Dec 1, 2009 2:15 PM, By Matt Gallagher

Mastering engineer Adrian Carr opened ACMastering in his Montreal home in 2008 after a long career in New York City.

The owner of ACMastering in Montreal, whose studio is profiled in Mix’s December 2009 “Project Studio,” shares his thoughts about the broader issues in mastering today and describes how he got started.

In “Project Studio,” you note how much the audio industry and your profession changed between 2005 and 2008, from the time that you took a break from the industry in New York City until you built and opened your own project room in your new Montreal home. What is your work like for you now?
I’m always updating my Website, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs and forums. I spend a couple of hours—every day, probably—just doing Web work. It’s so much a part of our industry now, and for me it’s my business. Quite by accident I’ve come across this new business model for mastering, whereby I rarely have an attended session. I opened up here on the South Shore of Montreal and yet most of my business is coming via Internet, so I don’t do attended sessions.

I’ve heard other producers and engineers talk about this, too—that part of their workflow is getting up in the morning and answering e-mails.
Absolutely! It’s so important, because if someone is going to look for a mastering room, they’re either going to get a personal recommendation or they’re going to go to the Internet. They’re not going to go to the phone book.

Judging from the credits on your Website, it looks like a lot of your work in New York City came from record labels.
Yeah. A lot of the New York work came from labels, but of course many of the labels are gone. I was just at AES [in October 2009], and really, the industry is focusing on the indie people now to keep it alive. There’s a good side to that and there’s a sad side to that. I understand it’s good that you can be an indie artist today and I think that’s absolutely fantastic, but there’s a certain corporate approach to doing business that makes it easier sometimes, and then there’s a budget and things like that, where in the indie market today, everything has been redefined and my rates are about half of what I used to charge.

Right, because the budgets aren’t there to support many of these projects.
Exactly—the budgets aren’t there. Of course I would have to say something about home recording, too, which has created probably one of the biggest shifts in our industry, because in New York it’s really something to see how many studios aren’t there anymore. And this is of course a phenomenon across the country because everybody’s recording in their homes with Pro Tools, and that’s good in some ways. It’s great to be able to record your own stuff where you want to, when you want to; but of course the quality and the knowledge is not the same at all today because they’re musicians—they aren’t engineers. They just want to record because they’re artists! That’s great, but [now] I have to spend a certain amount of time trying to help people. If I have a good product to work with, then of course [I’ll make] it so much better.

In our December 2009 issue feature “Another Gray Area,” Mix asks mastering engineers to tell us how their jobs have changed in recent years due to low-cost tools and lower budgets, so it would be good to address that from your perspective.
I find I have to be much more aggressive now in my mastering, and by “aggressive” I don’t mean level. I mean I have to do so much more to make something sound good and I have to have so many more tricks now than I had before.

Ten years ago, I had my Weiss EQ and Weiss limiter. You wouldn’t take apart the mix. You wouldn’t do a lot of these things that you have to do today. You wouldn’t use restoration hardware on a mix because you would respect the mix and what the mixing engineer did. But today you have to do oh so many tricks. Sometimes it makes my job interesting in that I get a mix and I say, “Oh, boy!” That’s my first reaction. Then I have to look for a way that I can draw the best that I can out of that and I’m not shy about really changing the mix today to make it sound better, whereas before I wouldn’t do that. So that’s one thing that’s changed. Obviously if I get a classical mix from an established engineer [laughs] I’m not going to start pulling that apart. But with a lot of the indie stuff that comes in, I really have to be much more aggressive in my job.

Mix Books

Modern Recording and Mixing

This 2-DVD set will show you how the best in the music industry set up a studio to make world-class records. Regardless of what gear you are using, the information you'll find here will allow you to take advantage of decades of expert knowledge. Order now $39.95

Mastering Cubase 4

Electronic Musician magazine and Thomson Course Technology PTR have joined forces again to create the second volume in their Personal Studio Series, Mastering Steinberg's Cubase(tm). Edited and produced by the staff of Electronic Musician, this special issue is not only a must-read for users of Cubase(tm) software, but it also delivers essential information for anyone recording/producing music in a personal-studio. Order now $12.95

Newsletters

MixLine

Delivered straight to your inbox every other week, MixLine takes you straight into the studio, with new product announcements, industry news, upcoming events, recent recording/post projects and much more. Click here to read the latest edition; sign up here.

MixLine Live

Delivered straight to your inbox every other week, MixLine Live takes you on the road with today's hottest tours, new sound reinforcement professional products, recent installs, industry news and much more. Click here to read the latest edition; sign up here.