AMY DRAGON

Mastering Engineer,
Telegraph Mastering

“When I’m mastering I want to be able to work with as few of my own fingerprints on the mix as possible. Unless told otherwise, my assumption is always that the mix that’s provided to me is beloved and simply needs objective ears and tools to finish it.”

from Women in Sound #6
released February 4, 2019
interview by Madeleine Campbell


Mastering is a particularly esoteric facet of this industry. How do you describe the mastering process to someone who is totally unfamiliar?
[Describing it] is a challenge for sure. Recently, I had a few speaking engagements for audiences with little to no audio experience. I made a slide that illustrates an analogy with photography and mastering. The first slide has a professional RAW photograph image adjacent to a final Photoshop-edited photo to visually relate the difference between the two. The next slide is two waveform images: an unmastered waveform next to a waveform that is mastered. I draw comparisons between mastering and final photography editing as similar in terms of unfinished (dull or flat) versus finished (polished and detailed). I think mastering emcompasses equal parts the skill of the engineer, the quality of the mastering equipment and a mastering room treated to optimize accuracy. Another consideration of mastering is preparing audio for whatever format it’s going to be distributed on. For example, there are differences in how you would finish audio for digital streaming, cassette, CD or vinyl.

I like the analogy of a photograph.
That could make sense to anyone. Everyone’s seen a photograph. It’s worked well thus far. Most people have experience in editing their own photos. Folks may determine that RAW photo may benefit from a little enhancement of color, balance, contrast or maybe a crop. Perhaps the final format for the photos is enlargement. You’d want to make sure it scales up and it’s not pixelated and that it looks great whether it’s going in a book or on a wall. Most people have also had the experience of interacting with the difference between amateur photos and professional photos. Mastering can be relatable from this framework in terms of sonic outcomes.

How did you begin mastering? Specifically, what led you to mastering versus recording or mixing or another facet of working in audio?
I say luck and friendship. I happened to be good buddies with my mentor Adam Gonsalves and he was considering training an assistant at a time when I was looking to build a new career. It was the first audio engineering doorway that was opened to me. I’d never had any other interface with mixing or recording. I had a foundation in piano and eventually competed for and landed youth orchestra seats in percussion. I got out of it because of terrible performance anxiety that made it not fun for me. Even without the performance aspect, music enriches my life to the point of being obsessive. It was good fortune that my voracious appetite for music and my interest in a wide variety of genres coupled with that early music theory foundation made me a good candidate for a mastering engineer. Adam wanted to grow his studio and train someone from the ground up and we decided to give it a shot. He assigned audio tests to evaluate my hearing and sonic sensibilities and after determining it was sound, he taught me the technical aspects of mastering. Adam is a terrific engineer and an apt instructor and I’m so grateful that my life aligned in this way.

I wish the United States had more apprenticeships.
Totally agreed.

I can’t think of a better way to learn a trade or a craft, or, at least, get started. How long ago was that? How long have you been mastering?
Early 2013 was when I officially began the assistantship. It was a pretty strict studio apprenticeship for two years where I was just listening, training my ear, shadowing and learning. I read recommended college audio texts and online resources. I visited recording and other mastering studios. I went to vinyl manufacturing plants and tried to learn everything I could learn about audio production. Gradually, I started practicing my mastering skills and learned how to cut master discs. In 2015, I started working as a manager at Cascade Recording Pressing, which ended up being instrumental in my mastering career. I was learning disc cutting evenings and weekends and for my daytime gig worked at the pressing plant. It was incredibly helpful to be at Cascade while also learning how to cut. Having the opportunity to see projects I’d mastered and cut go through the plant and evaluate in person how that translated to the final vinyl record refined my skills in disc-cutting.

What do you mean by “cut discs”? What are you actually doing?
In general, disc or lacquer cutting is the engineering of music to be etched into a master disc using a specialized piece of equipment called a lathe. The material for a master disc is called a lacquer. It’s a wafer- thin metal substrate that is evenly coated in lacquer material. There are a couple different manufacturers that make these blank master lacquers available to studios to purchase. Telegraph currently has a Neumann VMS70 model lathe. When I started disc cutting, the studio had a Scully lathe, which is a more manual machine.

It was pretty cool to have a foundation on the Scully and engage in the mechanical physics of engineering a cut. I learned to do mathematical equations for each cut to figure out how many lines per inch I could fit on a disc. The Neumann we have now is more automatic and has an internal computer that allows for less math on my part and more accuracy in my cuts.

The process at our studio begins when a customer sends audio mixes either digitally or on a tape. The engineering involves taking audio, passing it through our analog console for adjustments and using the lathe to etch a representation of the music in concentric grooves. There’s the physical limitation of 12 inches of space and only so much audio information will fit. The grooves should be cut at a specific width and depth or there may be issues with skipping. The goal is for relatively straight and symmetrical grooves as much as is possible for playback with minimal alteration of the audio.

Our studio has a diagram that illustrates the compromise of vinyl. The diagram is a triangle with a ball in the middle that represents the compromises and considerations related to length, level and bass for vinyl. Depending on which area of the triangle you move the ball towards, you will be compromising one or more of the other points. A longer record means quieter and much less low end, for example. A release in which the ball is able to stay centered is one that allows for fuller expression of the audio with fewer compromises.

I can imagine there aren’t many people trained to do this work?
There are not and and it’s directly related to the lack of the availability of lathes. I think the interest is there, but there are a finite amount of them in the world. Only so many were made until the early 1980s, when the market shifted in favor of more portable formats like cassettes and CDs. Even in their era of utility, they were really expensive to manufacture and few companies offered them. In the mid- to late ‘80s, lathes became antiquated equipment and studios started storing or dumping them. As the music industry became further decentralized in the ‘90s and with the advent of streaming and digital music, much of the existing equipment was lost or destroyed. Recent vinyl demand and an interest in obtaining lathes has gained momentum, but there’s yet to be a company emerge to manufacture new lathes due to the expense, thus making them rare and difficult to find. If you can locate an old one that is available, it will likely have some damage requiring careful restoration by a technician that has experience with them.

Are you generally cutting projects that you’ve mastered or are you also cutting projects mastered elsewhere?
Two-thirds of my customers are projects that I master from the raw mix and then engineer and cut the lacquers. The other third are customers who have digital masters done elsewhere and need lacquers, or direct from pressing plants and music brokers that contract the cutting services on behalf of their customers. There’s almost always something I have to do to the digital masters submitted to engineer the cut. I use the term “vinyl master” to refer to the adjustments required for a lacquer cut.

I want to jump back to mastering as a broader topic for a minute. I’m curious about your process. When you sit down to start a new project, what are the first things you’re listening for? How do you actually get started?
I begin with the track the customer identifies as the lead track. I listen through without any visual cues-- no metering, no screens, just my ears. I’m attending to the message or the intent of the artist, the overall tone and the sonic balance of the track. As I’m moving through the track, I’ll begin drilling down and identifying frequency balance or imbalance and trying to ascertain how much is intentional versus in need of an edit. I’m making judgements about the creative decisions for certain sonic elements to be forward in the mix or whether it was perhaps an unintended consequence of the mix engineer’s listening environment. Because of our room design, I’m able to hear all the frequencies and stereo imaging very clearly. It’s definitely not an environment you’d want to record in because you want some of the room to interact organically with the instruments and performances. It’s not necessarily the type of room you’d want to mix in, either. A mix engineer may want to hear the audio in a more live and musical state while layering the recorded tracks. When I’m mastering I want to be able to work with as few of my own fingerprints on the mix as possible. Unless told otherwise, my assumption is always that the mix that’s provided to me is beloved and simply needs objective ears and tools to finish it.

Earlier, you mentioned that there are differences in how you’d master for cassette or vinyl versus a digital release. What are some of those differences?
Differences in mastering for cassette really only apply if the cassette being manufactured is not high quality (Chrome High Bias), in which case I’d send a separate set of audio deliverables that would minimize potential distortion on lower quality cassette. Digital mastering has no real limitations other than not crushing dynamics or creating distortion. Vinyl mastering has many limitations due to the physical space of the record and the fact that you are etching into something that will be played back in plastic. For example, most cutterheads on lathes are sensitive to high frequency material like bright cymbals or harmonica, so for the same electronic release, the digital version can have a really loud album with inorganic high frequency sounds, while the vinyl version will likely have some of that high frequency material limited, rolled off or less level to protect the equipment and not distort.

What’s your listening environment like?
The acoustical treatments, the equipment and the monitoring are really important in a mastering room. We had an acoustician, Andreas Nordenstam, come in a while back and design upgrades in the current room. It’s not a completely acoustically dead physical environment but designed for frequency accuracy and all of the equipment selected is chosen for transparency and precision. Some of my favorite pieces are custom, like the Barry Porter EQ and Shelving EQ. They’re made to tightly adjust specific frequencies as cleanly as possible without adding color to the change.

What monitors do you have?
We currently have Dunlavy SC-IVs. I adore them. The Dunlavy SC-IV/A speakers are brilliant in sounding neutral without being sterile. Telegraph is currently in the process of a new room build with Northward Acoustics, which is a dream come true, but unfortunately the SC-IV/A’s will be out of proportion for the new room, which will have ATC speakers — also fantastic!

Congratulations on a new build! Is this an addition to your current space or are you transitioning into a new space?
We’ll be leaving our current location and relocating to a different part of Portland. The Northward room wasn’t going to be possible to build out in the current space. It’s still going to be a one-room studio, so Adam and I will continue to work around each other’s booked sessions. A lot of folks don’t have a budget for studio recording and mixing sessions and end up recording themselves.

What advice would you give to an artist recording and mixing on their own who is considering having their tracks professionally mastered? What are the tangible benefits?
Yes! I’m obviously pro-mastering and think it can optimize music made in bedroom studios and professional studios alike. That said, I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s and am very much endeared to the sounds and less-digital music of my youth and still prefer music that sounds rough, raw, live and open. There is value to a raw-sounding standalone single on BandCamp or a 7-inch vinyl release. If you want to sound fucked up and that’s the aesthetic, do it. Do what feels good to you. However, if your end game is for your music to play in a streaming source like Spotify, iTunes or Tidal — somewhere a track is going to be shuffled from one to the next to the next and it may not be within your control to sequence how folks listen to your music — you have to imagine that your customer is going to be affected by that difference. Mastering helps minimize that difference so that your track or album is competitive across formats and genres. Additionally, 12-inch vinyl is expensive and nuanced to manufacture, so starting with well-prepared audio really helps stick that landing.

How can people best prep their files for mastering?
In terms of what to send to a mastering engineer, start with the best possible recording that you can afford. Try to make sure things are miked in a way that is clean and that doesn’t have a lot of unintentional issues. Mastering engineers have tools to negate and remove certain errors, but depending on what it is, it might be baked into the mix. I advise folks to get mixes sounding as good as they can possibly sound to you as the engineer or as the artist. If there’s an egregious error I can’t fix, I’ll let you know. When you’re sending audio to a mastering engineer, you don’t want to have too much limiting on your mix bus or peak limit your audio. Provide a lossless format like a .WAV, not an .mp3 that has been digitally compressed. Otherwise it’s really the taste of the mix engineer and artist for the sound they are after.

“I advise folks to get mixes sounding as good as they can possibly sound to you as the engineer or as the artist. If there’s an egregious error I can’t fix, I’ll let you know.”

I really appreciate hearing you say that. My favorite engineers are the ones who remind me there are many ways to do this work and that the focus should always go back to the art and the song, not the technology. The technology is facilitating the artistic expression, not the other way around. Exactly. It’s all great to me. Do your thing. There’s a plethora of diverse music in the world. I trust the artist and I trust the engineer to know what they want and get their sound there. If you suspect a problem with your audio, a mastering engineer is an excellent person to ask for a mix check. Some engineers will review it for you as a courtesy and some for a fee, especially if you are sending it to them for mastering.

What music are you excited about lately?
The Pacific Northwest hip hop community is slaying right now. I feel like it’s coming into its own and it has a sound that’s really evocative of this part of the country. I never really associated the Pacific Northwest with hip hop. There’s been dope stuff happening out here for a while, but I think it’s getting the recognition it deserves. Check out EYRST, Crane City Music, Gifted Gab and Blimes Brixton, and WYNNE.
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www.telegraphmastering.com