Was in the mastering studio this arvo with Chris Coe aka Digital Primate. He’s about to put out a 12″ of some re-mixes of his track, My Bush Would Make A Better President. The two mixes featured on the disc will be one by T-Rek (look for ‘My Bush remix’ in his player) and Spacey Space, with the other by DeeDee (2004 interview). The original mix will be on there as well.
Getting the bottom end right on tracks like these can be a challenge for me as I don’t go to clubs much at all, so getting a sense of what’s gonna work off vinyl is a combo of a couple of things. One is trusting to a certain extent what the remixer has put down in their tracks. All of the guys on this disc are solid working DJ’s so you can be pretty sure that they have already dropped a bunch of different versions of their remix on different crowds in different clubs, to see what works and what doesn’t, particularly when it comes to bottom end.
The second thing is to make sure that after compression and eq in the mastering studio, the mixes will transfer onto the vinyl with no technical problems, as well as making the most of what the medium has to offer. Really, it should be down to the mastering engineer to cut the master-disk, but not many mastering studios run lathes now-days. It’s hard to say of those that do still have lathes, how much they see use - particularly in Australia. In many ways, it all seems to have come full circle, where the guy at the factory cutting the disc is all important when it comes to getting a good transfer onto disc. I guess in some way you could say that a lot of stuff that goes to vinyl gets double mastered.
I’m keen to listen to the test pressing to hear for myself exactly how these tracks have made it over to vinyl. Getting to listen to how each project you master translates onto whatever medium is part of what makes mastering an interesting thing to do. It’s about constantly building up your ears by way of detailed listening to the same material across a variety of media and sound systems. The more I work the more I’m beginning to think that somewhere in here lies the key to becoming a good mastering engineer, or even just a good sound engineer in general.
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