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can anyone recommend a mastering engineer that specializes in giving digital recordings analog depth. The big mastering facility in my area is trying to recommend me not to have my recording mastered to tape as it will just add hiss, so basically i said forget this guy cause he obviously doesn't understand what i'm going for. any recommendations?

Comments

sjoko Fri, 09/21/2001 - 18:11

Blake, I presume you wish to add some "warmth" to your master.
In that case, don't just discount your local mastering facility, but first ask them what they'd propose to use instead of a tape transfer.
I've got a 2 track Studer gathering dust, I'm using it less and less. Why? Very simple - we can now achieve the kind of good harmonic effect caused by tape in the digital domain, without having to go through 2 more conversions and without raising the noise floor. Well worth exploring. If they don't respond with a good explanation, by all means look elsewhere.

As a footnote, after almost 30 years analog mixing and mastering I was most likely the one person that really needed to be convinced, so I spend some time mastering both ways, until I was convinced I achieve better results in the digital domain.

As another footnote, if people started paying more attention to what makes digital sound good - their systems' converters and clocks - there would be less need to warming up digital recordings.