Please join me: As I have a wonderful and very Informative conversation with legendary mastering engineer Bernie Grundman. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.
Thanks Steve for arranging this interview. It is really so enlightening and there was so much information that Bernie was putting across to us. It beats a lot of the previous interviews done by AP in the sense that you let Bernie have a free rein in what he wants to convey about his work. There was very little self elevating on your part as the interviewer. You let the interviewee guru speak all that he wants on his work, his thoughts and his opinions. And that’s wonderful. I hardly sit down and listen all the way through most of such interviews but this one interest me enough that I sat right through!!!
It was my pleasure Chris. Thanks for all your kind words. Wow. I am very humbled. I am really glad you enjoyed it. I had a blast doing it. Bernie is a super down to earth guy. So easy to talk to.
As someone who grew up listening to dad's vinyl and then investing in it myself as an adult (right before the vinyl resurgence, and then throughout it) it's wonderful to hear Mr. Grundman's expertise and his admission about all of the flaws inherent in vinyl playback so it isn't the end-all be-all (and to be fair he talks about all the flaws in the digital chain as well). I've always been torn that the mastering for vinyl is different than for digital, and often to my ears the vinyl mastering is superior (less peak limiting/brickwalling, etc.). But it's on a medium that, no matter how great my turntable and stylus is, will degrade every time I play it (and let's not forget inner groove distortion, hiss, static pops, etc.). So it's always been frustrating to me that the best sounding master is also on the medium which is subject to so many avenues of physical deterioration.
Amazing video, thanks Steve, this Bernie interview - and also the Kevin Gray one- were awesome, great information fromd the masters. It'd be great if you could get Ryan K. Smith now, the "young master" of mastering. Best wishes from Chile.
great interview.. awful location.. doing an interview in a public place isn't a good idea for the exact problems you had. it's a zoom interview, use a zoom background and you be in a quiet place.. the 'cool location' idea degraded the experience with all the 'other' talking. Aside from that I loved how you just let him talk and you gently guided the conversation. Well done.
Deleted my own comment after seeing VinylPiper beat by 20secs. VERY hard to focus on what Bernie is talking about 20 mins in with all the background chatter. 22 mins is as far as I got but will come back in chunks. Congrats on the chat, but please- no more public spaces to talk with such an incredible legend. 👍
I love this guy, who will be able to match Bernie Grundman when he says enough of this? What a great video. I'd just sit and listen to him all night long
Excellent interview! Good questions, and Bernie is just so full of knowledge. So great to have these videos for the future. At some point the torch must be passed so I hope there are young and hungry mastering engineers out there soaking up all this important information that giants like BG possess. Thanks for the video!
Fantastic interview Steven! Bernie is obviously a wealth of knowledge from the last 50 years of recording/mastering so it was really nice of him to take the time today. His ability to explain the concepts/techniques he refers to for the average hobbyist makes this worthwhile to listen to. Cheers bro!
Steve, excellent interview. I can listen to and learn from Bernie all day long. He has such a wealth of knowledge to share, and thankfully he is fully willing and eager to share it and a fantastic human being! But as an audio-related and "audiophile" channel, the background noise during the interview was quite distracting at times, and I was disappointed and perplexed by your choice of locations to conduct the interview, though I get the "Vinyl" connection. And I'm not entirely certain the background noise was all on your end, but am assuming so due to the public store and visible clientele walking in the near background. There are fairly inexpensive and good USB microphones now that have hypercardioid (very narrow) polar pickup patterns which provide a lot more rejection to off-axis and background environmental noise, or wireless Bluetooth headphones with noise-cancelling microphones (for video gaming, etc.) If you plan to do more interviews or podcasts at this or other noisy locations, you may want to invest in equipement to mitigate this issue. I'm sure it was unecessarily distracting for Bernie as well if it was indeed on your end. Of course, this interview was done quite a while back, so you may have already conquered this issue. AND I do realize that setting up and doing these videos (sometimes on short notice) is NOT as easy as most people would think, and I appreciate these types of interviews greatly despite my petty complaining! 😉 Moving forward...I kind of had to laugh when you mentioned the First LP that you bought back in the day. 😜 I grew up primarily as a jazz drummer and saxophonist through my early school years and onward, but I was also deeply enveloped in the Rock, New Wave, Pop, and Hip-Hop/Rap of the era. AND, I agree that the "Pretty In Pink" OST was and is an Excellent Soundtrack and a fantastic selection of music, and that Bernie did a fine job in mastering it. 👍 One of my sisters had purchased "Pretty In Pink" on vinyl for me as a birthday gift when it was originally released, and it gave me hours of listening pleasure as a teen on my first turntable, a new at the time PLL direct-drive Pioneer PL-707 with an entry level Shure TXR5 cartridge & stylus with its integrated pivoting stylus guard and dust brush. 😊 I had also received my father's hand-me-down Dahlquist DQ-10 loudspeakers as a gift, which barely fit in my bedroom, haha. Unfortunately, I was just powering them with a relatively inexpensive 50-watt Kenwood A/V receiver of the era. 😊 Still, I was in 7th Heaven with the DQ-10's and my decent turntable! The next year I received an early Sony CDP-30 CD player as a gift and decided to try the CD release of "Pretty In Pink", and it was excellent as well. The absence of the clicks & pops of vinyl was a revelation. But I still preferred the overall sound of the Vinyl as I kept it in very good condition with my Discwasher Zerostat 3 anti-static gun and D4 LP cleaning brush. 😄 Good times. Thanks again to both you and Bernie for the excellent interview. Keep On Keepin' On!
Steve this was outstanding man Bernie Grundman is definitely the first mastering engineer I’m in awe with . I always listen to a Bernie he breaks it down perfectly I really enjoyed it and his experience is massive thank you Steve for sharing you asked the perfect questions and Bernie Grundman thanks for your amazing work . Lovellandrew
Hey Steve, what a great video. Compliments on making it more like a relaxed conversation rather than a formal meeting. Bernie is a master and such a nice guy. I love how he shared the knowledge of his work in a very simple manner so that the audiophile realm can become a bit more accessible. Keep ‘em coming. Thanks!
WOW! This is GREAT! Fantastic presentation! I always enjoy visiting your channel! I'm always very interested to hear about what Bernie Grundman has to share with us! Thank You!!!
That’s awesome you landed this interview Steve. I will find time to watch this very soon. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. Edit: I just finished the interview and it was a great one. Nice job on it Steve! Very informative and interesting.
Man is this a great watch AFTER seeing what has occurred with MoFi Gate! A lot of what Bernie is saying here confirms why some of us want an all analog chain whenever possible, despite the reasons MoFi cites for using DSD ahead of cutting a lacquer. The Master of mastering himself, are you really not going to trust what he is saying here?
How great is to have audiophiles, like Bernie Grundman, doing the mastering? The level of custom work and detail he puts on his playback and mastering system we can see in the final products, and they sound superb. One of his great mastering work is Miles Davis - Kind of Blue, made for Classic Records and recently released on UHQR by Analogue Productions.
There is SOOOOOO much information available in sound that computer programs cannot assign notation and space for. Therefore, computer sound programs have to pick and choose just what info they're going to choose to reproduce. And some digital programs and equipment do this better than others and digital sound is improving all the time. But they're never going to get there. What they can't seem to reproduce is the quality of the silence. That is, the ambience of the space the sound is reverberating in, including the harmonics going in both directions...higher and lower. This is what people mean when they say that good analog recordings have more "presence" and that good ears can detect the sound of the room itself. I don't see how digital recordings are ever going to be able to fully and faithfully record the sound of silence.
Thank you. I apologize for the background noise. It was suppose to be quiet in the record store for the interview and I’m not sure what happened. Next time it will be in my home studio. We all learn from mistakes. Glad you enjoyed it.
Consider using a bluetooth headset during interviews which has the capability to filter out background noise. The technology has come a long way in the last few years. People are driving in their cars and it sounds like they are in the next room.
@stevewestman7774 No problem at all. It is really a great conversation. Some mics seem to have such an omnidirectional pattern that they pick up everything. The software probably has built in compression such that the voice is compressed so the background noises are played back actually louder than they are in the room. One podcast I listen to has great mics, but they are on a table stand sitting on a hard table. It took me a minute to figure out the uncharacteristic boom I was hearing was the guest hitting the table (not visible) and not someone trying to break my door down.
Next time, Steve, if you interview BG again, could you be so kind an elaborate more with him about what he says at 1:03:25 "See, it's like what we do here. When we're equalising recordings and various things, we're doing it on an analog board. So, uh, we don't like digital equalisers, so we have our own that we build that are analog, so everything that come in here gets changed to analog and then we manipulate the sound in the analog domain and then we send it back to our final computer that has the final product." Look at the last bit there "then we send it back to our final computer that has the final product". I not against if it is all analog or not sourced, I am just curious about what is going on at this stage right before cutting. When it goes to that computer as the final product, is that just for monitoring the signal to foresee the grooves, or is a digital file created here - then played to the cutting head. I have heard so much about digital delay and such, and it would be wonderful what is going on here at this stage. It sounds to me that he records his analog equalisers to digital domain, a bit contradicting himself throughout this interview of his stand with that a digital file is degrading so much and it can't be copied and so on. To my own experience a digital copy of a file has always been a 1:1, but this not my main curiosity, my main curiosity is what is the signal path after his analog equalisers? Does he run the signal all analog to his cutting head? He was sent the Pink Floyd digital hi-res files from Guthrie (lovely records btw). He then must use a DAC, then adjust his magic on his analog equalisers, then AD again, or does he go straight DAC then analog to the cutting head, and subsidiary question to that, is the digital delay just a sample of a few seconds of the analog signal, so it is the actually analog signal being cut to lacquer (were he is at 1:03:25 - analog equalisers). To my understanding watching this, I'm being educated as if he records his magic of what he does to the computer. Hope I get my wish fulfilled. I love interviews like these. In a better environment next time.
He seems pretty anti digital, I think he meant the last computer step is what calculates the groove spacing and such. Feeding the analog signal to the cutting head.
Hi Steve, great work. I echo all the complimentary comments that have come before me. I must say though , and this not to be negative , but for some time now I have been wanting to know more of what just exactly a mastering engineer does. Towards the end of the interview we got some sense, ...call me a nerd I would love to see a block diagram showing the signal path and what devices are used and what adjustments can be made in the mastering process. Case in point does he work from a pre-mixed stereo track or is he given a multitrack source. If premixed what control does he have? he talked about "tweaking the knobs" . What are the knobs doing? And he made reference to his "computer". Sounds like that is at the last step. So does that mean we never get a complete analog path? What is the final product that leaves his facility? I assume its the stamping lacquer? These are just some of the questions I have. But it would be a different type of interview to get all that clear up . Anyway thanks again. Keep it up .
@lmontanaable I'm late to the party, but a Mastering Engineer performs nearly all of their work on the Final 2-channel "Mixdown" that is provided to them by a "Mixing Engineer" who has done all of the mixing/leveling/panning/EQ/effects/image placement/soundstage work using all of the individual multitrack source tapes or digital files that were recorded in the studio (the "tracking" process). When Bernie referred to "tweaking or twisting the knobs" on his mastering console, that primarily consists of him applying selective and corrective EQ or "balancing" EQ (adjusting the overall Spectral Balance) of the recording. Mastering also involves using at least some Dynamic Compression or Limiting when necessary in order to achieve a more even and "balanced" sound in terms of relative instrument and vocal levels, and to keep the Dynamic Transients in the music within the Dynamic Range limits and capabilities of the intended final media (Vinyl, CD, Hi-Res file, or Streaming Service). For instance, I am a saxophonist and drummer/percussionist. Woodwinds and Brass (i.e. saxophones and trumpets & trombones, etc.) and Cymbals can be overly harsh and fatiguing in the upper treble high frequency region if the wrong microphones, recording environment, or techniques are used to capture them. And as Bernie stated, if you have excessive Treble energy, the cutting head for the lacquer disc that produce the master vinyl pressing disc will have trouble accurately cutting these extremely tiny high frequency "squiggles" in the lacquer disc, and your turntable's stylus at home will also have trouble accurately tracking these tiny grooves that reproduce the high frequencies. This inability of the lacquer cutting lathe's cutting head and/or your turntable's stylus to accurately create or follow these very tiny but high amplitude grooves in the vinyl will just sound like harsh and unpleasant distortion. So these high frequencies must be "rolled off" in level or amplitude to at least some degree to mitigate this problem when mastering for a Vinyl LP. This isn't as significant of a problem as some people might think or suggest, because even by the age of 30-40 years old, our high frequency hearing capability has already began to diminish significantly below 20kHz. And from 50-70 years old, our high frequency hearing degrades exponentially with each year. (Bring in the Klipschhorns, LOL). However, these higher frequencies are no problem to accurately capture and reproduced in a digital format or medium as long as the peak level does not exceed -0 dBfs (essentially digital clipping which results in offensive distortion). But Bernie might still want to adjust the level of these high frequencies even for a digital release if they still sound too harsh, unnatural, and fatiguing. Normally, these types of issues are usually adjusted and corrected by the "Mixing Engineer" before Bernie ever receives the final 2-channel mixdown that he will master. But if Bernie's mastering playback system reveals that these instruments are still too "bright/harsh/aggressive", he might use selective EQ in the neccesary bands in order to tame these frequencies so they sound more natural and lifelike, and not as fatiguing to listen to. But you want to be as "light-handed" as possible when applying corrective EQ, because especially in narrow bands it adds an increased amount of phase shift as more EQ is applied. These phase anomolies can sound unnatural unless you are using a special type of digital F.I.R. EQ filter that does not induce these phase shifts. But these types of digital FIR filters are not as common as the standard IIR EQ filters which do impart phase shifts, and the FIR filters aren't possible in the analog domain. Another example: Bernie may also use EQ to adjust the Low Frequencies that would typically be reproduced by a subwoofer or the larger midbass speakers in a HiFi system. Perhaps the bass drum (kick drum), the electric bass or upright acoustic bass, or a synth-bass is overly exaggerated in the mix and needs to be tamed and brought down to a lower level in order to be more balanced and integrated with the other instruments and/or vocals. This might happen when the mixing engineer's studio monitor speakers do not adequately or accurately reproduce the lowest bass frequencies because they are using small, compact monitoring speakers, or they may not be using a good subwoofer (or it is not properly implemented with the main monitors). In this case, the Mixing Engineer might have overly boosted all of the lowest freqencies during the mixing process so that they are up to a level where he/she can actually start to hear them adequately on their small, bass-deficient studio monitors. But when Bernie receives the final 2-track mixdown from the Mixing Engineer and Bernie listens to it on his extremely neutral and accurate mastering system, his speakers accurately reproduces all of those low frequencies that the mixing engineer wasn't hearing unless he/she overly boosted those frequencies. So, on Bernie's system, now the bass is just way too overexaggerated and will cause the track to sound overly "boomy" and "muddy" on most HiFi systems that have decent bass response, or for instance in a car stereo system, etc. A Mastering Engineer will also bring the overall Level or Amplitude of the recording up as high as possible (within reason), and while (usually) trying not to destroy or "crush" the Dynamics in the recording that give the music its excitement and impact. "Dynamics" are the quietest vs. loudest passages in the music. The Mastering Engineer may also adjust the relative overall levels between the verses and the chorus in the song, so that a little more energy and excitment is perceived during the chorus. But this overall Level Boosting is done to maximize the Signal-To-Noise Ratio of the final recording, especially on formats like vinyl where the Signal-To-Noise Ratio (S/N) is already limited. This reduces the Background Noise and Hiss in a recording relative to the actual level of the music information, and it helps the quiet or low level and subtle details in the music to not be masked or buried by the hiss and background noise. Ideally, this type of S/N ratio optimazation would have been done primarily in the Mixing Process before it gets to the mastering stage, as is most commonly referred to as "gain staging". But the Mixing engineer should leave at least some "play room" or leeway for the Mastering engineer to work within if he/she wants or needs more dynamic control. But especially in the mid-1980's through Y2K and even today, the practice of boosting the overall levels and perceived loudness of the recording via mastering was done so that songs on the album "stood out" or "popped" and were more noticeable and attention-grabbing when playing them compared to the previous or next song on AM or FM radio. Especially in a noisy car, this would help the song to stand out on the OEM or aftermarket car stereo and be more impactful and engaging. Making the songs more noticeable and engaging means more records will be potentially be sold, and that you're more likely to stay tuned into the radio station to hear their advertising during the breaks. This was commonly referred to as "The Loudness Wars" because each record company would ask both the Mixing and Mastering Engineers to make the songs and album As Loud As Possible to compete with the other music being played on the radio. But this was a "vicious circle" and caused a lot of otherwise great recordings to be severely Dynamically Compressed or compromised, which is called a "Brick-Walled" recording. Effectively this was the absolute MAXIMUM loudness level that could be achieved on the recorded format or media before distortion started to really degrade the sound quality. But this "Brick-Walled" result is what the majority of mastering engineers today would like to avoid at all costs, at least if they are concerned with maintaining the best possible sound quality and the original dynamics in the music. So in general, a Mastering Engineer's job is the following: 1. Use a minimum amount of "corrective" adjustments to retain all of the Mixing Engineer's work and provide the best overall sound quality of the instruments and vocals. 2. Provide a cohesive sound that balances but also highlights the strengths and unique attributes of the music. 3. Minimize any weaknesses, distortion, or distracting elements in the recording. 4. Reduce background Hiss and Noise by maximizing the S/N ratio and/or using targeted EQ so that ALL of the details in the music can be heard and experienced. 5. Adjust the Spectral Balance, Dynamic Range, and overall Loudness Levels to remain within the Dynamic and Frequency Response Limitations of the chosen playback media it is being mastered for. 6. Make any sonic adjustments to highlight the aspects or elements of the song that the artist and mastering engineer feel are most important beyond what was already done by the mixing engineer. 7. Create the best possible emotional response and connection to the music. 8. In the end, optimizing all of these things makes a better sounding and more enjoyable record, which sells more copies and concert seats. There are currently Hundreds of RU-vid videos and Podcasts about MASTERING that you can watch or listen to in order to learn more about this process. But like anything, there can be a lot of misinformation out there as well.
Good question. It is the AB1006 and it will say it on the spine of the album cover but u need to also check the deadwax and make sure it too says ab1006. Here’s the Discogs link: www.discogs.com/release/6017897-Steely-Dan-Aja
