Arnie Acosta interview in Tape Op

[thethrillfactor]

I am suprised no one has mentioned his interview in Tape Op. Its actually an excellent interview with someone who has been mastering for a long time.

A couple of things he said were controversial and others were enlightening.


1) He left A&M because Universal was trying to force him to master Rap music and he refuses to do any rap.

2) He remastered the entire U2 collection for Itunes directly from as many as the original masters themselves.

3) The way he works with U2 is they send him numerous amounts of mixes to try different things. There is usually lots of editing involved. Also if there are problems with the mixes he talks to Edge to get the problems resolved.

4) Mastering is something that takes literally years of critical listening to do.

[jdg]

it was the first thing i read in this issue.

Originally Posted by thethrillfactor

1) He left A&M because Universal was trying to force him to master Rap music and he refuses to do any rap.

i wonder why? lyrical content is what i'm thinking.

[thethrillfactor]

Originally Posted by jdg

it was the first thing i read in this issue.



i wonder why? lyrical content is what i'm thinking.

I think that he is probably a spiritually based person who doesn't want to do something against his beliefs probably?

That's the impression i got.

Its cool though to have friends you can call up right after like Doug Sax who hand over the keys to his place with no questions asked.

[fradoca]

well even if he has remastered a bunch of u2 albums
i still prefer the mfsl editions of War and Joshua Tree.
The mfsl cds sound more analog and the levels are not so high.



cheers

[Silvertone]

Originally Posted by thethrillfactor

I am suprised no one has mentioned his interview in Tape Op. Its actually an excellent interview with someone who has been mastering for a long time.

A couple of things he said were controversial and others were enlightening.


1) He left A&M because Universal was trying to force him to master Rap music and he refuses to do any rap.

2) He remastered the entire U2 collection for Itunes directly from as many as the original masters themselves.

3) The way he works with U2 is they send him numerous amounts of mixes to try different things. There is usually lots of editing involved. Also if there are problems with the mixes he talks to Edge to get the problems resolved.

4) Mastering is something that takes literally years of critical listening to do.

Personally I don't think he is wrong about number 4. I did over 15 years of mixing, 25 years of tracking and mixing. Mastering is a different mindset and you have to learn to affect one region of music without doing damage to other instruments that fall within that region. It's much more intense listening as you can't solo anything. It can be very fatiguing the first few years (much more so than working with bad monitors when mixing).

Now like Bob Ludwig, I can hear a piece of music, know whats wrong and know immediately what to do to correct it. I think this is what he is talking about. Many people stumble around "trying things" till they hit on something that works for mastering.

Only after years of training the mind (kind of like playing by ear and knowing right where to jump into a piece of music) do you know what to do right away.

Just my personal opinion.

I read the Paul Orifino article first... of course that's because I wrote it TWO YEARS AGO!

Then I read the Sigma article because Mike (and Joe) are such great guys and I've always dug the Philly sound. Thanks guys!