DAN SWANO: His Remote-Only Workflow, The “One Monitor” Philosophy, and The Loudness War

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. And now your host, Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:08):

Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we are now on our seventh year. Don't ask me how that all just flew by, but it did. Man, time moves fast and it's only because of you, the listeners, if you'd like us to stick around another seven years and there's a few simple things you can do that would really, really help us out, I would endlessly appreciate if you would, number one, share our episodes with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me at al Levi URM audio and at URM Academy and of course our guest. And number three, leave us reviews and five star reviews wherever you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, thank you for all the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way.

(00:01:10):

All we ask in return is a share a post and tag us. Oh, and one last thing. Do you have a question you would like me to answer on an episode? I don't mean for a guest. I mean for me, it can be about anything. Email it to [email protected]. That's EYAL at m dot A-C-D-E-M-Y. There's no.com on that. It's exactly the way I spelled it. And use the subject line. Answer me Eyal. Alright, let's get on with it. Hello everybody and welcome to the URM Podcast. I would like to welcome Dan Swano back onto the URM podcast he was on about two years ago. Dan s Swano is a mixer, a mastering engineer, a musician, a producer, and a songwriter who is the owner and operator of Uni Sound AB Studios. You'd recognize him for his work with bands such as oped, dark Funeral Catatonia, ghost Marduk, and many, many more. As a performer, he's known for playing with bands such as Nightingale and Edge of Sanity among many, many others. This guy has been around for quite a while, and I would say is one of the most influential producers in all of European metal. I think that he helped discover some of the most groundbreaking artists. Anyways, I introduce you, Dan Swano. Welcome back to the URM podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:02:39):

Thanks for having me

Speaker 2 (00:02:40):

Again. It's a pleasure as always.

Speaker 3 (00:02:42):

Yeah, the pleasure is all mine. I

Speaker 2 (00:02:44):

Can't believe that we're coming up on two years since the last time. That was in July, I believe, of 2019.

Speaker 3 (00:02:55):

Yeah, that's correct.

Speaker 2 (00:02:56):

When I was in Sweden to work with Nordstrom for Nail the Mix, so

Speaker 1 (00:03:01):

July, 2019.

Speaker 2 (00:03:02):

Yeah, man, time flies. I feel like the past year has just been a whirlwind. I don't remember most of it.

Speaker 3 (00:03:10):

Well, I do, but it was, of course the COVID thing is terrible, but it didn't really change my life all that much because I'm working from home and have only remote clients. Yeah, but there were some, you couldn't have all the holiday Saturdays and Sundays. It was only me and my wife, which I have no problem with, but that's the only time you could feel, oh, let's meet. No, we cannot because of the fucking COVID. So that was the biggest change. And we also like to travel. We've been to New York and to Florida and we went to the north of Norway and this and that, but this year we just took a little holidays where the COVID wasn't that bad at the time. Some islands around Holland, and so it's kind of nice.

Speaker 2 (00:03:57):

Well, it's interesting that you say that besides that hasn't really affected you because that is kind of what the majority of people I've had on the podcast or now the mix have said because most of them, if not all of them, do at least a large percentage of their work remotely and a lot of the other ones who don't figured out ways to start working remotely or to just take on other kinds of work. So I think overall the people in the audio industry, not the live industry, but audio industry did pretty okay actually.

Speaker 3 (00:04:35):

Yeah. And for a change, I thought it was really cool that I also took the step to do it the way I do. I mean, I work with bands from around the area in Germany where I live just now. I finished an album with a guy he lived probably 20 minutes away, but it's better that I do my stuff here. I send him the files and he listened there when he have the time because it's also so that I work a lot with bands that have this as their passion and their hobby. Not that many bands I've worked with all do it full time. They are more into this that they go to a studio and then they stay there and do their thing because that's a part of their whole thing. Then they go on tour and this and that. But I work a lot with people who have to squeeze stuff in after the kids go to sleep, they will listen and write some corrections and this and that.

(00:05:20):

So I knew already when I started again in 2004 in the autumn that this is possible. This have to be in some ways a parallel way to do it. I mean the other way will go on, but I think this is, I just like it. I don't like having to make all the decisions on the fly. When you have five people, they're all over the studio doing God knows what other than listen to what you are actually doing. I think it's better that we all focus and I think a lot of records would've sounded differently or been differently if it wasn't for this way of everyone can take their time, listen in the car. I feel way more relaxed now when a band say, yeah, it's ready. We are done. 25 years ago, I was terrified because I didn't really know if they really had listened in the car or at the friend's place or at a party until they get the actual cd. They could start listening around because they had a cassette and then it say, oh, I wonder what they think now because it is released now. It's like when they say it's done and I send the DDP out, then I know it's turned out great. They really did listen everywhere and everyone with a say in the mix have heard it the way it will be presented forever on streaming or whatever. So that is the way I love to work.

Speaker 2 (00:06:44):

It's very, very weird the old way of doing things where people couldn't really actually hear the end product. And so in a lot of ways you're expecting musicians to understand what they were hearing through your studio monitors.

Speaker 3 (00:07:00):

And we all know that the old term sounded great in the studio. Either you didn't understand anything what was, because I mean, I did not so many records in other studios, but I do remember that I couldn't really relate to any of the monitoring either it was the super mega big 18 inch thing in the wall that blew your brains out or they had small stuff like the early and tens or the aura tone or whatever that just sounded like there was no bottom end in anything. And I'm like, okay, this doesn't sound anywhere like my home stereo, like this kind of middle ground. So actually when we mixed one of them say we have to go to a Hi-Fi shop or someplace where they have normal stereos with a cassette and listen. And there we heard tons of things that we needed to change in the mix and we just went back and did it that way because I mean I did a mix or two in what then became Fascination Street, the first location, it used to be called Studio Cooling and he had this super expensive A TC speakers in the wall and I remember trying to mix some hardcore and punk stuff and I had no idea you could use 15 db bass, okay, this sounds cool, and then not do that and then just crank everything worked.

(00:08:18):

And I was like, how is anything supposed to sound? And I was not really doing the whole ab thing back then, but it was like nothing was telling you this is wrong. And I remember the studio owner coming in at one point saying, well, that's a lot of base. And I'm like, oh, okay, probably overdoing it here. But those big monitors, they can handle anything. The monitors I was used to, they kind of gave in. They started choking or started to sound terrible when you were doing stuff a little bit too much. So I was super focused on trying to find a monitoring situation where I knew what I was doing and then everyone at home, they have their car stereo or their Hi-Fi and these days I guess there's earbuds and headphones and they can instantly say, that's too much treble or that's too much base. And I just love that.

Speaker 2 (00:09:06):

Yeah, it's funny too, I think a lot of audio people talk shit about their clients listening on earbuds or whatever it is they listen to, but I don't understand what the problem is. If that's what they listen to everything through, then it doesn't matter how good or bad it is. All that matters is that they have a frame of reference that they understand. They know what's supposed to sound good on what they're listening to because what they listen to every day. So I think that even if what they're listening to isn't the most HiFi or detailed or high quality method, that doesn't matter. They're not the engineer, they don't need that. All they need to know is if they like it, does it sound competitive to what they already listen to every single day? That's what actually matters in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:09:59):

It's like having sometimes four or five guys out there with a clear reference that they may not understand it, but it takes a lot of time before you get that kind of reference as a mixer. You have some headphones, you have some speakers or some what I used to go to the car a lot, I don't anymore. But that was just like it doesn't matter what it is, you listen to other music there and now you listen to the mix and if it doesn't sound super good, it's just so raw and brutal, there's nothing you can do really. That's just the truth hitting you in the face. I get that a lot from the guys. I must say that in the last four or five years, the changes have been not so much about the tone or the balance, it's just more like little detail work, meaning that the stuff I do translate extremely well to all different kinds of monitoring situations.

(00:10:51):

And that was a dream of mine when I started because there are some records that always sounds the same. Doesn't matter where you hear them, they just have that sound everywhere. And there's something about those records and when I could come to that point that the guitars or the character of things just remain and then there's maybe a bit more treble, a bit more bass depending on how you set your Hi-Fi or the response whatever, but the main kind of tone of the sound should not change so drastically. So the vocals are gone in one speaker and then super loud and the next.

Speaker 2 (00:11:27):

Yeah, absolutely. I have heard some people say, tell me what you think about this. That referencing on multiple speakers once you're at a certain level of experience is kind of pointless because your own speakers so well that you already know how things are supposed to translate. Now I feel like there's some truth to that, but also I know plenty of people who are amazing who reference on multiple systems. I personally don't think that it's one way or the other, but what do you think?

Speaker 3 (00:12:00):

I am so a sucker for the sweet spot and since I haven't seen one of those rotating speaker stands yet, so I could remain in the sweet spot, push a button, and then another speaker show up exactly where I used to have my other one. Then I could, because all the time you have then a bigger listening scape or what do you want to call it? Because it has to be on the other side or above or under or I used to work selling pro audio for super many years and I had sometimes eight different speakers and it was super complicated to have this where you could click on a switch and they all changed because when you place them, so they look, the coolest one is super narrow and one is super wide. Or you could just place them in equal speaker with the space being equal, but then the customer have to move a little bit to the right all the time.

(00:12:57):

Okay, now move and every listen to number three, now move again. And that was just so weird. And I learned in that moment. Sometimes I would take my mix to the shop and reference and it was just like eight different sounds of, I don't know really. It's like, oh, here it sounds cool there. It sounds cool too. Oh, okay. Also pretty cool. So just having that one reference is super when it comes for me and speakers. And then I am also a big believer in headphones. Not so much for the balance of things because of the whole phantom center issue with the bleed between the ears and this and that, but I like to have a room free environment that I can bring with me and the pair of headphones I've been using, I've been using since 2005, not the same pair but the same model.

(00:13:49):

And I just know instantly when I crank them in a certain way, if it doesn't do this, then it's not good, then it doesn't work if something is peaking there or this makes my ear feel a little bit funny, something is wrong with the mix or the mastering. It doesn't matter what the speakers are doing. Those are my lifeline. I call them super important. And also when I would still be buying keyboards or pods and that kind of guitar stuff, I would just bring my own headphones, plug them and say, no, this sucks. But if I would've been given some other headphones that I had never heard, I might have bought that thing because it sounded good in those headphones where music normally sounded super strange. So I think getting a pair of headphones that you can trust for just that vibe and knowing when you listen to a record that might even have won like Grammys for how good it sounds, if it doesn't sound super good in those headphones, well maybe you should buy another pair because that's probably a really good sounding album, very well balanced and all that stuff.

(00:14:56):

So I get by with this and I try to switch rather between headphones and speakers rather than lots of different speakers because I think it's a little bit confusing because they cannot be in that same spot. And I have a system here where I also can do some EQ to my speakers, add a bit high and base and just have this button that I can push and then all the kind of EQing to the speaker is gone and then it's there and this makes more sense to me. How would it be now with a bit more high end? Would the mix just get that nice kind of scooped feeling and nothing starts sounding weird or not? So I am more into that coming from a little bit in the really early times, I used to have a Hi-Fi as my monitoring and there you could add a little bit base on the graphic EQ or whatever and just see what happened. When you pull it up, pull it down, is it only this that gets treble or does the whole mix get treble? So it's neatly balanced in this spectrum way.

Speaker 2 (00:16:02):

The thing that I really do like about headphones or in-ear monitors, the Empire Ears monitors is the very simple fact that they sound the same everywhere.

(00:16:15):

That's a beautiful, beautiful thing, especially for people who travel to work producers or mixers who do stuff in other people's studios all the time. I mean the idea of not being able to have your own true north is kind of disconcerting. I mean I feel like a really good mixer can make anything work, but really, really, really once you're in other people's rooms and on other people's monitoring systems, you really don't know what the hell you're hearing. And one of the big advantages of a proper pair of headphones is what you said is being able to have the same sound, the same everything every single time that you use it. That consistency is amazing. And there are really good headphones and in ears now. I think that there was a long time where the idea was you shouldn't do any of this kind of work in headphones other than to just check low end or something or to check edits. But I do think that this younger generation who grew up with headphones, they're proving, well, not just them, but I'm saying them specifically because that's what they grew up using. They're starting to prove that the whole idea of not being able to mix or master with headphones on is a myth at this point. Maybe it wasn't in the past, but now I do think it is.

Speaker 3 (00:17:42):

And I think also that when you would consider that you buy a really good headphone, that sounds really good and that's your only monitoring, I think you would end up making a lot better demos or whatever it is you're doing than buying some not so good speakers, placing them so you listen with your stomach rather than I've seen pictures like, okay, that's going to sound strange. And I think given the price, and also this what we talked about earlier, how you might have listened to reference stuff for years before you say, okay, now I will start myself. And you kind of remember, well that sounds not fat enough because those other records don't sound like that. So I probably have to add a bit of bass here. But these smaller speakers, that just doesn't sound good and they're not properly placed, you end up doing so terrible mixes because I don't think people sit and listen to music all day for a couple of months in those speakers, they just, I'm going to start a home studio.

(00:18:49):

They put them up, they put them wrong, and then they just start working EQing tweaking or doing whatever, and they never really have this real life vibe going on. What does total California sound like in those speakers? And I've had that throughout my career that these are studio monitors. You only listen to this, what you do when you're working, you don't listen to normal music. But there were a few times when I kind of did just because I was cleaning or whatever and I put on some record. I still remember the shock I got when some records I remembered sounding a bit thin. They just had so much more bass than what I was used to. And I think, fuck, I think I'm doing something wrong here with my mixes because if that's how much bass that thin sounding album have, well then my mixes have no bass.

(00:19:40):

And then you started thinking and changing and then I started to listen more and reference more. And also remembering when you went to the mastering, what actually started asking, what are you doing? Yeah, I'm adding a little bit of bass. I said that means that I am probably hearing too much bass or when the monitoring in speakers is really, I think at the end of the day when you have that one going for you with especially, I don't know, it's just better. But if I had to choose then I think that the headphone option would produce better results somehow. Maybe not perfect. There might be a bit more of that vocal up, vocal down or because panning and all that mono stuff is a little bit weird unless you have some software to kind of emulate the spill from the right speaker going a little bit into the left ear and that kind of stuff.

(00:20:33):

But I have done albums 100% in the same headphones that I'm wearing now, and I have had people saying it's their reference record and one of the better records they ever heard sonically, I was like, oh, that's cool to hear because I mixed them in a pretty cheap pair of headphones. But I did everything in these headphones and I just knew that's how a kick sounds, the snare sounds on all those other records. So of course you kind of go for that. And I remember I had to check a little bit like the vocal balance or a solo guitar, solo, whatever, all that mono things had to be sometimes a little bit up or down. But general soundscape, I had no problem with that.

Speaker 2 (00:21:17):

So recently with Remote Nail the mix, which is what we had to figure out because of the pandemic, we have been encouraging the mixers to use headphones if possible, if they don't want to, they don't have to. But we would love if we got our wish, and it was an ideal scenario, they'd be using headphones during the live mix because then there's no sound from the speakers going into their microphone and phasing against the stream coming off of the daw. So headphones makes our life a lot easier and most of them have complied. And it's very, very interesting that some of them who never really use headphones by the end of the nail, the mix, they'll say things like, I could actually probably do this because the mix sounds fucking amazing in some cases better than the original mix that they did crazy. And also we have had people who just mix in headphones, come on, or who do, we just had Buster Oda home on who goes between his six sixties and a set of Amon.

(00:22:35):

Now Amon are amazing. And he did his nail in mixes three in a row. We did a triple all in headphones. And I do think that the mixes, he did sound better than the originals. And I'm just seeing it. I'm seeing it every single month that people can do this shit in headphones. And really it comes down to, not to get redundant, but it comes just down to the same thing that matters with speakers, which is do you know what you're hearing? Do you understand what you're hearing? If you understand what you're hearing, you're fine. If you have MacBook Pro speakers, the new ones with the low end and you understand what you're hearing, you might be able to make that work too. Might be. It's not ideal, but at the end of the day, if you understand what you're hearing and you know what you're doing, you should be able to get the job done in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:23:31):

And to have that portable is even cooler somehow. I mean, I spent really much money on a pair of Jerry Harvey, what you call it, GE audio or something, I don't know how you say it really, Florida company. He kind of invented the in-ear monitors, Jerry Harvey. They had a model I paid, I dunno, $2,000 or something for it molded and all that stuff with God knows how many roofers and tweeters or whatever in them. And I had one of my biggest kind of audio experiences in those ER monitors with that little digital preamp that came with it. And I just couldn't know that sound could sound so good. And my whole skull became a subwoofer. It was surreal. But I tried and tried, but I could not mix with them. I love listening to music. I love listening to movies. You have all those 23 hertz things going on in the background was super interactive, but I just couldn't get somehow mixes to translate.

(00:24:36):

They sounded good in ears, but when you went to the car or listen somewhere else just didn't work because they were a little bit too tweaked to sound good on stage when you're a performer. But that was really good sound. That was crazy. And I still have them, they don't fit really good because it's like my ear canal changed or whatever, but still for watching movies or just enjoying music, it's super. So when you can invest in something that sounds really good, but also you can mix in because they are not too notched or whatever in the upper mid range, that's something I just recommend to everyone. Also a musician to know that when they have an album mixed and they need to have some reference stuff going on, they can ab to other records that they really know what they're listening to. That is super important.

Speaker 2 (00:25:29):

There's a company called Empire Ears that I mentioned earlier, and they have a model called the ESR, I guess the Mark two now. And they are flat, they're in years and they're flat as fuck. And they're the only in years I know of that mixers that I know have been able to actually work with. Now what's interesting is they make all different models of in years, and some of 'em have way more low end, kind of like what you described. And the model I have since I don't really mix anymore is kind of like what you said, enhanced low end. It's great for movies and things like that, but the amount of low end, it was actually designed for drummers.

Speaker 3 (00:26:11):

So

Speaker 2 (00:26:12):

A drummer helped them to reference and to make it sound good for someone sitting on stage. I mean, it's an $1,800 in here, it sounds unbelievable, but for mixing maybe not so much, but their esrs are actually flat. They are really, really, really flat. And definitely I know quite a few people who have been able to mix with them. They're so flat that it throws people off at first. But yeah, nothing is hyped, which is pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:26:49):

It takes a while to get used to, but it's

Speaker 2 (00:26:51):

Also, yes, it does.

Speaker 3 (00:26:52):

It's also good to have one of those around. And I remember also, like I was saying earlier, these super big stony monitors that is all built together with a control room. And I guess when you measure them, it's pretty flat. But back then I was really used to more like a lot of bass, a lot of treble. Everywhere in your high five was like full bass, full treble loudness button pushed in. And that's how you kind of knew sound. I never really heard what was flat to a microphone sound because the way our ears work and also that you don't really hear bass, you feel bass. And then it becomes, it's really a complicated sound until you understand the whole Fletcher Manson thing and why the loudness button is there and this and that. You learn and then you realize, okay, but it's always good to have a flat starting point. Then you can do all the tweaks necessary for you to hear all the frequencies at all levels because we all know that it's kind of a dynamic thing, so it's not always working to have the loudness button pushed in, but at lower levels it's actually making the sound flat to you. But when you would put a measurement microphone there, it would look really, really weird.

Speaker 2 (00:28:06):

Yeah, exactly. And I guess another thing too is I do encourage people to treat their rooms, but let's be realistic. Most people getting into audio now are in rooms in their house or apartment. That's just the way it is. Most people listening to this are working in their house or apartment in something that was a bedroom or is a bedroom or in their basement, something like that. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's tons and tons of people at the top levels who do that. So where I'm getting at though is that to be able to design a studio and to take into consideration its acoustical properties and to build it from the ground up the way it should be for listening properly, like the way Chris Crut did or Andrew Wade did, or some people do, I think Will Punny just did it. You can do that and that's awesome.

(00:29:06):

And when you get to that level, that's great, but there's a lot of people who would prefer to just mix that of their house or whatever. And so if you're dealing with converting a room into a listening environment, you can put up the panels and all that, but it will never be a perfect listening environment. No matter how many panels you put in there, it will never be a perfect listening environment. And so you'll never have true flat in there. All that does is make it that much more important to a try to get some sort of way to listen to true Flat, which is through in years like that maybe. And learn the shit out of what it is that you do have in front of you. Because if you learn your speakers, you can make it work in the most horribly treated scenario. For instance, my business partner Joey Sturgis, always mixed in an untreated bedroom. All those gold records he has were done in the shittiest acoustic environment. But the thing is, he knew exactly what he was hearing. And I think that that's the moral of the story, I think with our conversation so far to me is learn how to figure out how to learn what you're listening to and recognize it.

Speaker 3 (00:30:30):

Absolutely. And some people have their references. It's like they hear in an instant. I've come to this point now where there's this subconscious thing, I get something to mix or something to master, and that first thought within the first five seconds, that's too bright, that's too dark. And then I say, oh, but maybe it isn't. And then you start working with it, but it's never wrong. You have that here, it's so fast. But the problem or what needs to be done, and I guess that's also what the mastering guys have that sit in the same rooms for a long, long time. They just have this kind of muscle memory for, I remember when I was still going to other mastering rooms, they would just put the DA tape in and they would within 10 seconds start with their EQ knobs like some old stove, like, okay, this needs a bit of this.

(00:31:17):

And it's like they just knew it. And I was like, okay. I had no reference there whatsoever. They could have done all weird kinds of things. And I was just, yeah, that sounds, I don't know better or different. I have no idea because I never had any headphones or whatever to bring. And I remember at one time I was in a really big studio and I asked if I could just connect my headphones to the big console. I said, no, this one doesn't have a phones jack. It's like a real console. So what I can do. And then it was had to get an headphone amp and connect this to the patch bay. It was super complicated. I had no idea what's going on here unless I can easily connect my headphones in the control room and this and that. But that's not how they did it.

Speaker 2 (00:32:06):

Well, they didn't need to because they were used to it.

Speaker 3 (00:32:09):

Yeah, because headphones, you don't use headphones in a super expensive big ass studio control room, end of story. That's what you use in there where you do the recordings. So I think, yeah, that's changed a little bit over the years,

Speaker 2 (00:32:23):

Man. It's all changing, but I actually feel like it's for the better, these changes we're discussing and the changes I'm seeing in technology are for the better. I think that it's a beautiful thing. What you can do now with these tools is it's a beautiful thing. I just think back to how hard it was to do audio in the past or learn audio in the past or get things to sound good in the past. I do feel like it is a little bit sad that some of the, I guess old knowledge is in some ways being forgotten, but at the same time, does it matter? And the reason I'm saying that is because you hear new productions that sound fucking amazing, that have nothing to do with the old way of doing things. And so I sit there and I hear that, and I think, well, we're evolving past that. That's just the way these things happen. And I don't feel like production is moving backwards at all.

Speaker 3 (00:33:23):

No, I think the only thing that I personally think is a little bit something I still don't really understand how it was even allowed to happen is the whole loudness war thing. I've never come to terms with how that could happen. It's so humanity to invent all this, oh, let's have this higher rates and bit depth and we get rid of all the problems with the old ways, but then let's just invent some sonic plague that just has to be done to degrade the audio. And then we degraded some more before it reached. It is like why? I just couldn't understand why they couldn't lower the volume of those rap songs or whatever. That was the loud ones. Why did everyone else had to be sometimes 10 dbs louder with really terrible equipment? And then just the idea to make every other thing as loud as that, even if it meant that it sounded terrible, that was okay.

(00:34:20):

And the whole industry is like, okay, that's what we have to do now let's remaster everything and just tweak it so it sounds worse and sell it again. I mean, I've come to terms with it. I'm very much a participant in this whole make it loud stuff and all that, but I just couldn't really understand, and it started way earlier than I thought. Actually it was already back in 93. You could hear albums suffering from that whole limiting volume thing. That's really the only thing that bugs me now is still the loudness war. And people say it's gone away because of streaming, but that's so not true. And the world of metal is as alive as ever, I'm afraid.

Speaker 2 (00:35:03):

So what I think is different now is that a lot of people care less about it. And I also think that people are figuring out how to work within it. But I agree it hasn't gone anywhere. And it's one of those things, I wonder really what can be done about it, because I think that it's something that the clients want, right? The musicians want that. The musicians want that. And it seems like the audience wants that. They get tricked by the volume and because those two parties seem to want that, I don't see it going anywhere.

Speaker 3 (00:35:40):

No, I've tried to educate people since, I think in 2013 I started to do an FDR full dynamic range version of every mixer, every mastering I have done, and I sent it to the clients and somehow I don't know what to do with this, but what is this? I say, yeah, that's the best sounding version of your album. No, but the volume is it. Yeah. And then you try to make them understand, but they just don't. And some don't even understand. They think it's a choice that the volume can either be this or that. And I chose to make it a little bit less loud. No, you are sacrificing things to make it louder, but they don't really get that, and it's really, really hard sometimes because it is so that it needs to be up there with their previous album or the other album.

(00:36:36):

And there's really no easy way to get out of it. And it seems also that the more limited things are, the streaming engines will play back things at different volumes too, because it's a normalization process that feels peaks inside the material that of course, when there are no peaks, because it's all looking at a piece of duct tape on the screen that is going to play back louder when normalized because the algorithm is not feeling snare peaks or whatever. Transient. Yeah. But I think sometimes also the tools we have now to make things louder are like a gazillion times better than only 10 years ago. So I'm not crying as much when I have to kill the stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:37:26):

That was my point when I said that we're figuring out how to work within it. The tools are way better and people's skills are higher. Now, I will say too, that I learned the hard way that the loudness war is not a hill that I want to die on because on my band's final record, the self-titled doth album that came out in 2010, I was very much wanting to make a statement for a natural sounding mix with a super dynamic master, very few drum edits. I wanted to make something that was just fucking real and over the top and did that. The problem is everybody thought that it sounded bad compared to our previous album. Now, eventually over time, people stopped feeling that way, and I guess people with a more sophisticated listening palette understood it immediately. But it hurt us actually. It hurt us to take that stand. We should have just mastered it loud and got it on with it because the public did not get it. They just didn't get it. There's nothing we could do to make them get it. I think it sounds amazing. I feel like it was a dumb thing to martyr myself for.

Speaker 3 (00:38:45):

Yeah, I did it for a while. For all the stuff I did for Century Media, I could add flack or high resolution MP threes of the full dynamic version as a ROM part to the physical cd. I did that kind of thing only to likes. There is a better sounding version, but I'm not allowed to make that the official version. But for any audio file out there who likes stuff at the intended dynamic range, here you go. It is cool now because of all the vinyl stuff and all this can be cut from the full dynamic range masters because there's really no loudness war going on in that sense that people are comparing and this and that because the medium itself will somehow sound more silent the more music you try to put on it. So the only way to win the loudness war is to say, our new album is four sides 45 r pm and it's not really that much music per side.

(00:39:43):

Then it can be pretty loud for vinyl standards, but that's just like a physical limitation. It cannot be loud if it's longer than blah, blah, blah, minutes per side. Yeah, I have all those things, and it's been a spike lately with people who want to have this master thing that sounds better for vinyl. And that is of course, when stuff was not killed for sometimes up to 10 dbs of dynamic range or whatever. Or it's like, of course that other one sounds better, but like you said, people will think it's something wrong. It's like a rough mix or whatever they call it, because it's not loud. I don't want to get into it. I just get all aggressive and

Speaker 2 (00:40:25):

Crying. Oh, way to get into it. So the thing is, lots of engineers will say, well, that's what your volume knob is for. Turn it up. You can't tell the consumers what to do. You can't say things, just turn it up, bro. You idiot. So this makes me think of something that I've noticed with marketing stuff for URM. I learned this years ago. Most people just don't read things. Say that we have an announcement of a time that something is going to be taking place. We post it on our calendar on the site, post it in our Facebook groups, we send an email about it. It's on the actual product page. It's in all these places, and people still don't see it. Some people just don't read. I'm not saying they don't know how, I'm just saying they just don't. I feel like this just turn it up thing is kind of would be like if I got super frustrated with that and just decided, well, they should just read.

(00:41:28):

We put it up there. So it's their fault that they don't know. Actually it's my fault for not figuring out another way to communicate it to them. But I feel like this, just tell the consumer to turn it up. That's what their volume no is for is like, yeah, sure, but they're not going to do that. So it's kind of a dumb argument. You can't tell them what to do and they're not going to understand that this is quieter, it's supposed to sound better and I can just turn it up. They're just going to hear something in the middle of a playlist that's different.

Speaker 3 (00:41:58):

Yeah, I've tried for 10 years to educate people and to appreciate them and this and that, and yeah, it's kind of a dead end. But I think, like we said before, the tools have gotten better and you learn some tricks along the way. And I think there are ways to make stuff not maybe this super miga DR four loud without any super sacrifice, but I can get stuff a few DBS louder now without even hearing that I'm doing something negative to the audio than, I don't know, five, six years ago. So it's a part of my daily life. I make stuff loud all the time, and that is so, but it's just the one thing that we were talking about that I think is not really a super big step forward. It's just like, why did that have to happen? Because all the other things are so awesome, how easy people can get good recording equipment and you can record at home, you can do this and that. But that thing always kinds of, it's like a little bit of a mood killer.

Speaker 2 (00:43:04):

I think it's like any other advancement. Anytime that you have an advancement, a technological advancement, there's going to be both the good sides of it, what it allows you to do easier or faster, and then there's going to be the unintended consequences. And I think that that's true with any sort of evolution. There's always going to be some dark side to it no matter what. There's nothing on earth in my opinion, that's been invented that doesn't have some sort of a drawback to it because we don't live in a perfect world. And so I do think that that's one of the drawbacks to how things have gone, but I think that the overall big picture is a beautiful one.

Speaker 3 (00:43:48):

Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 (00:43:50):

Yeah. I love the fact that we don't have to go to a $3 million room just to get work done.

Speaker 3 (00:43:59):

No, it's super cool. It's beautiful. It's really, really cool.

Speaker 2 (00:44:02):

And if you do go to a $3 million room, that doesn't mean it's going to sound better than something that's done on a laptop. It's crazy. The price difference of the equipment has zero bearing on the final result. In my opinion at this point. The only thing that matters is the skills of the people working on it. And that's a beautiful place to be in, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:44:26):

Definitely. And I think sometimes when you try to make the wrong kind of music in the wrong kind of setting, this super large console and all these things and all you do is this kind of electronic stuff, I think that stuff is better done in the box. Just adding stuff together. You don't need to do all that other stuff that you might get a better result when you want to do some old sounding stuff, like some country album that should sound like it was done in the sixties. You might get something from a big studio because that's what they were using back then to do those albums. But now with some of the stuff I hear on the radio here, the commercial channels, you don't need anything to do that. Sometimes it sounds like it's a synthesizer and a drum loop and then super processed vocals with some kind of meloy autotune robot thing going on.

(00:45:18):

That's how you do it. And it seems to be working because they're playing that fucking song all the time on the radio, the vibe that can happen when you are like five dudes in a room playing together, recording live. And I heard a podcast the other day where they say that you should buy a console because the clients you are after and also the a and r guys and the label X from this big corporations, they want to have a console in a studio. It doesn't matter that you use maybe only the talk back in the stereo channel. When they come in here, they will go and look for the studio because this to them does not look like a studio. This looks like an office with speakers that is dying a little bit. But there was a time when I had to help a local studio that was in a similar situation kind of get gear, only because they were having some executive from Sony or whatever coming by, and they needed their place to look more like a studio because everywhere around Stockholm at the time, they still had the super big consults, but they were not really using it, but they of course didn't tell it.

(00:46:25):

And that was the thing, they came through the door, wow, this is a real studio. When they went up, do you know what all these knobs are for? And ha ha, this kind of stuff. I mean, sometimes, I mean, I would be a little bit, you have your car fixed and you come into a room and there's no car fixing equipment, only a laptop, which probably could actually repair a couple of cars in these days. But you would say, Hmm, where's all the car fixing equipment? We don't need that stuff anymore. We do all here with an ethernet cable. So okay, that would probably feel a bit strange. And that's how they see recording. It must have this big console.

Speaker 2 (00:47:04):

I don't know what podcast that was, but I think that they are living in the past with that idea. Now, first of all, I know exactly what you're talking about, and I used to call it client appeasement. Certain pieces of gear were there for client appeasement, specifically for when an A and r guy would fly to town. Exactly that or when a band is coming to check out the place for the first time. This was something that I thought about all the time back in the two thousands. That was definitely on my mind, and I know lots of people who did that sort of thing because there was a time when clients did look at a studio as not just the skills of the person using the studio, but as what's in it too. But man, I don't think I believe that that's the case anymore.

(00:48:00):

And I'm saying that because I know so many people now who are getting work and getting great work for labels and for great artists who don't have that kind of setup. They do just have a computer and some speakers and some of them have no outboard. Some of them have a lot of outboard. But my point just being that whole idea of you need the console, you need all that stuff. I think maybe that's not so much the case anymore. Just think about this too. The a and r people at this point in time have been taking demos from people who work in their bedrooms and make amazing stuff for well over a decade now. And they've been working with producers and mixers who come from the bedroom world who make amazing stuff for well over a decade now. So they're getting used to it too. So I'm not sure I agree that it matters in the same way that it did. Now, of course, it's always impressive to walk into a room and see the SSL or the Neve and see all that cool shit.

Speaker 3 (00:49:18):

Yeah, there is something to it, but I don't think it's necessary anymore. I think that was more like how it used to be because they were visiting some guy and he had now the new place was all in one room to total chaos, and it was more about getting a vibe and having instruments around and making everyone feel comfortable. But there was a time when a studio had to be in a certain way or it was not a studio end of story.

Speaker 1 (00:49:45):

Yes,

Speaker 3 (00:49:46):

I've been away from that for super long. I did it already before I got one of the first small digital consoles and everyone was like, oh, what's that? A typewriter or what? So no, it's a digital console. You can program it with flying faders and that kind of stuff. And they had never seen such a thing. And I just loved it because that was what I needed to do, all that kind of super intricate black and deaf metal stuff. Then there that was super easy. And then all I wanted to was to move that into a computer. And that wasn't until I think, I don't know when it was really happening. When it was happening, and it was sounding okay, was the first UAD card that I bought for a lot of money when it only had three plugins. That was the first time you could feel that you could mix in the box and it actually sounded really good. And that was also a really, I think oh one or something like this around the turn of the century. Then if I could do all in the box, that would be so good. But up until then you needed to have a digital console or one of those yamahas or whatever, just because they had better internal processing than the computers at the time. And they could run a couple of waves plugins and then it would be over one C four and it was like, oh, oh, here we go.

Speaker 2 (00:51:05):

Yeah, man, I remember I had a control 24 for a while,

(00:51:11):

Which as you know, is just a glorified mouse. But even that did great for client appeasement. It didn't have to be an SSL, they just like Vegas mode. So they were easily tricked by things like that and they wanted to be tricked by things like that. But I'm not so sure that people are tricked by that kind of stuff anymore. And here's part of why. So I remember when I went to the studio the first time when I was 14 and we're recording on tape and I didn't know anything about this stuff. And so everything that the engineer was doing was magic. It looked like an airplane cockpit. I didn't know what anything did. And the fact that this person knew what all those buttons and knobs did, and we heard our song coming through the speakers, the best we've ever sounded. That was very, very magical. But if I had a way to record at home with EQ and compressors and amp sims and all this stuff, suddenly that's not so magical anymore. And everyone has access to that stuff now. So the magic of going to a studio and watching someone just turn some knobs and know what everything is, I don't think that impresses people anymore. Now of course, you go to Andy Wallace's place and watch him work some knobs, there's magic because he's Andy Wallace, but it's not because of the gear, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:52:50):

Some people still prefer this to be together in the same room and the room is bigger than a garage, like this big live room things. But also the budgets don't really allow for anything. Maybe two days of drum recording and then you're blown a big chunk of your budget and then you have to do the rest for free at home or something like that. So it's a different time. And I think I would be suspicious sometimes when people have too much old consoles and too much gear and all that stuff and they cannot really do a recall, I think would maybe be more damaging to the situation than how much better it would sound. Because recall is a big thing these days, but what people expect sometimes is crazy. But I have a total recall since a long, long time, and I can do it, and I'm super careful also with what I update and not So I can open a mix from two years ago without any missing plugin, without anything saying anything and just tweak that thing they want and do it.

(00:53:53):

It happens all the time. People need, I don't know, stems or backing tracks or, oh, we want to mix this new album, but we want exactly the same sound like the other album you mixed for us. I said, okay, why not just replace the files and make it a bit cheaper? And it's working all the time and it's really a cool thing. And imagine to do that with a big console in a lot of outport. And I never felt that it's sounded that much better than what you could do with other gear. It's not like this insane difference because then I would probably have tried to stay with the gear because I do like it when stuff sounds great, but I could never motivate the bank balance difference.

Speaker 2 (00:54:36):

The idea of its sounding better I think is also kind of flawed. And the reason I say that is because with analog gear, it doesn't even sound the same as another piece of analog gear that's the exact same model. So you don't have an accurate way to judge. So there could be one piece, one version of a compressor like that one unit that sounds fucking amazing, but that's not the same 1176 that is in somebody else's studio or that's not even the same, say they have 3 11 70 sixes. All three of those aren't even the same.

Speaker 1 (00:55:15):

No.

Speaker 2 (00:55:15):

So there's no actual way to judge or measure the quality level of this analog stuff. Now the only thing that matters, and this is really important, and actually a guy named Josh Schroeder who did nail the mix in February, he is a very, very intelligent, philosophically minded producer and mixer, and I agree with what he's saying. He likes the analog stuff because of the types of thought processes that it inspires. Something in that workflow triggers you to do things a certain way, which produces a certain type of result that he likes. And so to me that if you're going to make an argument for any type of gear or any type of workflow, that's the best argument right there. The argument that this allows me to do my best work when I work with this kind of gear turning knobs or whatever, it triggers something in my brain, which allows me to do the best stuff I experiment in ways that I wouldn't experiment in the box or whatever. If that's the argument, then awesome. But then again, that's a completely individual personal argument and someone could say the exact same thing about A DAW that they use that something about working in this stage, this DAW with X plugins and X workflow just works for me creatively and that's why I use it. That's the best argument I think.

Speaker 3 (00:56:47):

Yeah, and it's the end result. It was always about the end result, and

(00:56:51):

That's been a part of my life since I was a teenager and I mixed demos on my four track cassette recorder and I stole work from other studios around and they just couldn't wrap their head around how I could get that cassette thing to sound so good. I say I don't treat it like it's four demos or whatever. For me, this is four channels from a 24 track machine because the bandwidth is not that super me different. When you see you have your two inch tape and there's 24, and then you have that little cassette and it's four. Yeah, it could sound okay. So we recorded some stuff onto it, like commercial albums and we played it back. It's like, do you hear super degradation of sound from this whatever Pink Floyd album or whatever. No. Sounds like that Pink Floyd album sounds super good.

(00:57:40):

Yeah, so why couldn't the snare drum or a micd up Marshall Amp sound just like any of the records we are buying and listening to everyone like, oh, it's only a cassette porter studio. It'll sound shit. Whatever you do. Yeah. When you treat it like that, it will trust me. But when you have a really good microphone and you take great care of getting good source tones. I'm still remixing stuff from that four track stuff and it sounds great, all the drums from one track and all that stuff, but it sounds really good and I think you just have to respect whatever you are recording too. I mean, I grew up with Sound on sound, which you had to balance everything and you had to play the whole song through, and so for us, four tracks was like, wow, like a revelation you could actually punch in and punch out and raise the volume up and down later and do reverb only on this and that, and when you went to eight track to 16 and all that, that's super cool. You just have to make sure that the end result doesn't sound like in any way that people can start asking, oh, that's just a crappy demo studio when a four track cassette porter sounds like it is an actual studio recording. That's all that really matters how you did it. It's completely unnecessary knowledge. It sounds great. Cool. That's it.

Speaker 2 (00:59:05):

Yeah. I mean, who are the only people that care about how you did it and judge how you did it? There are other engineers who had nothing to do with you making the record and who probably don't buy the record who probably don't even listen to that band.

(00:59:22):

That's true. Yeah. What is that saying? Working all your life to make a bunch of money to buy things to impress people you don't even care about or something of that or to impress people you don't even like. I butchered the quote, but that quote makes me think a lot about engineers caring too much about other engineers thinking that they're doing something dumb. It kind of the same idea that a lot of heavy bands are too obsessed with being true or super heavy and they will do things artistically just because they're afraid of what the other metal bands will say about them.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):

Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):

It's kind of dumb.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):

Yeah, I've seen it really up close with all these black metal black metal guys. So have I in the nineties that was Are we more evil than the other bands? Are we faster than the other bands? And it's like, okay, who cares? It's like, who write the best song?

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):

Did you burn a church today? Yes or no? We've got a checklist here. Didn't burn a church. It doesn't matter. Nope. Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, you are M Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month Nail the mix members, get the raw multitracks to a new song by artists like Lama God Angels and Airwaves. Knock loose OPEC shuga, bring me the Horizon. Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(01:01:19):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jenz Borin, Dan Lancaster to I Mattson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content and man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(01:02:13):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to urm.academy to find out more. That's an interesting thing to me, by the way. The idea of doing things wrong or being afraid to do things because of what other people think, and I'm bringing this up because I see a lot of beginners in the URM community say that a lot of the stuff that they've seen on now, the mix was enlightening because somebody will show something that they thought was wrong because somebody else told them it was wrong, and so they were always afraid to do it and then they see this person who makes great sounding records just do that thing that they thought was wrong and it's like a revelation to them that, wow, this person makes great records and doesn't care what people on the internet says all they care about is that something sounds great?

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):

Yeah, I had that a lot. You're not supposed to be using that gear or whatever. I mean, one of the albums that people come back to me for is the first dissection album called The Somber Lane, and that was mixed on a PA console that we bought to my progressive rock band as kind of a keyboard and vocal mixer. Didn't even have mute or solo buttons or whatever, and I just rema that album sometime back and I think, fuck, I did this when I was 19 on a PA console on a Fostex B 16 and I had one compressor and two reverb units and it sounds really too good to have been done with this kind of stuff. And it's like, yeah, but everyone around local musicians and so no, that's not even a real studio console. Yeah, but it's the best. I have somehow the limitations of that console also made those albums sound the way they do because when I got another console later on with all these parametric mids and all these a sense and all this stuff, I didn't really understand stuff sounded a little bit worse for a while until I found my footing with that new big studio console, but that old PA console, it was noisy as hell, but it was kind of cool.

(01:04:47):

I had 16 tracks and two subgroups or whatever and yeah, I mixed, I don't know, three, four full length albums that I've sold quite a lot and actually some of them started little sub genres and I think, yeah, why not? I mean I was just happy doing it. I never really sat one day and said, I'm going to start a recording studio. I just kind of got forced into it by bands who wanted to record with me because they heard the demos I made with my bands and they wanted that kind of sound also and the money was not really an issue, so all of a sudden I just kind of had to have a recording studio.

(01:05:26):

So the gear was just like, okay, I can use this and I can use that and that's it. Then I had some stuff was not even supposed to be, I had this sheep version of a Yamaha SPX 90 called the Rex 50 that was more like a guitar version of the SPX 90, but I thought, ah, it's good enough. It's got some cool reverbs in there. So I just used that for many years and then I bought a second one and they were sheep. They were me a crap. I found out later that they were not really all that nice when it came to the A DD conversion and stuff like that, but they worked for me and they're on tons of these records and people still have, they love this ambience and how they sound and I said, yeah, it was just that old pretty sheep gear. Nothing ever costed more than like $2,000 that I used when it was brand new. I never paid that for it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):

It comes down to making the best out of what you've got,

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):

And I always did, and I always had this thing that I tried sometimes to have more gear because it looked cool in the rack or whatever, but at some point I think less is more when it comes to this, just have a few and know what they're doing and just, I don't know, it was too many choices. It's just slows you down and I think it's still, so today with the plugins and all this, I keep going back to the same ones. I could have a plugin list of maybe 20 plugins and I could mix and master without any problems, just sometimes it's cool to try that other one and I go back to that one because I know it does that thing that I need now and I don't really have time to experiment too much because everything just needs to move forward

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):

And plus how different is it going to be if you just get a new EQ

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):

Once you find the one you really, really like, which in my case is the fab filter Q3. I've been with them forever, the fab filter guys, but I just go for that one for everything all the time. There are a few specific tweaks. I do like a pull tech for some things. That's the Universal Audio Pull Tech of course, not a real one because I've used that one for so long and there were just certain tweaks, especially in the treble, I said, ah, that's how you get that sound that I've heard like a trillion times on albums. So rather than trying to figure out how that would be done with the Q3 that I have actually done with the side chain, I've seen it and I think, no, it's much cooler just to do it on a Pol Tech boom boom, ready. But for I would say 75% of my EQ moves, whatever they are, is the Q3 because it's right there. I don't even have it in a folder. It's just there in the list. I use it for everything so fucking good.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):

Yeah, I mean some people will make the argument of don't you need to keep on experimenting in order to grow? And while the answer to that is yes, there's certain kinds of tools that you don't need to experiment with. No, that's so true. Once you find an EQ that works really well for you, that's great. Awesome. Move on. Experimenting with the creative stuff, that in my opinion is where the experimentation should come. Once you figure out which screwdriver you like to use, you don't need another screwdriver, you're good.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):

And that's like you need your set of tools and you find them over the years they're ergonomic or they do this and they don't break or whatever. And I have that. I have reverbs, EQs and compression, but what I am a big sucker for ever since I tried the first finalizer, you remember them, the TC Electronics one?

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):

Oh yes. How can I forget?

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):

Yeah, that was one of the most expensive things I ever bought and I abused it and I loved it. And one of the happiest days was when I was finally able to sell it, how weird it may sound because then I had figured out how to do all that stuff that one did without that one actually doing it because it's like I saved everything all the time by running it through some preset or whatever. But once you didn't really needed it anymore. That was a big day I remember. But what I have learned from then, I love these tools that just do weird stuff and that they have never existed even as iraqian, like do you know the Gofo, for example? You try that?

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):

Oh yeah, amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):

That thing just blows my mind every time and I use it on pretty much everything. You shouldn't use it on to do stuff. It's probably not supposed to do, but it does it better than the stuff that is supposed to do that kind of stuff. And I just like, wow, is there anything this thing cannot do? And they just came with a new update with all the stuff that I felt was like maybe it could do this now it can. And all that kind of weird stuff that I think some engineers might not have the time to fully embrace something. It's a little bit abstract yet what does it do? It does a lot of calculations, pro millisecond or whatever and it makes things sound a little bit more like this and that, but I just went all in with that one and I can use it for so much cool stuff and that's probably where I am a little bit different.

(01:10:52):

I'm more adventurous when it comes to those, what is it plugins, the weird ones. And then I am super strict with all the meat and potato stuff. Then I know it and it's just a little bit less and more of whatever. I know by now all the digital versions from Universal Audio of the classic stuff, I know when I feel like a Fairchild, I feel like an 1176, I feel like an LA two or three or that stuff because that just works for some stuff. But I like that other weird stuff too. You keep finding new ways to do stuff and that's where I am a little bit more adventurous and it keeps me interested and when you give someone with really good programming skills, just like a clean slate, do something that doesn't exist that will make my life easier but doesn't really sound like, oh, he's been using that one because it leaves like a sonic footprint or whatever. Just make my life easier. And that is just one of them that I think is amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):

I call them future plugins because they do things in a way that is just brand new, which I think is amazing. Soothe is another one of them.

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):

Yeah, I've been using that one also since version one. They just keep updating and doing this stuff. What I want them to do. And I think also the sibling, the spliff or spiff or whatever it's called, it's also super cool, this anti soth thing that just adds spank and weird stuff and can remove clicks and pops and yeah, I'm using a lot of those weird things, but I would say maybe I abuse them or do what they're not supposed to do or I dig really deep into the edit and just use them as a dsr, but the best one ever rather than what they say you should be using it for.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):

Yeah, well they know what it was designed for, but you can rely on the manufacturer to understand what it was intended for and how to use it in the way that it was intended for, which is really, really cool. But the manufacturer doesn't have the luxury of using it on thousands and thousands and thousands of works and albums or songs or masters or whatever. They don't have that luxury, and so they're not going to figure out these out there ways to abuse it that really, really work though. People who are going to figure that out are going to be people such as yourself who are coming up with these interesting use case scenarios that are kind of off the wall. And that's actually why I think that a lot of this stuff, for instance, that's covered on now, the mixer URM is not stuff that's taught in normal schools and that's because it's not the kind of stuff that's found in the manuals.

(01:13:48):

The stuff that I think a lot of metal mixers and producers mastering engineers have figured out has come through doing things wrong or through abusing tools or figuring out ways to use a tool in a way that it wasn't intended for, but that works really, really, really well. They figured that out because they were on the quest for making something crushingly heavy or whatever it is that they were going for. This knowledge comes about through just trying things in the field and eventually figuring out new methods that really, really work. And you won't find them in the manual. The manufacturer might not even know that you can do that with it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):

Yeah, I've had a lot of those. And the latest is a company from somewhere in Asia called Annex Waves and they are doing digital version of the Dolby and DBX noise reductions and I was doing a lot of tape transfers and I just realized that when it's recorded on one machine and then playing back on another, sometimes the noise reduction don't seem to be doing what it should be doing. It's like eating too much of the material. You can clearly hear it working with the expansion that it's doing. So I just say, okay, fuck, I'm going to transfer all these tapes with my own music without the DOL bc and then I'm going to figure out a way to replicate what the DOL BC did in the digital domain later. I just did it and it got of course a bit brighter, but really that nice punchy sound that I really like.

(01:15:25):

And then just happened to find this annex waves. They say they have an app where you can actually encode and decode Dolby and DBX stuff. Exactly this what I was looking for. But it also turns out that when you buy the app for 15 euros, you get a VST three plugin and like, wow, that's cool. I can have it on each track of these 16 things and you can experiment with it. And it turns out that that's one of the coolest plugins I have discovered in the last time because you can do that famous Dolby trick that the guys were doing already in the eighties to get that airy nice top end on vocals and all that where they did something weird with the Dolby cartridge and all that stuff. But this is really the Dolby B and the Dolby C and the DBX one and two in a really good modeling because when I put that stuff on the tapes that I've recorded myself and heard a million times, it's actually doing exactly what it should be doing.

(01:16:25):

But I can set the threshold later. So it is as if I could go in there with a little screwdriver and start experimenting with adjusting the noise reduction on my Fostex machine, which I'm not going to do. I don't understand it really. And to do that in the digital domain, it's just so cool. You can do it with automation because some stuff actually sounds better without the noise reduction on it, even though it was encoded with it. It's just got brighter and some stuff sounds fantastic. And of course it's noisy, but then when the noise starts creeping in, you automate the threshold so then you have a little bit more of the noise reduction that it was recorded with, but of course as a code and a plugin. But what I do like now to get, you have some vocal that sounds really dark or whatever, just put that annex waves plug on it, and then you choose to encode with DOL BBB or DOL bbc, and then you get this bright and punchy compressed sound, but it's only working in the region where noise reduction works, which is of course where also the human voice sounds then a little bit brighter and punchier and it's just opening up everything.

(01:17:35):

You can use it on di, you can use it on bass on drums, and I did it on grand piano the other day on a parallel and it just got goosebumps all over my body, just abuse it and then just fade in a little bit of it with the raw signal and it just sounded like a million bucks. And I think this is how they did it, this is this what they talk about, this parallel compression and you run it through this and that and you EQ stuff, but that's just like one slider, one plugin, boom. It's all there. And I would never have found that thing that have made my life so much easier with some stuff if it wasn't for this idea to transfer this stuff from tape without the noise reduction on it and actually have to find now the digital version of a DOL bc.

(01:18:20):

The first time I googled for it, I found a plugin called Satin, which is a super good tape thing. They have also the Dolby and the DBX, but they do not have the DOL bc, which is of course the ones I'm using and that's different from Dolby B. So I had to go on searching and after Googling like a maniac, I found this annex waves thing and that is the kind of thing that I like to do. And then I have used it on anything in parallel to get overheads to open up a little bit and this and that is just such a cool thing and it's like 15 euros. It's like, okay, really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):

That's the perfect example actually.

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):

Yeah. And that stuff has happened to me all the time. I buy something because I think I'm going to need it to fix one problem, but that's the only thing I never got to fix with it. But it's been fixing 50 other problems for me since because it turns out you heard it too much when it was doing this, but they said it could. Yeah, but it was super good to do things maybe in the low end rather than in the high end because it was sounding a little bit like static when you used it too much in the high end, but it was better than to do it in other areas of sound. That can also be strange with the temporary boxiness or weird chesty sounds or whatever. And you just learn by experimenting with this strange tool. But one thing I always do is that I experiment on my own recordings, older stuff. I don't really experiment live with the bands. I used to do that in the nineties and I suffered greatly for it, but these days I make sure that I know my shit before I'm actually applying it on a paying client's work.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):

Probably wise, I do think that clients want you to be open to experimentation in some cases, but at the same time you shouldn't use them as Guinea pigs.

Speaker 3 (01:20:11):

No, absolutely not. But back in the day, there was no time. I mean, I was solidly booked for years. It's like was the craziest time ever. And when I wanted to change speakers or by that thing that you were supposed to have, there was no way around it. I could not cancel a band and they didn't know that I was doing my first mix in these new speakers and sometimes it turned out great, sometimes not. So yeah, like I said, I suffer the consequences and there was a few times and some of them still haunt me, but I will never ever dream of doing that stuff again. So I learned the hard way that this is not how you do stuff, but that was just how it was. And I was actually in a studio myself and it was like a karma moment where the engineer was doing the same thing, oh, they never worked with these speakers before, but we'll see what happens. And the record ended up sounding very strange. So there it came back full circle in my face.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):

You as a client, how do you, knowing what you know about the art and craft of a recording and production, how do you approach a situation in the studio where that's happening to you?

Speaker 3 (01:21:22):

Well, I really don't know anymore because that was a long time ago and I think the last time I was in a studio with someone else doing something was with Jen Bore when he was still very unknown when we did the Blood bloodbath album, nightmares Made Flesh, that was the last time, and that was in 2004. I think that I let someone just take over because I knew that Yens, I trusted him. I've only known him for a couple of years, but I just knew that his approach to the whole game that he just took over that studio that I had worked in a couple of times and he bought the SSL, he bought the big P tools and he slept on a mattress in the office and just kind of, yeah, I'm doing this. I was missing a little bit of that drive myself and I felt, wow, this younger kid, he really have the drive.

(01:22:16):

He can probably just do a home run with a whole blood bath recording in two weeks and it'll sound good. And it did. So that was the last time and I just let him run with it. And before that, I think it was one of the mastering sessions I did when I just felt that nothing really became that much better from having it mastered by someone else, even with me attending. And then I felt, I think I can do this myself from now on. And I did. There have been a few bands that insist on working with their mastering guy and so far it's been good, but it's always scary. I don't like this idea to let my mix go and maybe not even have the chance to hear it before it's going off to the presses. But in some cases the band is super nerdy about my work. I think they will also hear when the mastering guy is doing something wrong or whatever you can do with audio. So yeah, I would think maybe Yen Ren I would trust to mix an album of mine, but I could never afford him.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):

He's pretty great man. I actually just had him on and he talked about you helping discover him.

Speaker 3 (01:23:30):

Oh, cool.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):

What was different about him, just out of curiosity, I'm asking that. I remember Ackert telling me in 2005 when he had to have something recorded at my then studio for the Roadrunner United album. And so he just came in to do a vocal. I didn't record him. He was telling me about this guy s Boren that they just worked with who's amazing. And he had this young dude that people hadn't heard of but that he's fucking great, which that's how I heard about him was before Ghost Ries came out, was Michael telling me that this guy is going to be a big metal producer, that he's just on the level?

Speaker 3 (01:24:14):

Well, I think I know Ys, I think in 2001 or something like this, I was working at this music store selling studio equipment and he sent me an email. He showed up, he moved to, and he took over this studio that I had been working in that had this big nice A TC monitors that I didn't understand. It was called Studio Cooling at the time, and the owner Jonas ing, he would want to sell it, but it ended up leasing it or something to Ys. And I had made a deal with Jonas already that I could record vocals for Nightingale one of my bands in the B studio because I really liked, there was absolutely no room in the vocal room. It was super dead. You could hear your own heartbeat when you go in. And I wanted that kind of super dead dry vocal sound because I just felt that when you remove the room from the equation, it sounds so nice and you can stand a little bit more far away from the microphone.

(01:25:13):

So I was there in the B studio and I used to go through the big studio to go to the toilet or to make a coffee or whatever. And then Ys was working on some stuff like barbershop music, some Elvis impersonator music or whatever. And I was just like, wow, he's really going at it doing this kind of stuff the hard way, working his way up and we got to know each other a little bit. And I just felt that when I talked to him about metal and all that stuff, that he was coming from a completely different angle than I was. He was not really a metalhead. He liked gothic rock, he liked Paradise lost and that kind of stuff, but I just liked that he was super serious about everything and I think I need that kind of guy. I just need him to take this project that I had in mind with blood bath and I need someone that I can trust will do the best possible work.

(01:26:13):

And he had all that, but I felt was needed. And I don't think there was anyone else I would've trusted with this because it also involved four of my songs and I recommended him to my friends in Catatonia because they were having trouble getting a good sound and getting a good mix. And I just felt that I didn't have the time to mix the album and they just went with Yance and mixed an album with him in the metal world. And then when I heard that one I think, wow, he's really got some good shops. And then I heard an a OR album that he mixed with a couple of people I knew around that also sounded really good. Still sounds good to this day actually. It's a band called Crystal Blue, so anyone who like a OR, they should check it out. It's really good.

(01:27:01):

And then it was just so yeah, of course. And I tried to explain to him what we were after with Blood Bath with this chainsaw H hm two pedal. And I felt all the time that people that were recording that kind of very special guitar sound, they were trying to add their own flavor to it. They were trying to fuck it up again. But I really needed someone that would just take that sound coming out of that speaker and miking it up and just reproduce what I am hearing in the best possible way. And because he didn't come from the same background like I did with this H hm two sound, when you heard it the first time, you was like, oh, that's what I want. I think he thought it sounded shit like terrible. And he tried to convince me to do a little bit of that treble knob down to make it sound more normal, but I was not, no, this is a full on h hm two def metal album, but I want it to sound like I remember playing him the Korn album that came out a little bit with this Here to Stay song on it.

(01:28:07):

I want this kind of sound like super expensive, but I want this to be a Def Metal album. But with that kind of sound to it, I thought he was the right guy to do it because he had never mixed a Def Metal album before. I don't know if he had mixed that much with growls and stuff on it also. And it turned out super and I think that kind of helped him in the right path. And I am still really happy with the ways, especially the song Eaton, I think it sounds really good. And to think that it was mixed by a guy who didn't really mix that much. Def Metal I think is cool and it's all acoustic drums, all real amps and all that big SSL console and I just had a really good studio vibe with them. So I'm not surprised at all that he is as big as he is because his worth ethic back then was super cool still is, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:28:58):

I think that you can just tell with certain people it's not, obviously you can't predict the future, but you can just tell that certain people have the right mindset and the right discipline and work ethic and talent for something. Not that many of them, no.

Speaker 3 (01:29:16):

And just alone, the way he took over this big studio and how he just made it work somehow and he didn't really have this super big master plan or a super big reputation. I mean, if I would've taken that studio over

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):

Super big balls.

Speaker 3 (01:29:32):

Yeah, really bigger size balls. So I just felt that I was like, wow, this guy is really good and I think he will do a great job. It just needs to get to work with some really good stuff. And I guess, I mean you can see it however you want, but if Ys wouldn't have been the dude he wasn't still is, I would not have been interested. So it's like you say, a lot of times with the luck and the timing and all, it's just all lined. I needed him for something and he was that guy and that gave him something too, and everybody wins and he made that whole album in two weeks. That's also pretty cool. That's

Speaker 2 (01:30:12):

Fast.

Speaker 3 (01:30:13):

And he was always worried and I had done stuff in six or seven days, but of course they were full of playing mistakes and stuff like that. But I think yeah, two weeks, that's a lot of time. But yeah, we had never met the drummer. The first time we heard him play the songs was when he was actually recording the songs and that kind of stuff, but I was only there for my song, so I didn't really know, but I know that they split it up between the two studios and this and that, but it was really cool and it's still an album that I think sounds really special in a good way.

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):

So I have a question about something you said in the pre-interview that I find interesting that I'm not sure I understand. So you said that being a yes man is what made your career and also what helped propel it, but what exactly do you mean by being a yes man? Because I'm not sure that what you mean is what I think you mean, but I would just like to clarify.

Speaker 3 (01:31:12):

Well, there are some bands that I've worked with in my career that keeps popping up when people mention my name and I never had that mindset that people should audition for me or I'm better than them. I need to hear something first. Can I come to the rehearsal and this and that? I just instantly say yes to everything and I still do, and sometimes it's backfire, but I worked with, I did the first demo from Maroch, first demo from Catatonia. First time ever in a studio was O Path, all that stuff. It was just me saying, yeah, of course, of course I will do it. I will record your band, just show up. And then there were times I wish I didn't say yes the first time I recorded Millen Colin, for example. I thought it was pretty terrible and I was trying to find a way to call in sick, but I didn't in the end and I finished their second demo and I ended up working with them until I couldn't anymore and I did three albums, lots of eps and all that stuff and have a gold record and all, but that was also a yes thing.

(01:32:20):

I didn't know them. When I would've listened to their first demo, I might have said, oh, that's a lot of out of tune everywhere and oh, okay, but I didn't. I just said, yes, of course I still am super psyched that people want to work with me. I mean, the competition then was not so fierce, but now it is like a mega fierce competition worldwide. So why did they choose me to mix their record or master? That's fantastic. So of course I will make it work. That's how it is. It's a bit that the yes mentality made sure that I got to work with the band and the bands and the people that made my career that I'm still happy with today.

Speaker 2 (01:33:05):

What's funny, so a yes man, what that's referred to as someone who basically works for a celebrity or a higher up and will never tell them the truth or give them a criticism. They'll just say yes to all their ideas and basically that's how they rise is by just being yes men and basically patting the ego of the person in power. That's why I wanted to clarify what you meant. I didn't think that's what you meant.

Speaker 3 (01:33:43):

No, but I think my idea is based on the Jim Carey movie where he have to say yes to everything. That's more like weird situations. Yes, I will do that. Yes, I will do that. I am pretty far from a yes man. I do like to have those kind of people around me in bands though in that sense, I'm pretty bad in a band situation because my idea is always right, and if you don't think so you're wrong. But you see, most of the time I've been kicked out of the bands I've formed or I have duos with this other person that it's okay with that. But we have still a great communication within our duo, but I'm kind of the captain of the ship and the other one is fine by being the other person, the copilot, so to speak. So yeah, glad we clear that up.

Speaker 2 (01:34:39):

Well, yeah, I was curious, but because I actually agree with the philosophy, especially at the beginning of a career, of just saying yes to things you have to

Speaker 3 (01:34:50):

When you don't. It's like all the bands I mentioned, I had no idea and they just turned out to be the big ones. Then I got to work with some bands that was kind of known or famous before that was nerve-racking in another way. They had been to other studios, but there was something special about knowing that these guys are hearing themselves playing back for the first time in their lives. Now they hear what they sound like really, and I am the one doing it. So that was special. And still sometimes now bands are recording themselves and they make pretty strange sounding rough mixes, and I do know that I've brought a few musicians to tears in a good way because of how it sounded so much better that they could ever have envisioned from what they sent, and that is always a fantastic feeling, and I feed off it a little bit getting that really overwhelming feedback. It makes me want to work harder and see if there's something I can squeeze out of this that someone maybe wouldn't have because it would've taken too much time or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:35:56):

Man, if you don't just say yes to opportunities at the beginning, first of all, you're not going to get good because you're not going to have enough experience. So there's multiple reasons for why you need to just be saying yes at the beginning, and one of 'em is so that you can get time doing it. That's it. You need the time to go through various situations and learn how to solve problems. Then there's the whole idea of if you don't say yes, you're not saying yes to opportunities that could possibly lead to the next thing,

Speaker 3 (01:36:32):

And there's a lot of that going on. It's still all word of mouth in the early days, but that guy also played in another band and they showed up and then a guy in that band played in another band. It just snowballed, and I just felt, of course, and I was enjoying that whole thing the early times. I also enjoyed the recording bit because the guys wouldn't stay so fucking long. They started to do later. They were just there for a weekend. But then what killed me as a recording guy was the two three week sessions, and that's some kind of diagnose I have that I need to do a lot of stuff at the same time, but when you had you meet Friday evening, you work the whole Saturday and then you mix and say bye-bye on the Sunday. That was just super perfect because every day was another kind of scene that this is soundcheck and getting to know each other. This is then recording and then Sunday is mixing and making tape copies and I love that stuff, but the long sessions was never for me. That's why the way I can work now is that I can jump between projects all the time, and as long as I keep my deadlines and make sure that I don't keep people waiting for longer than they have to, I can have as many projects as I think I can handle and I just love it.

Speaker 2 (01:37:51):

Sounds to me what you're doing now is perfect for your personality

Speaker 3 (01:37:56):

And I also, I did get a lot of better with people when I was working as a sales guy in the shop, but I'm best when I can make the decision that now is when I want to work, and that was always, it was hard to be motivated and inspired at nine o'clock on a Tuesday. I still don't know how some people do it, and the first time I felt it was when I was recording in another studio and this guy wanted to start really early and I was like, oh fuck, I'm going to do the rhythm guitars now. I just woke up after sleeping on the floor or a really bad bed. Oh fuck this, is this what I am doing to the other guys that I'm recording? I cannot go on doing this. So I opted out of the whole recording thing and I never went back to it. Just do the good bits, the mix and the mastering.

Speaker 2 (01:38:52):

Yeah, I think it's super important to understand who you are, what you're good at and what you want to do and what allows you to do your best work.

Speaker 3 (01:39:00):

When I heard about guys like Bob Clear Mountain and then later Chris Lord Algae that they could only mix, it blew my mind. It's like how they do this because well, okay, they do only the fun part and people pay them for doing only this. That's amazing. But that was still in a time when you needed to have compatible recording machines. It was so much, but in 2004 when all you needed was a CDR thing in your computer so you could load in what that other guy made you backups from the files, then you were good to go VAB files or files and you start mixing away, and that actually got me back into the game that was never there. The compatibility, I never had that two inch machine and that stuff. It was only me and Studio Sunlight. We had the same machine, but we were kind of rivals there for a while, so we didn't trade work.

Speaker 2 (01:39:56):

Makes sense. I mean, what do you think about the idea of competition in music?

Speaker 3 (01:40:02):

Well, I never really was a big fan of the whole music as a company thing. One of the reasons why I have never spent, I think the days I have spent of my life as a paid musician can be counted on two hands. I think I did some session work for Star one, some session work for Theory On and this and that as a singer, and I did some work for Catatonia as a drummer, but other than that, I've never really made any money being a musician. I mean, I've made it as a byproduct of selling the stuff, but I never paid my salary from being a musician, and that was because I was so anti, the whole idea of the band is a company, we need to have a bank account for the band. I'm like, what? No, you're not supposed to do that. That feels wrong. And that's why I never went for that whole thing to pursue a music career as my profession. I think that is just a very foreign concept to me. But I do know a lot of guys who do a really good job at it, but that whole world is so strange to me, really.

Speaker 2 (01:41:14):

Yeah, it's interesting because I guess people are competing for attention, so I understand that they're competing for attention, but when you're making art, there can't really be any competition in that. I think other than with yourself,

Speaker 3 (01:41:29):

You have to cut through the noise somehow. I mean, the way that a band can get recognized, it's changed over the years of course, but I mean in this noise that's out there now with all the different social media things, you also have to cut through in some way doing something outrageous or being this what they talk about. In the old days, when I got signed in the end of 1990, we still had the old ways of doing things with Get Your ad in a magazine and that slow process, but now everything is so quick, but it brings back a little bit this what you said about people not reading stuff. Sometimes you post something and they just don't pay any attention to what it is they are seeing on their phones or whatever. It's just like, I don't know. It's like nothing is really grabbing the attention unless it's really outrageous or whatever. So I feel so super uninspired for the musician in me to get something out there. Now it's even worse when I felt it was pretty hard to cut through, and that was at least six, seven years ago. I just felt it was good enough to release a really good album and it would get recognition and everything would work, but that wasn't the case at all.

(01:42:52):

The musician in me could never get across the fact that we would be on the list of whatever number 28 and something that was terrible was number one. Fair

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):

Enough.

Speaker 3 (01:43:01):

I just, yeah, I she's, oh fuck this. But I do know that the audio work that I do, and I compare myself to the best guys out there, and I think that I am in the same ballpark that is, for me, that makes more sense to me than trying to write as good songs as the other bands. But they will win anyway because they are the big band. They're already famous. They get away with doing really terrible stuff, but because they're so big, people just seem to like it anyway for some strange reason, and I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (01:43:30):

I think there's a certain momentum that once a band has a certain amount of success, there's just enough people who listen to them to keep the numbers going,

Speaker 3 (01:43:40):

And they always win all the polls for best drummer, best guitar player, just more people voting for the members.

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):

Like I said, I think it's important to know yourself if that's not the kind of thing that you want to engage in, it's good to just know that because I think that for some people, they're perfectly jumping into that ring and basically fighting for those spots. But if that's not who you are, it's good to understand that and find the thing that you can do a great job with and feel comfortable about. I guess the business situation with,

Speaker 3 (01:44:20):

Yeah, I mean I'm still, the last time we spoke, I'm still living the dream. I think it's like, wow, cannot believe that I'm actually doing this and it's continuing to be great, and it's like I designed this little bubble that I can exist in and I can make enough money to make a decent living out of it doing what I do. That's just like on paper, so weird that that actually works. But it's always doing the best you can with every situation and somehow you get rewarded by the universe and stuff just goes on. It's super. And I think for some musicians, they probably have the same drive about their music and whatever they want to do. I have about what I do with the mix and the mastering and it's just great. I just think sometimes it's so unfair that the really good stuff just don't get noticed. But I guess I've heard this analogy on your podcast sometimes I think it was Brian Slagel with this vehicle with the four Wheels and all that stuff,

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):

And

Speaker 3 (01:45:20):

I only had one wheel. I was this unicycle my whole career. Never had a manager, never had a booking agent, never had anything lawyer, nothing ever. So it's not weird that I'm not as famous as some of the guys that I know or whatever that's still touring, playing two thousands of people. They had all that. The whole vehicle analogy worked for them at a really early stage. They knew it, okay, let's make this into a business. Let's pick up a salary from our company. Let's do this. And they were like, wow, you are crazy. You're going to make a living out of playing hardcore. Wow. Respect.

Speaker 2 (01:45:59):

I've said this on the podcast before, I've always felt like that if there's an artist that's good and they haven't gotten super big with it, there's a reason. And the reasons are often found behind the scenes. They don't have the right team. For instance, maybe the band itself doesn't know how to communicate with each other and just make really bad decisions, always fighting or something. Or really, when it comes down to it though, they just don't get the right team behind them. And every band I know that is doing super, super well has the right team behind them. So I think Brian's pretty much right. I don't think that it's by accident that some bands are really, really big and others that are good just because there's so much more to it than just music.

Speaker 3 (01:46:57):

And I learned really, I mean I was still a believer in this, that if it's only good enough, it will find its way and everything will be cool. But once I started working in retail, you were selling things in the shop and sometimes the product itself wasn't all that super, but it was outselling all these other super cool things that I liked because the machine behind it was perfect. They just made sure that this product is just flying out the door and everyone is making money and it's well promoted and this and that, but it doesn't mean that it's even better than that other thing at the same price. But the distributor of that product didn't give a flying fuck about making it the thing you need. And then I realized at some point, fuck that. That's my record. I'm that other box that's there in the corner collecting dust while this is that other big band doing the same kind of music we are, but they roasted the occasion and have the machinery behind them to push their product.

(01:47:57):

We might have better songs according to me, but is it sounding as cool on this big stages as our stuff would do? Maybe not. Some even designed the music to sound really good on a big, at a big festival. It's like they don't have all this cluttering stuff. They have really basic stuff because played back at a really loud volume. Some stuff just gets too much, but when it's really raw and direct, like ECDC or whatever, that just hits you in the face and you get that sometimes on this big festival stage, it's like, wow, this sounds good. It's like they play a fucking CD in the PA system, and that other band with 1600 backend tracks sounded like a mess. The PA was broken. So that was a brutal discovery for me that at some point you become some kind of number on an Excel thing. Oh, they didn't sell enough. Just kick them out. Let's find something else with that style and maybe they will work better. And so that's when I said, oh, I'm so happy I didn't choose this or have the bug to be a musician. Some of my friends have, they can't get rid of it,

Speaker 2 (01:49:11):

And if they can't get rid of it, then that's what they should be doing.

Speaker 3 (01:49:14):

And they do, and some are happy to do it. Also as a part-time thing, maybe tour a little bit every now and I feel so sorry for them because of this whole COVID thing, because it's like having this thing you love taking away from you when it is being on stage and doing this little weekend or whatever. But lucky for me, I was never that big of a playing live kind of guy.

Speaker 2 (01:49:35):

Sounds like you figured out the right thing to do.

Speaker 3 (01:49:37):

Yeah, I'm super happy with this. And it just kind of happened and most things in my life that I set out to do in a certain way planned it. They didn't really turn out all that great. All the other stuff are just happy accidents, right time at the right place kind of things. And they led me to these other things, people who know me that I would be called in some circles like a deaf metal God or whatever. I mean still 87 and 88, I was listening to this a OR pump rock kind of music playing progressive rock and this and that, and all of a sudden I'm this growling deaf metal guy. What happened there? I said, yeah, I don't know. It was some teenage thing. I was attracted to that sound. It was new at the time and I felt something for that darkness.

(01:50:25):

You could combine it, you could tweak shit up. But without that path and recording all the bands I recorded in that genre, nothing would've happened. That was the thing, and that was this super strange left turn that I did away from all that I'd been doing since I was like six, seven, that was joining in on the dark side, so to speak. That made my life still to this day. So it's super weird. That just happened. And through that deaf metal thing, my progressive rock band and my indie rock band all got record deals and could, it's super weird, but focus solidly on this path I thought I must be taking. That would've led nowhere.

Speaker 2 (01:51:10):

I can echo that, and this is why when people ask me if they should go into popular styles of music or take the safe choice, my answer is always no. You should do what you can actually be good at because that's what will get you noticed. So for instance, before doth or parallel to Doth, which is my band that got signed to Roadrunner, I had a band that was also like a rock band when I was at Berkeley and I was in it. I was learning songwriting, not at Berkeley, but I was teaching myself songwriting and I wanted a way to write songs that weren't extreme metal. This band was doing everything write, but something was just missing. But it had the choruses, it had everything. Then I went back home for a winter break back to Atlanta from Boston, made some death metal demos, and I immediately knew that this was what I needed to do.

(01:52:12):

I needed to follow that. It was so much better than my other band, and it didn't matter if it was death metal, it was just so much better. I was convinced that that would be a much more sure bet than this super commercial rock band. So I totally moved to follow up with the death metal band and basically Death Metal has opened the doors for me for literally everything I have in my career. I laugh about it all the time because it hilarious. It's absolutely hilarious. That kind of stuff could lead to what it has. But the point being that I followed on what I could do a good job with and that's what led to everything I'm doing. Extreme Metal continues to pay off and I am so thankful that I didn't do the safe thing and keep pursuing, I guess more popular styles of music back then. So I really do believe that it's super important for people to follow what they can actually stand out and make a difference in excel, in what it leads to, who the hell knows. But it doesn't matter in my opinion, if it's part of some obscure style or genre, that's an important, what matters is how good you can be at it.

Speaker 3 (01:53:37):

Absolutely shouldn't be afraid of experimenting and also working with different genres and this that as a mixing or a mastering engineer, it's all, you learn something from this stuff that you can bring to another. And I think for myself, and you have also done this, that when you are working with this super dense blast beat, driven def metal stuff that's tuned down to the low Q and all to make sense of that, and then you get to mix a rock song, it's like, okay, what to do with all this space here? And then you can, that's just luxury because you're used to this image of sound that's just super dense and all these little different shades of black that you have to navigate through to make sense of everything. And it's like, wow. And I think my first recording for another band was this kind of cryptic slaughter style blast, beat driven hardcore, and that's what I cut my teeth on a portal track. It's like, okay, that's fast. How to deal with all that stuff. And you just did. You found ways to make sure that stuff got separated and how you micd stuff and all that. So you just really dive in at the deep end. And then when you started recording more normal stuff, it's like, wow, this is easy. While some people have never recorded something heavier than maybe a Nirvana song, and I don't know how they would even react when they would hear something like Naum or whatever that I did all the early stuff where

Speaker 2 (01:55:11):

Now if they're not into that, that's okay. If they're not into going for heavier stuff, that's okay. But I feel like if that's their passion, the heavier stuff, if that's what they're drawn to, they shouldn't be afraid of it. And I'm saying that because I know people who have wanted to do that and have been afraid of it because they're afraid that they're afraid that it will limit them. And of course it could limit them. It could. But also going for more commercial rock stuff or pop or whatever could also, you might not have success in that either, so there's no guarantees. I think the best thing you could do is to do the thing that will enable you to do your best work. And yeah, you're right. If you get good at extreme metal, you get good at carving space. Other genres with a lot more space can be a luxury. And then the problem though becomes making them sound too metal because you're used to it.

Speaker 3 (01:56:14):

Yeah, this is, of course, it is easy to fall into this trap that everything must sound a certain way, but I mean, my heroes are still Chris Lord Algi and Bob Clear Mountain, and when you listen to their,

Speaker 2 (01:56:25):

Oh yeah, amazing

Speaker 3 (01:56:27):

Early productions, the drums are just kicking and that's what draw me to those albums. It's just like, it's not really, you were thinking, oh, this is probably a drum machine, or just like that drummer, he's just nailing it with a rim shot all the time. And he's like, every Tom hit just hits you in the chest and you've learned that they were really early on with this working with samples to augment the hits, and they were really also doing stuff with the SEM code. So that stuff was not really like 15 milliseconds later than some other triggering stuff. It was really on the money because they were, in this case, I know Chris's drummer, and I think Bob is a bass player, so they're really into the kind of, how can I say this? You cannot really trigger something, and that comes a lot later, almost like a flam, then you just don't.

(01:57:18):

But if you could push that stuff back in time so it's arriving at the exact time the normal snares hit, then you just get this enforced. And I hear this now, but I didn't pick up on it. And then I read in the books about how Morris Sound did it. They did all weird kinds of trickery also with putting the kick actually where it was played and not like I did with the LSIs D four, like 20 milliseconds later as like, huh, okay, that was not really grooving. Once you started using samples, they were also delayed. These days it's super easy, you can just align stuff, but back in the tape days you couldn't. So they did all kinds of trickery and I started doing it a little bit later with the Atari slaving up to my fostex and I could also make the minus time and you could record the media data in the Atari and then just make it like 20 milliseconds earlier than it was actually triggered and it would be exactly where the kick was hit in the overheads.

(01:58:16):

And that made a really big difference to me and that kind of little stuff that everything is punchy and clear and that's really what I want for the metal. But also when I mix normal stuff, I want everything to be punchy. And if the band don't want that, that could be an issue. They want snare hits to disappear or don't really hear the kick drum or whatever, then we might have a problem. Because also the a OR music, the pump rock stuff that I listen to have that really solid and punchy production. That's just how I like stuff. I am a drummer myself and I like every hit I make regardless if it's a splash symbol or a ride bell or a kick or a snare to be present, you should hear it. And that's also the sonic trademark of some really famous metal producers. You hear everything all the time, and you may not know this, but that's why it's also clear and punchy and then some have a problem with this. It sounds too polished or whatever. But I like it. I like to hear what's going on. I think it's what I like. You hear every little nuance.

Speaker 2 (01:59:23):

I think that that's definitely the thing that is important is that the taste of the mixer is everything, and it's actually why people should go to a certain mixer. It just make me think of when a client would come to me asking for another mixer sound, which is really dumb. It's like, why don't you just go to that mixer? But if what the client wants is somebody's sound and somebody's sound involves very separated sounding elements as opposed to just one big vibe that's like you don't need to hear everything individually, you more just feel it, then go to that person. I feel like those kinds of differentiations are the differentiations that people should make when they're hiring a mixer.

Speaker 3 (02:00:14):

They definitely should. But I am experiencing all kinds of stuff and I actually do the challenge of getting a reference track and say, we want to sound like this. And I'm like, whoa, okay, how are we going to do this? Then that's what keeps me on my toes to kind of emulate the sound of another mixer. I take my ego completely out of the equation since a long, long time. I had a time in the mid nineties where I had a sound and people were coming to me from all over Europe to get that sound, and that gets old really fast, and it's a super narrowing of what you can do. So I swore an oath that it's all about the customer. This is a service profession and this what they want is something I can bring them and we have to face it. Some of the guys they want to go to, they cannot afford them.

Speaker 2 (02:01:04):

And

Speaker 3 (02:01:04):

I also have no problem to a reference to a mix that's made by a guy who may even cost less than me. I just say, this is the sound you want. Thank you. You have actually made a decision because the worst ones are the ones who don't know what they want to sound like, and you ask them a couple of times, can you not just send me a file where you like the drum sound and the rhythm guitar tones together? And they cannot even come up with that. How the fuck are they going to react to what I do? I mean the sound they want. Let's face it, it's not all that big of a vast universe of good sounds. You can narrow it down, especially in these days, we like the drum sound of that record, and if the rhythm guitars have a little bit more bottom end, this is what we think is a good starting point.

(02:01:53):

If I have that, I can make magic, but if the dudes don't know what they want and the drummer wants that kind of sound and the guitar player that kind of sound, I know that will never work together because they're from two different times even. And I say, sorry, you need to find some common ground here. And when I get that reference like, oh, we love the hard work from carcass. I say, okay, let's make a slightly hopefully beefier sounding version of that album. And then I'm up against, is it Colin Richardson or something? I say, oh cool, let's see if I can do this. And no one will ever say in a review or even the best friend of the band will comment and say, that sounds just like Corcas. No, it'll just have that sonic smell that the vibe will be there and it's a good starting point for me.

(02:02:42):

And then they might say, that was maybe not so much what we want, maybe a little bit more low end than the albums had when they were mixed for vinyl and this. So I think fine, but you agreed on something, which is a starting point for me now because there are so many different types of good sound or what they call it fat or whatever. And I remember one time I asked a guitar player to send me a guitar sound that he felt was really fat. And to me, a fat sound is like from beyond from massacre. It's like all bass, no mids just scooped. And he sent me a sound that pretty much had no bass in it whatsoever. So the Paul Mutes had no bottom end. I was like, that's not a fat sound at all. But he think this is a fat sound because of the way you hear the string and the whole vibe.

(02:03:35):

For him, this is fat. And I would never in a trillion years have given him a guitar sound like that because to me, fat is having the root note a little bit more and a little bit of wounds from the cabinet slightly scooped. No, it was none of that. And in the end, that was his version of fat. So I'm happy that I got to hear it because I guess we could have gone on and on still to this day about what guitar Tony wanted, but he found one sent me a sample of it and I said, okay, that's fat to you. Let's go with that. It's not fat to me, but I don't care. It's your product. So let's give you your sound.

Speaker 2 (02:04:14):

I think that's a great philosophy, man. I really, really do because just remembering that it's about them being happy. You would be happy when they're happy, right?

Speaker 3 (02:04:24):

Yeah. That's all I'm here from. I just jokingly say, uni sound your sound, or I am a sonic handyman. I'm like the guy who show up to you bought a lot of stuff and now you want me to build it. I'm not going to start yelling about the color is wrong, or maybe I do it in this way instead, whatever. I just do this what you pay me to do, and it'll be exactly this what you envision it to be. And then I'm out of here and hopefully I left a good impression and the next time they need something like a new kitchen put up or whatever, they will call me again. I was distrust with Guy for a reasonable price, and that's my niche. And I have done so many references against guys that have mixed album in the metal genre for the last 10 years.

(02:05:11):

And sometimes it's stinks a bit when this is a new up and comer guy. And now I have to reference, he was probably not even born when I started, but I just, okay, what the fuck? It's the way of life and it's a very, very good sounding album. So I mean, there have been some time in the last couple of a year ago, I mixed an album for a band called Ash Return, which is more like, they call it Sword Core, which some kind of mix of metal and hardcore. And we were talking about references and they said, yeah, we used to play in this other band before we broke up, and I think the last record we did with our other band sounds great. And I was like, oh, that will be easy. And then I got this mix from this completely unknown guy somewhere in Hamburg or whatever, and I must have spent two days only to get close to that.

(02:06:05):

It was such a good mix and it was so loud and so separated and all those nightmare qualities to a guy who's supposed to get there, it's like, how the fuck he did this and remained that and blah, blah, blah, blah. But in the end, I got there and I even improved on this, what the band felt was not perfect about the other one, but I was so hard. And all the time you had your levels set up. Exactly. So you're not fooling yourself. My mix is a bit louder, so my mix sounds cooler. No, rather, the other way around, actually. So that was out of the blue, one of the hottest ab reference points, but still, I don't think anyone, not even the fans of their other band will say, that sounds just like your previous album with that other band. No, it just sounds really good.

(02:06:55):

And that pushed me beyond my limits at the time even. And I was like, wow, how you do that? And I started Googling this guy, who the fuck is this? Like a guy who makes albums? It's say, oh, okay, not even one of the 10 big guys in the world, just some dude never heard of him. And here I am struggling, but in the end it happened and sounds great still, but it was really rough when you rap against the sneak mix or some boogie and stuff or whatever, you're in for a ride, but you think, oh, the previous record with this guy, you think it'll be easy. But no, no,

Speaker 2 (02:07:31):

Never underestimate.

Speaker 3 (02:07:33):

No, there's some really, really good unknown talent out there. So I'm all the time just trying to do the very, very best I can.

Speaker 2 (02:07:41):

Well, all the known talent was unknown at some point, right?

Speaker 3 (02:07:44):

Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. And they had to be so a cut above the rest that they got to be known. And also that the work ethics and how they are as humans and all is a part of their success. And yeah, I think I'm still happy to be here.

Speaker 2 (02:08:02):

It's impressive, man.

Speaker 3 (02:08:03):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:08:03):

Pulled it off for a really long time.

Speaker 3 (02:08:05):

Yes, actually 30 years this year since I mixed stuff for other bands and they were kind enough to actually pay me money rather than beer or something.

Speaker 2 (02:08:17):

It's amazing, man, to keep it going for that long. It really is.

Speaker 3 (02:08:21):

Yeah, there are some of us still around. If I would've been doing it every day, I did have a lot of time when I was doing it, only whenever I had the time and I was working full-time in a shop. But I mean still I made so much connection. I bought so much gear, tried so much stuff, mixed, so much stuff at the shop when my boss wasn't watching. So that was kind of me working double shift, like I was mixing and mastering eight hours a day, plus working eight hours a day until it didn't really work anymore. So I never really stopped.

Speaker 2 (02:08:55):

Well, you did what you could.

Speaker 3 (02:08:56):

Yeah, it is an obsession and I'm still happy that it's still here. There's still this drive. I know some people are still trying to write a perfect song. I'm still trying, but the perfect mix or the perfect master and the drive is just there and yeah, what can I say? Happy as a pig in shit, like they say.

Speaker 2 (02:09:16):

Last thing I want to say and then I think is a good spot to end, it is just about the obsession. I get asked all the time about how do I get more motivated? And I think to myself, you shouldn't have to try to get more motivated. You should just be obsessed with it. And if you're not obsessed with it, that's fine, but you should ask yourself why and just ask yourself, is it something you really want to do? Because without that obsession, how are you going to stick it out?

Speaker 3 (02:09:45):

That is like the obsession is that weird core of this ever sustainable energy in you. It doesn't ever burn out. You think it will when you end this situation. That was all stressful. I mean, at one point I think I mixed nine albums at the same time and I ended up getting psoriasis from it, a nervous breakdown and everything, but still I am here doing it. It's still there. That drive to do it again. But I quit so many things in my life, various forms of sports and various forms of this and that, but that mixing bit, that audio related part of music, that is my true obsession. And I think we spoke about this in our previous podcast, that is why I'm no longer a musician and people weekly don't understand that. But you have released like a hundred records with your own name on it. Yeah, I did. To be able to mix it.

Speaker 2 (02:10:44):

And they're still out there

Speaker 3 (02:10:46):

And it's like, oh, can you please do a new album? No, I cannot because it's not in me anymore. I just recently took up singing again after five years of not singing. That probably never happened in my life ever, because I think I was singing all the time when I was even a kid. But that was just like, no, I got to focus on this stuff and let my voice heal after I growed a little bit too much. But it's like that burning passion is all about the sonics and also what I like about this, how my setup is so minimal but so extremely powerful. That's always what I wanted to be able to just pack a few things up and go, not to have this big fucking hangar full of stuff that, oh, I have to stay here now for the rest of my life because I can never move all this shit. I can pack pretty much all of the important shit in my small car and just drive off and I could set it up somewhere and make a good mix. That was always this also that must at some point in time be possible. And now it is, and I'm ever grateful.

Speaker 2 (02:11:50):

Well, that's awesome, man. Congratulations. And Dan, I want to thank you for coming back on. It's been a pleasure talking to you again. Likewise.

Speaker 3 (02:11:58):

Till

Speaker 2 (02:11:58):

Next time then. Alright, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post them to your Facebook and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levi URM audio at URM Academy. And of course tag our guests as well. I mean, they really do appreciate it. In addition, do you have any questions for me about anything? Email them to [email protected]. That's EYAL at M dot aca DMY. And use the subject line answer me Al. Alright then. Till next time, happy mixing.

Speaker 1 (02:12:39):

You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.