AUDIOSIEGE

11/30/2024

11/14/2024

Don’t worry about waiting on your slacker bandmates to pay their portion of the deposit! For the next couple weeks, you can schedule mastering without paying up front with the coupon code “SLOVEMBER”.

11/13/2024

Huge thanks to Edmonton, Alberta’s Culled for entrusting me with mastering their fantastic new EP, “Psycles” and for sending a couple of copies of the vinyl version, which came out looking stellar and sounding great, thanks to Rob Lawless’s tracking and Jesse Gander’s mixing. It’s available now through the band, so give it a listen and buy a copy!

11/12/2024

Congratulations to Vicious Blade, Terminal Nation, 200 Stab Wounds, and Necrot on making the top 40 albums of 2024 list! I’m honored and proud to have worked with y’all… HELL YEAH!!!

10/22/2024

Mixed in Denmark, baked in Oregon… another one returns to the kitchen. Thanks so much to Livlos for sending a care package with their new album, “The Crescent King”, out now on Noctum Productions. And thanks to Jacob Bredahl, who I’ve always had a blast working with over the years, for another killer mix. This record is really, really good, so go give it a listen!

10/17/2024

I get a lot of emails and messages enquiring about rates and availability. I don’t mind answering emails at all, but I can be slow to respond sometimes. That being said, all the information regarding rates and scheduling is on the website, and mastering can be scheduled through there as well, without waiting for an email back from me. As always, i appreciate y’all!

10/11/2024

My new favorite transformer. Hit these with about 9 dB of gain, then pull the level down with a pair of 600 ohm Daven attenuators before hitting the Dangerous Bax, and it’s perfect.

10/10/2024

Seattle’s Heiress tasked me with mastering another stellar release, and they just sent a vinyl copy down Interstate 5. This one came out sounding and looking really good, and the band did a nice job on the recording and production. “Nowhere Nearer” is available from Indecision Records. Ultra mega thanks for everything y’all… I’m stoked!

10/03/2024

I often worry that I focus too much on the task at hand to really experience an album as a listener, but I do try my best to do so, and there’s a certain balance to it. When records I’ve mastered are released, though, I try to listen to each and every one, without wearing the engineer hat. There are few things that make me as excited as I get when I see that The Metal Epidemic Podcast has reviewed an album I mastered. It often spurs me to listen to the album again, and I get so proud of the bands and everyone involved when I listen. So here’s to all of y’all… and here’s a few recent reviews. Cheers! And Dave and Duncan… I love you guys! ❤️

10/01/2024

This Aseitas album came out really good. Huge thanks to the band for entrusting me with their newest masterpiece, “Eden Trough”, which was recorded and mixed here in Portland as well, and thanks for the copy on vinyl! Great work by Connor Reising and Hazel Henry in capturing the band’s songwriting, with a weight and technicality that rivals that of the Fremont Bridge.

09/27/2024

Muso update for this week… dropped two spots to 215, but still holding on to the spot in front of LANDR. An 8 point gap makes me nervous, and I honestly don’t think a service/tool should be ranked among human engineers.

09/25/2024

A word on peak normalization, and how it can really screw things up. These two screenshots are different songs from the same mix, both normalized to 0.00 dBFS. Since the normalization simply adjusts the gain to the point where the loudest peak is at digital 0, the levels of songs with the same mix settings can be thrown off substantially, even if the general RMS levels are close. For example, if one song has a single stray snare transient that peaks at -3.0 dB, that song will be turned up 3.0 dB when normalized. If the next song, from the same mix, has transients that are fairly even, peaking at -6.0 dB, then it will be turned up 6.0 dB when normalized. See the problem there? The latter of the two will end up being louder, at the expense of consistency. When preparing mixes for mastering, never normalize them.

09/21/2024

Thanks to my good friend Scott Evans from Antisleep Audio for the surprise mug and sticker!!! you’re awesome.

09/19/2024

One of my favorite equalizers is this Auditronics PEQ-82, made in Memphis in the 70s, not far from where I grew up. It hasn’t seen much use lately, so I think I’ll blow the cobwebs off and patch it in.

09/15/2024

Since I’ve spent the weekend at the Oregon Coast, I figured this morning would be a good time to share another fantastic plugin, released this week by Pulsar Audio. Poseidon is a stellar sounding equalizer, based on the Trident A Range console EQ, with a few extra saturation and transformer modeling options. I’ve used it extensively over the past few weeks, and it’s become a staple in my toolbox... especially for midrange push before compression. It’s awesome, so give it a spin and check out the presets I’ve added to the shared preset folder (link in bio). Have fun!

09/14/2024

This week, Make Believe Studios and Metric Halo released some huge updates to their plugins, adding a few new features, as well as oversampling. If you haven’t tried MBSI, MixHead, Sontec MES-432D9D, or Sonic EQ, it’s a good time to do so. It’s all on sale again as well!

09/12/2024

Limiter lookahead times matter a lot! Pay attention here, and you’ll save time tracking down distortion and clipping where it doesn’t make sense for clipping to happen. Here’s an example of the difference 0.10 ms of lookahead makes. As you can see on the tail of this song, where bass and guitars are ringing out, there’s audible clicking with the shorter lookahead time, since the limiter is “skating” over the audio and causing distortion. On the example with the lookahead set to 0.20 ms, we still have some distortion, but it’s inaudible. This doesn’t mean short lookahead times are inherently problematic though-they’re actually quite useful when loudness is needed. But, pun intended, there’s a limit, and it depends on the program material (there’s always a sweet spot). Whenever you hear unnatural distortion in weird places, like the end of a song, or when guitars or bass are playing on their own, check the limiter’s lookahead time if the problem isn’t immediately obvious.