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Howie Weinberg is a mastering engineer with a careerspan of 35 years. Clients include: Nirvana, Beastie Boys,Pantera, Public Enemy, Slayer, Muse, The White Stripes,Sonic Youth, Run DMC, Tom Waits, Garbage, SmashingPumpkins, Prince, Cypress Hill, Björk—and the list goes on.

Recently I tracked and mixed an indie rock band fromChicago named Camera. When it came time to have theiralbum mastered, Howie’s name was at the top of their wishlist. The band and I were ecstatic that he was able to takeon the project and give it his final touch. He was also will-ing to take the time to give us his advice and stories as wellas a look into the evolution of the mastering process.—PV

You recently mastered ten tracks from the Chicago-based band Camera that I had the pleasure of mixingand recording. What are your thoughts on the tracks?

Howie Weinberg: It sounded good, really nice. Themixes sounded really big and tight. I like stuff that has avibe already, where the basics are already there, ratherthan having to add or create something that doesn’t exist.

I know the band was a little nervous about gettingback to you with some changes to track times and theoverall bass level on one of the songs, because, well,you are Howie Weinberg!

That’s OK [laughs], that’s what I do! Never be afraid totell somebody you are hiring what you want. That’s veryimportant, because in the end that’s why you hire them.

After I master something, I want people to put it on andhave it do something to them. Like “Wow, that’s got agreat vibe or feeling”, not just “Oh, it’s got more bass.” Ithought it went really well. Was everybody happy with theresults?

They were blown away! We all were.That’s what I like; I never get tired of hearing that

[laughs].

Do you get a lot of work from indie labels or bands? About half and half. I like the indie stuff, because even

though some of the recordings aren’t as good quality assome of the major-label stuff, it can often be more cuttingedge. In the end, if it’s good music, I don’t care where itwas done or who recorded it.

You got your start at Masterdisk in New York...

I started in 1977 and I was the company’s first messenger. I alsospent much of my time making one-to-one dupes of the 1/4", 15 ipsDolby master tapes from Mercury and Polygram. Doing that I reallygot to start hearing what was out there in the world, and the musicwas great!

One of my earliest memories—when Saturday Night Fever cameout, I spent all night making tape copies for every country in the worldthat was going to release it.

Did you go to school for mastering or audio engineering?No. When I was 18 or 19, I left college and got a job at Masterdisk

delivering packages, and I was just there watching everybody. BobLudwig was like my boss and he would show me around. After I grad-uated from tape copies, the company moved to a different space, andabout four or five months in, a mastering room opened up, and lo andbehold, here is my new mastering room. It was like, OK, here it is!Come on in... [laughs]

To be frank, the first few months I was a newbie and it was “prac-tice makes perfect”! But I was young and had a brash attitude and Iwould do anything! And I did!

You were one of the first guys to master hip hop records.I still remember, around ’81–’82, someone brought in the first real

hip hop project. I think it was Kurtis Blow or one of those,Grandmaster Flash, and they just kept on coming, and all of a sud-den in the first few months I had five or six gold records immediately.

They didn’t call it hip hop at the time, it was called rap music andI became the guy in town who would do rap music. And for aboutfive years I did all the rap records in the area, working with guyslike Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons who were all about the sameage as me.

A world-famous mastering engineer talks about the history and mystery of mastering

Interview by Paul Vnuk Jr.

Q&A With A Master:Howie Weinberg

Excerpted from the November edition of RECORDING Magazine 2012©2012 Music Maker Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission.5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 For Subscription Information, call: 1-800-582-8326 or www.recordingmag.com

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How did you make the switch from being the hip hop/rapguy to your work with rock bands like Nirvana and the ChiliPeppers and such?Doing hip hop just got my foot in the door and got me noticed.

A lot of the guys who did hip hop in the beginning, like AndyWallace, the Lord Alge guys, they were all doing dance recordsand hip hop-type records before they ever did any major rockrecords; there is no real difference—great music is great music.

How has mastering changed over the years?In the early ’80s, 15ips 1/4" Dolby A was the format, 1/2" was

not invented yet, certainly digital wasn’t. In those days it was allanalog, vinyls and cassettes, and then CDs came into play, andI remember it was like, “I can now put some more bass on hereand if I put more bass on here it’s not going to under-cut, and ifsomething comes in out of phase it’s not going to ruin my daywhere I will have to keep re-cutting it.”There was a little bit more of an art to it then, some of that has

disappeared with digital media. I would say that 98% of vinyl

cutting now is done from digital tapes where you just push Playand you try and fit the music on there, rather than master every-thing from scratch—let me tell you, that was some work!

So what does a typical session look like now? Do you haveclients there or not?I might get a project from France, another from Germany, fol-

lowed by one from England and then maybe two from NewYork, so it’s a lot less client-attended now and a bit more like filemanagement, which I kind of like and don’t like.When clients come in they also want to hang out, which is not

exactly conducive to me focusing really well; but I do like itwhen the clients are there, because I get the feedback from theclient immediately.But since most clients don’t show up these days I have learned

how to work by myself really well and at my own pace. Since Ican’t get feedback from a client I just get feedback from my ownhead [laughs], “This will be right, this is what I like...”

About how many albums do you do in a week?I work on about five to eight albums a week now.

Do you have a general workflow or even a typical chain youstick to? Obviously I do have a chain that I know works really well, some eqs

and curves and all of that other stuff, and eventually I will share thatwith the world and make my own plug-in, but that’s next year... [laughs]Generally speaking I have a lot of different variables I can

work with. Sometimes it sounds better with the eq before the com-pressor, sometimes the compressor before the eq because thecompressor will do a certain thing and you want to eq off of that.

I have an SPL Master Bay, so all my gear goes into one boxand then it goes into the mastering console, so I can take mycompressors or eqs or whatever and put them into any directionI want. It makes workflow really easy.

What about your personal gear choices?When I started this studio here, I set out to have the best

equipment money could buy and charge very fair rates.Obviously the equipment is key to everything.I have an SPL mastering console, which is one of my major

weapons. The 120V consoles that SPL makes have much moreheadroom than a 60V analog console and you can cut reallyhot records a lot cleaner. When I was in New York I had aNeumann console, which had a big sound, but it had limitedheadroom. I also use the SPL eq.For digital gear I have Pro Tools 10, I have three Antelope

Audio clocks and I also use their converters. I try and convert thisstuff to analog really well, do all the processing in analog andthen dump it back into digital, and I use a Merging Technologies

Pyramix system for that, which I think is the best digital worksta-tion in the business—I have two of those.

So your main DAW for mastering is the Pyramix?Absolutely, they really did their homework, it’s very easy for

editing, very logical and it sounds great! I want my analogchain reproduced as close as I can, and the Pyramix systemdoes this.

You have a Focusrite Red Compressor?I use that once in a while, and I have a custom-made SSL com-

pressor, I have an L2. I have the big Sontec eq, the masteringone, and I have the smaller GML type from Sontec which is muchmore vibey, and I use the SPL eq which is very much like a Pultecwith a big-ass bottom end and a big wide sound; and I have twoEQP-1A Pultecs in mint condition. I have a lot of processing.

What about your digital side?I have a Weiss digital console that has de-essing, and six

bands of eq, and the Pyramix has eqs and compressors thatsound amazing and most people don’t even know about. I havethe Slate Digital tape plug-in and mastering plug-in on my sys-tem that’s really good.

Some mastering engineers are either all analog or all digital...Some analog stuff sounds really good, and there is a cost-ver-

sus-effectiveness to analog recording that’s beyond a lot of peo-ple’s means; and the digital stuff has gotten really good. Theplug-ins are great and you can blend both worlds really well.It’s the way a lot of people are mixing nowadays, they mix in the

box, but they have tons of analog outboard gear as well. I don’t

Excerpted from the November edition of RECORDING Magazine 2012©2012 Music Maker Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission.5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 For Subscription Information, call: 1-800-582-8326 or www.recordingmag.com

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master in the box because I have the SPLconsole and everything goes through there.Basically I am an analog guy, but I havedone projects in the box that still sound fan-tastic. It’s all only as good as the operator,you know. You can have all the gear in theworld and if you don’t push the right buttonsand twist the right knobs it ain’t good.

Now that CDs are nearing the end oftheir life cycle, where do you see digitalaudio going?I usually master at 24/44.1 but lately there

is a big market for hi-rez stuff, so I have beenmastering a lot for 24/96. I have been doinga lot of mastered-for-iTunes stuff and a lot ofHD tracks. This is the future of audio; eventu-ally a consumer will be able to download a24/96 file. When I play back tracks I havedone at 24/96 it’s just a perfect mirrorimage that 16/44.1 does not give you.

Any dos and don’ts for clients, or com-mon mistakes you see fromproject/home studios?The first do-and-don’t I have come

across too many times is: If you are mak-ing records and you are happy with theway they sound, it’s not a good idea tocompare your records against commer-cially-released records that could have hada $200,000 budget using the best mixersin the world in some of the best studios inthe world, and then go “Oh, my mix doesnot sound as good as that.”Or clients send me their music and say,

“Well, you have done these kind ofrecords, can’t mine sound like that too?”I try like hell, but you have to be realistic

on what you have. What I am trying to sayis you don’t necessarily have to competewith them; you just have to make goodmusic, OK? I think in the end people are justway, way too concerned about certain pro-duction values rather than musical values.

What about the current debate on finalmixing levels? I just got a project from a really well-

known producer and I called him up andsaid it sounded great, but you know what?Your files are too small.A lot of times if your files are too small,

you are not using up all your bits and num-bers. You want to have a nice fat file that’snot overly done, so somebody like me canget the files and have room to move on it.Then the opposite is when I get files that are

totally slammed and squared out, it gives mefewer options. I like nice loud files, but I don’twant them crushed. There is a happy medium.

Howie WeinbergYou want to get files back from me that sound better, and if files that I get are so

loud and crushed, I can’t even match their levels and that’s going backwards. Myadvice is, do two versions—one that you give to the client for listening that’s a littlemore crushed so the client can hear it louder, and one that’s nice and dynamic butnot too compressed, that gets sent to mastering.

What is your opinion on adding bus compression to the final mix?Just do it artistically, it’s really important not to use equipment just for the sake of

turning it on, you know what I mean? Use it for the benefit of the music, not justbecause you have it; like “I have five different plug-in eqs—I should use them all!” Goby the adage “less is definitely more”!You want to record stuff that has what I call the turn-up curve! You know how you can

play some records and as you turn them up they just keep sounding better and better,where as some records, you get to a certain point and it’s ARRRGGHHH!!! You can’tturn them up, you know what I’m saying?

What about low and high end? Which one is the more problematic?I think it’s both. The problem is a lot of people are working in home-type studios

with not the most perfect monitoring systems or recording environment. That’s OK inthe end if the record has a vibe. I have noticed that a lot of the albums I am getting,people are doing really good jobs. They watch videos and they read the magazinesand the forums and they practice and I think people are doing their homework.I think in this day and age the equipment has gotten really good, and skills have got-

ten really good, and there’s really very few records that I get in that just sound like crap.

Do you ever turn anything down? That’s a big grey area, because sometimes I may think something is crap, but the

band loves it and you have insulted them [laughs]. Generally speaking, if I get some-thing in that isn’t very good I will let them know.

Do you have any advice for the budding beginning mastering engineer?If you are really into finished audio rather than recording, try it! A lot of guys these

days who try this also have a really good knowledge of recording and mixing as well.See, I didn’t do any recording or mixing, I just don’t have that background, I am

not a musician, I am a specialist. I basically listen from the standpoint of your aver-age Joe Shmoe consumer who takes the record and puts it on and listens in their caror their boom box or iPod. I approach it like that.

What is your take on the dreaded Loudness Wars? I think people need to start thinking about other things! If an artist wants to make

their record a certain way, they should! You as a consumer should not be worriedabout it. It’s gone a bit overboard! I have done records where people have com-plained it’s too loud and I play the thing and think, “It doesn’t sound bad to me.”

Excerpted from the November edition of RECORDING Magazine 2012©2012 Music Maker Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission.5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 For Subscription Information, call: 1-800-582-8326 or www.recordingmag.com

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I have been on both sides of the coin and Ican go either way, in the end it’s what theclient wants. If they want it super loud to com-pete with the next guy, I am fine, if they wantit nice and dynamic I am fine with that too.

Last question—the Howie Weinbergmastering philosophy?Be less concerned with technology and

more concerned with artistic endeavors. The

Camera’s The Panic and the PermanencePersonnel:Justin Scro: Lead vocal and guitar.Ryan Aylward: Bass guitar, synths and backing vocals.Joseph Scro: Drums, percussion and keys.Recorded and mixed by Paul Vnuk Jr. at Moss Garden MusicAssistant engineer Steve CiliakAdditional overdubs at Clinical Sound by Steve Ciliak & Ryan AylwardProduced by Paul Vnuk Jr. and Camerawww.cameraband.com, www.facebook.com/CameraBand

The band’s and the engineer’s opinions on the featured tracks:“Pop Radio 101” and “A Place I Know”:

Ryan Aylward: Hearing Mr. Weinberg’s mastered version of our album forthe first time, after being so close to it for a period of over two years, was arevelation, and I knew every intricate detail. Going from one song to the next,even if it switched to a completely different genre, I felt as if the album hada sense of cohesiveness to it. Instruments seemed to inhabit their own spaceand they had more clarity.Comparing both the un-mastered and mastered versions of the album, I

noticed in the song “Pop Radio 101” the snare drum had a bit more “crack”to it and I believe he removed some of the lower mids, which took away aslight amount of the reverb reflections we had from tracking in a large roomwith high ceilings. It gave it that extra punch that made the louder momentsof the song more powerful.On “A Place I Know” the most noticeable change I heard was the main

vocals. To me, it seems as if they are heightened and the instruments seempushed back a bit more, and it heightens the feel of a singer out in front ofhis backing band, but the vocals are never “on top” of the music, which isexactly what we were going for.

Because this song is relatively calm with a loudending, I was able to get a sense of how the mas-tering process really enhances the dynamics of dif-ferent sections of a song. The distorted guitar thatenters at the climax now helps the song be morepowerful because it sounds like he made moreroom for it. The bass guitar seems to have hadsome of its midrange cut to allow for more clarityin the distorted guitars.These are just some of the details I noticed upon

comparing both versions of our album. Hearingwhat a great mastering engineer like Mr.Weinberg does to your work taught us a lot and itwas a great experience.

Justin Scro: The difference between the masteredand un-mastered version of the album is that thealbum sounds brand new again. That’s a veryimpressive feat when we’ve been working sointensely with the same songs for years.What made it a priority to work with Howie

Weinberg was that he genuinely has alwaysseemed interested in his work. His catalog is unbe-lievable. You can find great works in almost everygenre of music in his discography. His talent is hiscare for his craft and it is apparent on every albumhe’s mastered, and it means a lot to us that one ofthose albums is ours.

Paul Vnuk Jr.: First of all, I am thrilled that thealbum is loud and modern but not crushed. I put thetracks up in my DAW and I can see that the dynam-ics are preserved, but using Howie’s vernacular,it’s now a big fat wave!On “Pop Radio 101” the bass is punchier and

made my original mix sound a tad softer and atouch boomy by comparison. Overall I hearimproved presence, detail and clarity.“A Place I Know”... this was significantly louder,

and probably one of those too-quiet mixes Howiementions above, as I fell prey to the “keep everythingin the DAW at –12 to –18 dBFS” trend that is ram-pant on the forums. Once I matched the volume lev-els in my DAW for comparison, I found Howie’s ver-sion added a more forward midrange which madethe song bolder and more powerful. It sounds a bitmore punk now and a little edgier, but not slammed.

You can hear the two songs discussed here,before and after mastering, at www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/392.html

Howie Weinbergequipment is great, but it’s only as good as the artist who uses it. Having great-sounding equip-ment does not necessarily mean you will have great-sounding or great-engineered records!But, but...! Suffice to say if all the combinations work, if you have great equipment,

great engineers, great artists and great music... then you have magic!

For more information, visit howieweinbergmastering.com. Photos by Evans VestalWard, courtesy of Howie Weinberg Mastering.

Paul Vnuk Jr. (vnuk@recordingmag.com) is a recording engineer, musician, pro-ducer, and sound designer living and working in Milwaukee. Paul would like to thankHowie for his time and cooperation in the interview process, and for his work mas-tering Paul’s mixes of the Camera album (see the sidebar).

Excerpted from the November edition of RECORDING Magazine 2012©2012 Music Maker Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission.5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 For Subscription Information, call: 1-800-582-8326 or www.recordingmag.com