The term “legend” gets thrown all the time in audio production circles, but my guest this episode really deserves it. I’m sure you already know this but Ken Scott has worked with the Beatles, David Bowie, Elton John and Supertramp amongst so many others, so I was delighted when he agreed to join me for this episode ! There were so many things we could have talked about it was hard to know where to start, but here are just a few of the topics we covered: * Why Abbey Road trained their engineers in mastering before they were ever allowed to engineer a recording session * The value of mentors - a ..read more

We’ve been using “soft clipping" in mastering for over 20 years at this point, but it suddenly feels as if it’s all anyone is talking about ! New plugins, new suggestions about how to use it, and wild new claims about how amazing it sounds. Except it doesn’t. At least – not all the time, and not for all material. In this episode Joe Caithness and I dig deep into the details and talk about: * What clipping is, and what it isn’t * The crucial differences between hard and soft clipping * What makes a great clipping plugin (and why comparing them is a nightmare) * Some of our favourite clipping pl ..read more

The Billboard Top 50 global singles from the first half of 2024 have an average loudness of -8.3 LUFS So that’s how loud we should be making our masters, right ? Well… It certainly might seem that way, but in reality it’s a bit more complicated than that. This is only one of the interesting results that Ian Stewart presented in his latest blog post for iZoTope, and in this episode I asked him back on to really dig into some of the details and nuance. Plus I also wanted to talk to him about the amazing plug-in that got invented during the last episode he was on ! (Well, that’s my story and I’m ..read more

2 cool things (and a special offer!) by Ian Shepherd ..read more

People are always asking me about mastering for vinyl, and I’m happy to try and help based on the experience I have. I don’t actually cut vinyl myself though, so that advice is always limited and second-hand. So for this episode I decided to talk to a genuine expert on the topic - Scott Hull from Masterdisk - and really get into the details. Scott’s knowledge and experience of cutting vinyl is enormous, as you’ll hear, and I took full advantage of that in this episode ! Some of the things we talked about include: The 4 stages of vinyl production, and why each is important How making assumption ..read more

I’m always arguing for balanced dynamics rather than loudness for it’s own sake, but some people have a different opinion - high loudness is important, and even beneficial. Nick Di Lorenzo is one of them - he says that loudness is important regularly on his YouTube channel. So in this episode I invited him on to explore that idea in more detail, and really get into the nuances of the topic. Do you need to be mastering loud ? Topics include: * The practicalities of loudness * What makes things sound loud anyway ? * Record labels versus loudness * Why loudness IS important * Why LUFS don’t matte ..read more

You can't go a day without someone telling you how loud your music should be, these days. "Everything has to be -8 LUFS" "EDM has to be -6 LUFS or louder" "-11 is the perfect balance" "Just master everything to -14" ...but they can't all be right ! In fact, none of them are, and even more importantly, they may not even be talking about the same thing. And the differences are really important. So in this episode I try explain really clearly and concisely: The 3 different types of LUFS The difference between them Why it’s crucial to know which type you’re talking about Why mastering to integrate ..read more

Everyone is talking about inter-sample peaks and True Peak limiters - or in fact it’s more accurate to say they’re arguing about whether ISPs are audible or not, and whether True Peak limiters sound bad ! In this episode I’m joined by Alexey Lukin, iZotope’s “godfather of RX”, to talk in detail about exactly what ISPs are and why they’re so confusing - including: * How are inter-sample peaks measured, and why do you see different results with different meters ? * What are DSP overshoot peaks, and how are they different ? * What does over-sampling have to do with all this, and why is it importa ..read more

If you’re not already listening to Matt Boudreau’s fantastic podcast Working Class Audio, you need to start now ! Matt is a highly respected mixing and mastering engineer who has recently moved into working in Dolby Atmos, where he’s already picked up some seriously impressive credits - oh, and also produces one of the top Audio podcasts around. Which is why if I try to think of anyone better to learn the fundamentals of good audio for podcasting and journalism from… well, I can’t. And the great news is that Matt has put together a new “PodClass” course to help people with just that. In this e ..read more

DJs get a lot of flak, especially about loudness. There’s a deep-seated belief that “loud” masters are still a requirement for club music, and that DJs are somehow to blame. But is this fair ? The reality is much more complicated and interesting than the popular cliche that DJs will only play loud masters, and in this episode Ian dives deep into the issue with Joe Caithness, who works as both a DJ and a mastering engineer. Topics include: The reality of DJ-ing The problem with peaks Loudness ? Or consistency ? The power of Pioneer The shocking missed opportunity of loudness metadata The ‘sound ..read more