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Originally Posted by Samc The most sensible attitude here if you ask me. It would seem that in order to increase the importance/revelance of themselves an services, some mastering engineers are intent on injecting more of themselves into the (record making) process than necessary.
But hey.......some actually think they're artists. |
i do think mastering is an art. i think our job is to improve the music, otherwise the world wouldn't need mastering any more. for me that can involve some lateral thinking, breaking rules, experimenting with out of the mainstream theories in my spare time. however, the signature sound that i am working so hard to develop is intended to inject more of the music into the record and nothing else.
i appreciate our mutual respect for the art we are working on, but i would like to change your mind on creativity in mastering...do you think alan blumlein (inventor of stereo techniques e.g. m/s recording and processing...) was a creative genius? i do. (the blumlein-derived techniques i use in mastering help me deliver more of the musical dna from the source and the mix to the listener, imo.)
i think many audio engineers are creative too. some invent their own stereo processes, some do continuous research on dithers and make their own, some make filters or speakers...etc...some deny that they are creative, but i see examples anyway... who first employed a convolution reverb? i would consider it to be a creative invention, probably theories were proposed before it was able to be done, and is still being refined; so no one engineer deserves all the credit. who invented parametric eq? (george massenberg co-invented it, afaik) creative genius? i think so. who told steve albini to run a tape bacwards through a compressor? maybe he was not creative for doing it, (he thinks not) but whoever did it first perhaps was. the reason mr. albini gives for using this trick is to make the recording seem more transparent to the source.
those are just a few examples of why i think creativity in the context of mastering doesn't have to mean "mucking around". of course if you are already successful in a job doing almost nothing to a signal other than altering the level and a touch of eq, then i am not suggesting you change.
jeff dinces