April 2008
Tuesday, April 29
Wanda Land's album is complete. She's happy, and I'm happy.
Jonathan Russell at Masterfonics did an excellent job.
From this point, Wanda will probably set up a Myspace, hire photography, and have some CD packages printed and pressed. She will pursue the popular online avenues for distribution - CD Baby, Tunecore, and possibly some streaming outlets such as LastFM. I'm not sure if she will get into regular live perfomance.
For Wanda's pre-mastering files, I used an Apogee Rosetta 200 analog-to-digital converter, to record the stereo mixes back into Pro Tools. The Apogees are generally considered to be superior to the stock Digidesign interface converters.
I have to say, I'm convinced. The resulting mix files sounded smoother, more defined, easier on the ears, and dare I say, more analog. These are, of course, mere descriptives based on personal opinion and reaction, but I am sold. I want one.
There are other converters available, and they all have a certain sound, but the Apogee is very popular for good reason, and is not terribly expensive.
Mastering engineer Jonathan Russell's tools include a Sontec mastering EQ, and Weiss compression and EQ. He also uses a rackmounted Waves hardware L2. We had to override the L2 somewhat on one song, as I'd mixed it balls-to-the-wall with monster guitar effects, and the L2 was really smashing it in its unique and special way (sarcasm aside). Jonathan increased the gain of the actual mix file, so the L2 wouldn't have to react so obtrusively.
I think the album sounds good, and I'm very pleased and proud to have been asked to mix it.
Here's to Wanda Land for some lovely, excellent music.
Monday, April 21
Greetings all.
Nothing of substantial interest to share. Too busy living an actual life to sit here and pontificate about one.
I'll report back in a week or so.
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