Maor Appelbaum

Moving to America from Israel and initially working with Sylvia Massey, he is now the owner and operator of Maor Appelbaum mastering in L.A.
His credits include Faith No More, Sepultura, Yngwie Malmsteen, Meatloaf, Mayhem, Angra, William Shatner, Therion, Dokken, Armoured Saint and many more.

Questions in this episode include:
Do you have a working relationship with bands where they send you mixes and you give feedback?
Do you sometimes not even hit analogue? Ie do a 100% digital master?
Using old DAW’s and plugins.
Running signal through gear for colour.
Auditioning different sets of converters and clocks.
Do you ever get colour from using plugins?
Do you ever throw up a reference master/mix when finishing a master?
Has loudness normalisation changed where your masters are arriving at in terms of overall level?
Do you make different masters for vinyl, CD and streaming?
What gives an album longevity and enjoyability in terms of production? (spoilers: not “loudness”)
The amount of compression necessary for “that” sound is less than what people think it is?
Maor’s room and monitoring (his room was done twice before he was happy with it).
Main difference between the initial room acoustics and what it is now.
Is your room super flat or does it have a curve that you like?

Thanks and goodbyes.

Catch you all next episode guys!

Owen

Maor Appelbaum

Maor Appelbaum is a highly regarded mastering engineer. Among his credits are Sepultura, Faith no more, Meatloaf, Candlemass, Yngwie Malmsteen, Rob Halford, Angra, William Shatner, Mayhem and so many more.

As this interview was filmed with video, I have decided to split it over 2 episodes and will release the Part 2 video along with the complete audio recording as a podcast next week.

In part 1:

Owen Gillett interviews Maor Appelbaum for the Production Masters Podcast
www.productionmasters.net

PART 1

– Greetings
– Maor’s history
– Working with Sylvia Massey
– Conventional audio training
– Why did Maor choose mastering?
– Developing mastering skills
– When a client’s vision works against the music.
– When a lot of the time there IS a budget.
– Was there a project(s) which really opened Maor’s career?
– Mastering Sol Invictus and re-mastering We care a lot FNM
– Using the flaws in a recording to create character
– Processing which mixers do which works against the music
– Taking a musical, non-forensic approach to mastering
– Having a go-to chain vs doing what’s required for the music

Stay tuned for PART 2 next week,

Owen

Owen Gillett interviews Maor Appelbaum for the Production Masters Podcast
www.productionmasters.net

PART 1

– Greetings
– Maor’s history
– Working with Sylvia Massey
– Conventional audio training
– Why did Maor choose mastering?
– Developing mastering skills
– When a client’s vision works against the music.
– When a lot of the time there IS a budget.
– Was there a project(s) which really opened Maor’s career?
– Mastering Sol Invictus and re-mastering We care a lot FNM
– Using the flaws in a recording to create character
– Processing which mixers do which works against the music
– Taking a musical, non-forensic approach to mastering
– Having a go-to chain vs doing what’s required for the music

Stay tuned for PART 2 next week,

Owen

Bob Katz – Room acoustics in Digital Domain studio A & B (plus some nerding around)

In this video, I think the Jewel in the crown is getting to see inside Bob’s studio A where he shows us the ridiculously impressive raked ceiling which is 22 1/2 feet (or about 6.86 metres) tall. It’s 12 feet (3.65Metres) at the speakers end with no floor – ceiling reflections.

Dynamic directivity controls of the Dynaudio M5p’s control the vertical dispersion.

Subs are digitally crossed over and go down to 15HZ and if switched to Bob’s alternate, all analogue chain, go down to 27 Hz. Very impressive whichever way you look at it.

The Acourate room correction software is used for the final EQ.

Check out the AVAA c20 bass traps by PSI Audio here. They provide almost infinite trapping between 15 and 150 Hz so effectively eliminate the reflections from the rear wall.

Also discussed:

• How long has Bob been mastering for?
• Monitoring in studio B (Genelec 8260’s)
• Studio B acoustics (“flat” down to 20 Hz with room correction)
• Translation between studio A and B
• Recording and mixing at Digital Domain

Bob Katz

Following on from the previous episode where we looked at Bob’s analogue rack gear, he starts by saying that he isn’t in fact married to either analogue or digital processing.

We then take an in-depth look at Bob’s incredible monitoring system in this episode. What went into him arriving at the point he is now (in monitoring nirvana) with the Dynaudio M5P’s. He explains how he set them up in his room for maximum accuracy including the complicated process of de-coupling them from the floor and taking precision measurements to compare his results.

To contact Bob for mastering and for a large number of articles relating audio quality and technical understanding head to www.digido.com

You can follow Bob on facebook here

Bob Katz – studio tour 1 – rack gear

In this video, mastering master Bob Katz gives us a tour of the rack processors in  his mastering room at Digital Domain.

Here is a list of the gear we look at:

• Maselec ML4 – Multiband analogue compressor
• video monitor of the audio monitoring
• Avocet remote – monitor controller
• TC system 6000 remote – fully loaded
• “Bettermaker” – digitally controlled analogue EQ
• Dangerous Music – Dangerous Bax EQ
• API 2500 – for rock attitude!
• ANAMOD – ATS1 – tape simulator
• IJ research K1 – mastering transfer console – for routing/patching
• Pendulum ES8 – analogue vari-MU tube compressor with transformers
• “Bob’s Blender” – for parallel compression and blending
• Maselec MEA-2  – 4 band analogue parametric EQ

Owen: “I was going to ask you later if there are any pieces of analogue gear which do things that you still can’t achieve with plug ins and I think the tour answers that question. Obviously you still get something from them (analogue processors) that you’re not going to get from plug-ins, right?”

Bob: “That’s correct!”