality is to some extent subjective but why can't every, or indeed most, remasters be an improvement over the one before?
If interested this link is a good discussion of the RCA CDs from one of the guys that coordinated the early release.
http://picknmixed.blogspot.com.au/p/the-bowie-rca-cds.html
When remastering, there are also a few other other things to take into account. It is not only your opinion as mastering engineer that counts but also the artist’s, the company’s execs perhaps and sometimes others. Levels are often imposed.