Dave Collins
In this episode I speak to Grammy award winning mastering engineer Dave Collins. I had a great and inspiring time talking to DC. An Absolute gentleman and one of the worlds true Production Masters.
Here is a run down of the content of the episiode:
How long have you been doing this for?
(Dave’s history including being mentored by Joe Gastwirt and Doug Sax)
How do you know when your job is done? Ie when a master is right
“Mastering is a special kind of listening”
Online forums, and getting tangled in technology and what “should” be right vs how does it feel?
Was there someone who taught you which parts of the spectrum correlate to which parts of the music?
Did your mentors expose you to the sound of running signal through gear to hear (with everything at “zero”) what it did to the music?
Do you always just use one set of converters and clocks?
DC’s room design
Does the room have a “curve” or is the response completely flat?
*testing room acoustics by using your voice*
The level of detail ie materials used in creating the acoustic treatment of the room
Dave’s monitoring (ATC’S)
On deciding the acoustician to use and listeing to his rooms in Europe.
Was the room built with the ATC’s in mind?
Acoustically transparent gear racks
Do you ever do a digital only master?
DC on “quite often only requires one EQ and one limiter”
*about when to use compression and its musical function*
Is there something you hear on mixes all the time that is working against the music?
About processing (or not) on the master buss during mixing
Are over processed/limited mixes more of a problem at the pro end or more at the amateur end of the spectrum?
Have you ever done a master where you’ve done literally nothing to the music?
(tongue in cheek) What’s your go-to mastering chain? *spoilers* “Your Go-to mastering chain should be: Nothing.. and add from there”
Has the trend towards streaming affected where your overall levels have ended up?
Loudness normalisation on spotify and youtube
Creating masters for different formats
You can check out Dave’s main website here
Thanks to everyone out there listening. I hope you get a lot out of this one.
Cheers,
Owen