Michael Romanowski » Studio

Studio Gear

Michael — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:30:00 +0000

(Please click on any image to see a larger view.)

The Mastering Room

Tape Machines

Lathe 2

A partial list of hardware and software

Sonic Studio SoundBlade (2)
Manley Mastering Backbone Analog Insert Controller
Focal Grand Utopia EM Monitors
EAR 825 (pair)
EAR 660 (pair)
EAR 822 (pair)
Requisite Audio LM2 MK III
Scully Cutting Lathe with Neumann cutting head and custom electronics
Pacific Microsonics Model 2 A/D/A converters (2)
Weiss DS1 MK3
Weiss EQ1 Mk2 LP
VTL Siegfried Mono Block Amps
Dolby SR/A Stereo cards (6)
ATR 102 (4) – (1″ two track) – (1/2 ” two track) – (1/4″ two track) – (1/4″ four track)
Ampex MM1200 (1″ Eight track, 1″ two track)
Nuendo 5

Studio History

admin — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 20:36:03 +0000

Back in 2001, Michael Romanowski, Paul Stubblebine and John Greenham went looking for a studio where they could have two dedicated mastering rooms. When they found the property at 1340 Mission Street, they leapt at the chance to work out of a building with great potential and a long audio history.

In the 1970s, 1340 Mission was the site of Coast Recorders. Bill Putnam, of Universal Audio fame, designed the recording studio. That studio is still in use today, and is the last recording studio of its size left in San Francisco.

Upon taking over the lease, Michael, Paul and former mastering engineer Phil Brown worked for six months to renovate the space and realize their vision of creating a facility for all aspects of music – from rec and mix to master.

They demolished the existing rooms, and took the entire studio down the bare walls. Then they rebuilt, designing the two mastering studios with acoustically correct room proportions, including bass traps and acoustic panels on the walls. At key points during the construction process, Michael and Paul consulted with Bob Hodas, an acoustician, to help with decisions around design, and ultimately to “tune” the room, and establish the correct speaker placement and listening position.

They also completely redesigned the lobby, and built the kitchen and bathroom areas to be more client friendly…

“We took a lot of pride in doing all the work ourselves,” says Romanowski. “It was really satisfying to craft everything by hand ~ from plastering the walls in the studios, to designing and building the kitchen. We actually steam bent the wood to create the counters, and hand built all the cupboards and cabinets. It was a lot of work, but was a labor of love.”

The vision has paid off, since all types of engineers are in place, and can address any client need related to making a record. Michael Romanowski Mastering is where he and Paul Stubblebine work, the second room houses John Greenham Mastering, and in the back, Matt Boudreau’s Broken Radio runs the tracking studio. Upstairs rooms are occupied by The Tape Project, and Michael Winger Productions.

Glasses – Digital vs. Analog mindset

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:34:46 +0000

A lot has been said about the comparisons between analog and digital recordings. There are a few common misconceptions about mixing in the digital domain versus the analog domain. Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) are very common these days. Much more so than analog consoles or tape machines. Something I would like to point out is the deference in approach to working with digital sound.

In an analog session, the information is stored on a tape machine and routed through an analog console. With, perhaps, outboard analog equipment such as EQs and Compressors in the signal path. This signal is the result of the flow of electrons through electrical components like resistors and capacitors, tubes and transformers, and amplifiers and VCAs. What happens to the electrons as they flow is that the nature of the resistance and capacitance create heat and distortion as the signal is affected by the physical components. The resultant signal is then combined with other similar signals to create the final mix signal.

In the digital domain, we are working only with binary digits. 1′s and 0′s. The signal in digital audio is described by its digital resolution. For instance, 44.1khz/16 bit. Or 96khz/24 bit. It is also described by its computational length. For example, a DAW calculates the change in signal as a function of word resolution; 32 bit floating point, 48 bit fixed point etc. The fixed or floating point arithmetic describes how the decimal point behaves. Regardless of the type, there is a fixed length of digital information that each DAW adheres to for is ability to represent digital audio. I like to look at this as a glass. Let’s consider a channel in a DAW that has a finite volume. In that glass is the amount of information that each channel holds. If the glass is completely empty (no signal) then the digital description is all zeros. If the glass is completely full ( 0 dbfs ) then it is comprised of all 1s. Everything in between is a combination of 1s and 0s. When you make a change to the audio, let’s say a .1db change in gain, you are adding two digital words together of equal length to create a word that is twice as long as the DAW can retain. The remainder is thrown away or truncated. In the analog domain, you would be adding more voltage to the channel which would create more lever, heat, resistance etc, ( it is not thrown away, it is like the glass does not overflow. )
Let’s look at the effects of digital summing. when each channel is like a glass that contains a limited amount of content and you combine it with another channel, you are adding those signals together and the resultant is a glass that is the same size as you started with. In the case of a drum mix, for example, that you would combing the signals of the kick, snare, hit, and two overhead mics. With these five channels, it would be like pouring the contents of each glass into one glass that is the same size as each channel. What you would end up with after you are done is a completely full glass with a lot of information “spilled.”

That information that is spilled is all of the low level, but very necessary, information that pertains to things like overtones, room reflections and detail in the instruments themselves. Now consider what happens when you do that for each of the busses in an entire mix, like guitars, keyboards, vocals etc. You are now taking all of the guitar channels and throwing away pertinent information, just like the drums. Now, what happens when you combing all of the sub mixes to the master out? The master is still like a glass that is the same size as the busses, and the channels. It hold only as much information as each of those channels.

A good question would be ” how much of the original snare drum sound is left in the final mix?” Not very much. What happens to these signals is that we will compress and change the level of the final signal, and the busses, to accommodate for the final level. We know that we don’t want any overs that can cause distortion on the master out. So it gets compressed and limited to keep it from being too loud. But that method does not retain any of the original sound that was thrown away. It only makes what’s left not digitally distort. The sonic damage has been done.
A better way to approach digital would be to not have any dynamic processing on the final out. To not have too much level, or overs, would mean that all of the information in the busses combined would not be too much together.

…and to not have each buss have too much information without dynamic processing, each channel that is combined would need to be able to be added together such that that the respective busses would not distort.

Digital recording and mixing can really sound exceptional, as long as it is approached with the mindset of how digital functions. Analog and Digital both are excellent ways of recording and mixing sounds, but they need to be understood in how they are similar and how they are different.

5 Things About Mastering Article for Universal Audio

admin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:18:10 +0000

5 Things You Need to Know About Mastering Your Music
By Michael Romanowski

The mastering engineer is the last step of the artistic phase, and the first step of the manufacturing phase. It’s the final opportunity to listen, polish, and make a change in the sonic presentation. It is also the first step of the manufacturing phase, because it prepares the master in the way that best suits the needs of the manufacturer.

The goal is to listen to the broad picture; the actual content is immaterial. The mastering engineer is paying attention to EQ presentation, to level presentation, to dynamics presentation. It’s taking a collection of songs, and creating a flowing body of work.

A Bit of History

Mastering has changed greatly since the late 1950s, when mass-produced music became the norm. At the time, record labels owned studios, and the labels employed the engineers. Engineers started their careers as apprentices, and the first stop on their path was to apprentice with the mastering engineer. This was to develop and hone their listening skills. The mastering engineer was responsible for transferring the final tapes from the mix/balance engineer, and ensuring that the transfer to lacquer (the master at the time) was as accurate as possible. The whole goal was to duplicate the tape sound on the disc. In the process of apprenticeship, the new engineer listened to hundreds and hundreds of transfers, and learned the subtleties of this art from a seasoned professional. As the new engineer gained skills, he or she typically moved to training with the mix engineer, and recording engineer.

As the studio/label relationship broke down over the years, engineers became independent, and started working in different studios. The challenge here was that each studio had a different mix environment. The engineers were then tasked to polish the results from a less familiar environment, using the tools they had at their disposal: EQ, dynamics, processing, and levels. This is the situation we are still in today, in which the role of the mastering engineer has expanded to become the final check for both the technical and artistic aspects of a project.

Preparing Your Mix for Mastering

1) Be Prepared

When you show up at the session, it’s essential that you are prepared. You should clearly label which are the final mixes you’d like the engineer to use. You should have all the details of the file finalized such as song titles, sequencing, and metadata such as ISRC codes and CD text. It’s also important to have documentation of any known problems with the files as well. Accurately note the existence and location of glitches, digital errors, distortion, bad edits, and level problems. This will save a lot of time and money during the mastering stage.
Additionally, you should know who the manufacturer will be, and what their requirements are for type of master and method of delivery. Make sure the songs have been accurately timed out, so that they will comfortably fit the size of the intended format(s). If you are supplying the pre-master mixes on an analog format (like tape), it is very important to include full reference tones and documentation of the specifics. This assures that the material will be played back at proper levels and bias.

2) Provide Alternate Mixes

A preferable way to present files is for the mix engineer to include alternative versions of the mix: vocal up, vocal down, solo up, solo down, etc. Remember it is important keep these alternate mixes well marked, organized, and documented.

With the advent of DAWs, one question that has come up is whether it is preferable to have stems as part of the delivery. Some engineers prefer stems to allow more tweaking and flexibility in the mastering process. However, there are also several potential drawbacks to this.

Including stems can blur the line between mixing and mastering. The mastering engineer can start to lose objectivity, because he or she is now tasked with balancing the final mix. Another concern is that the character of the whole doesn’t necessarily translate to the character of each of the stems. In trying to optimize each individual stem, the result is often detrimental to the nature of the final mix.

3) Don’t Over-Compress the Final Mix

Digital audio files should be delivered at the same resolution as the recording. It’s important that the mixes include some headroom to allow the mastering engineer room to work. A good rule of thumb is to have peaks at around -3 dBfs with an average (rms) around -10 to -14 dBfs. Final buss compression should remain minimal, because it’s not something the mastering engineer can undo. A standard practice can include final compression of the mixes as a reference file to the artist, but it’s best when that’s not included in the delivered files for mastering. With high-resolution audio there is no advantage to maxing out the levels.

In a related issue, it’s helpful to not have fades included on the final mixes. The mastering engineer can make fades shorter, but can’t make them longer. Sometimes in the sequencing you realize you want it longer than you thought you did, just to keep things flowing properly.

A Note on Loudness

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the issue of loudness. There are pros and cons to having high levels, but there’s a point where it can be too loud or too quiet. A misconception about a loud file is that it will sound louder on the radio, when in fact the opposite is true. Going through all the compressors on the broadcast can clamp onto a signal and hold it back. The louder a song, the smaller it will sound on the radio.

Similarly, a misconception about MP3s is that the louder the song, the better they sound. The purpose of an MP3 is essentially to shrink the file size, which occurs by eliminating data. The algorithms are designed to throw away data below a certain threshold. Low-level information is discarded. A highly compressed song has no low-level content, therefore the algorithm is throwing away information you can hear.

4) Gear Is Great; the Room Is Better

The most important piece of equipment for a mastering engineer, besides his or her own ears, is the room. The feedback given by the room affects the perspective and opinions of mastering engineers, which in turn influence the decisions they make. A revealing monitoring environment tells everything about the mix – the good and the bad. This is necessary for mastering engineers to be able to make accurate changes that affect the final translatability of the audio. One of the goals of mastering is to ensure that the project sounds as good as it can on a wide variety of playback systems.

5) Don’t Master Your Own Work

If you are too close to the material, it is hard to emotionally separate yourself from the content, and accurately hear things like level, EQ, and dynamics. This is not because you don’t have the skills, but because it is extremely difficult to have the emotional detachment necessary when you are listening to your own work. An essential role of the mastering engineer is to be emotionally unbiased. The mastering engineer and the mix engineer should be two separate people, in two separate environments.

It is always best if you can involve your mastering house early in the process. Get the specifics for submittal before the final mixes if possible. If they are willing and time permits, submitting your mixes ahead of the mastering session can allow for detection of problems and suggestions for improvement.

Conclusion

Mastering is the final creative step to take your mixes to the next level. The specialized equipment, finely tuned monitoring environment, and most importantly, the unbiased experience of a pro will help you hone your material to a competitive edge.

Following these suggestions can help you enter this final stage with confidence, and help you maximize your time for a smooth and productive session. This will ultimately save you time and money, prepping the way for a productive and hopefully enjoyable experience.

Michael Romanowski is a mastering engineer based in San Francisco. He has many years of experience and has worked with a wide range of artists, including Norton Buffalo, Joe Craven, The Radiators, Too $hort, and Paul Jackson to name a few.

Mastering Studio from the cover of Mix in December 2009

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:06:06 +0000

Here are a few photos of the studio.

(Please click on any image to see a larger view.)

ATRS

Lathe 1

Lathe 2

Pro Sound Web

admin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:12:32 +0000

Thank you Pro Sound Web for a very nice piece in today’s news.

Mix Magazine 2009 December Mastering Issue

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:57:54 +0000

Michael Romanowski is in the 2009 December Mastering Issue.

I’m very happy to announce that the cover of Mix Magazine‘s Mastering Issue, December 2009, features my Mastering room with an interview inside. The interview includes myself, Paul Stubblebine and Bob Hodas. We talk a bit about the room, the Speakers (Focal Grand Utopia EM’s), the Tape Project and of course Mastering.

Computer Audiophile Symposium – From Performance To Playback

Michael — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:32:00 +0000

This is a Symposium that I am involved with, going on this weekend at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, about Hi resolution audio playback from computers. We all know the CD is dead ( or dying quickly ). We are no longer held back by Red Book Audio constraints. The purpose of this Symposium is to show all the aspects of playback for home music servers. There are some very talented and forward thinking folks involved with this. It’s going to be very cool indeed.

Hope to see you there.

Computer Audiophile is proud to announce the inaugural Computer Audiophile Symposium to take place at world-renowned Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California. Never before has an event demonstrated this complete musical chain. Experience everything from a live acoustic performance to a high resolution digital recording to the state of the art in computer-based playback.

Witness legendary Recording Engineer and product innovator Prof. Keith O. Johnson capture this live performance. Industry leaders including Mastering Engineer Paul Stubblebine, Reference Recording’s Marcia Martin, Sonic Studio’s Jonathan Reichbach, Berkeley Audio Design’s Michael “Pflash” Pflaumer, and representatives from Meridian-Sooloos will illustrate every step in the chain from performance to playback. In addition to these well recognized panelists, Matan Arazi will debut a groundbreaking music server and his approach to developing this all-out assault on computer based-playback.

Panel Discussion about sound, listening and perception

Michael — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:50:53 +0000

This is a long round table discussion, but I think very well worth the time. All of the folks here have very good ideas about sound and listening; the experience of what music can and does do to people when all of the elements are in place. Enjoy.

Deep Listening: Why Audio Quality Matters