I’ve done a lot of live recording over the past fifteen years. I have both a 24 track and an 8 track system, both use high quality converters and do the actual recording on a laptop computer. These systems have proven themselves over the years to be extremely reliable and yield great sound quality.
Once I have recorded the raw tracks of a live performance I mix them using a large computer system in a good acoustical environment with a high quality, properly calibrated monitor system. This gives me complete control of the balance of the recording after the fact and I can refine the mix with great precision. The system has the ability to make changes in level and tone of individual tracks and store and edit these changes so I don’t have to do a complete mix “on-the-fly. This is very helpful with live recordings where there are often imperfections requiring “surgical” precision. I like to think that I’ve become very good at this mixing process, I’ve spent many hours refining my techniques, and can produce a great sounding recording without losing the “live” character.
Mastering is the process of taking the complete mix or mixes from a studio recording or a live performance creating individual tracks, adjusting the level and tone of these tracks so they all “play well together” and then making further adjustments to try to make the whole performance play well on a variety of playback equipment. We want it to sound great on high quality systems but also on car stereos, ipods, and boomboxes. I take great care in this optimization to avoid too much compression and limiting which can quickly squeeze the life out of a recording.
If you have recordings on vinyl, cassette, reel to reel tape, VHS, Beta, or some other old format I can produce a high-quality digital copy and produce a CD for playback on today’s equipment. I have the highest quality tape decks and turntables to yield great results. As a secondary part of this process I can often improve your audio by further processing:
- Reduction of hum and noise
- Improvement of intelligibility
- Speed correction
Of course I can’t do the impossible, if you give me a completely erased tape, a recording with much more noise than signal, or one so muffled that there’s no intelligibility at all, I may not be able to help. I’m always willing to take a listen and give you an opinion before starting any actual work.
I’ve spent my life working with electronics. For 34 years I was the president of Ashly Audio Inc. in Rochester, NY and designed all the analog products that made Ashly a household word in the audio industry. I’ve also spent years troubleshooting and repairing electronic equipment of all kinds. I’m old enough to have grown up with tube based gear so older instrument amplifiers are a specialty but I’m also comfortable with today’s solid state and digital gear. I designed much of the equipment I use daily in my recording work.