Nashville, TN (April 22, 2013)—Capitol Christian Music Group post production engineer Vinnie Alibrandi is putting his DiGiCo SD11 rackmountable mixer to a novel use: mastering.
“The concept of mastering is expanding into the film world of using ‘stems’ for surround and I found that the DiGiCo SD11 served as a fantastic mastering centerpiece,” explains Alibrandi, who also engineers at FOH at Nashville’s HopePark Church on the weekends. “It’s well-suited to mastering for its center section layout. With the same engine as DiGiCo’s larger-format consoles, the SD11 offers built-in multi-band compression, snapshot automation, plus having the ability to allow any of its many channels to become true stereo channels, surround channels, or custom-built multi-channels, is unparalleled.”
Mastering has become an important step for Alibrandi in the process of readying CCMG’s songs for broadcast consideration. “We value the sonic difference between our mixes and our masters. Sometimes a song ‘comes to life’ in the mastering and even though the music may be used just as a ‘bed’ track underneath dialogue, we still want the artistic statement that our artists signed off on, preserved.”
Two of the artists he recently mastered for radio, iTunes, and CDs charted at #1 on the iTunes Christian Gospel charts: Tye Tribbett, with the single “If He Did It Before (Same God)”, and Tasha Cobbs’ album Grace (plus the single “Break Every Chain”). Alibrandi will be also be mastering CeCe Winan’s ICON album (coming in July) on the new Gospel Motown label.
Alibrandi’s independent mastering company, Mastering.me, has also handled audio post on the SD11 for a few independent films, including Alex Dreaming by Dane Dakota.
“Around the office at Capitol CMG, I am know as an ‘outside of the box’ thinker,” adds Alibrandi. “Mastering outside of the box with the SD11—besides giving me a second chance with my ‘upper transient bit resolution’—is just more fun!”
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