Bob Macc
“I’m all about sharing information – if it helps someone make a better mix then it’s beneficial for everyone.”
“I am a complete and utter geek with an astonomy/astrophysics degree who reads papers on jitter performance of various DACs in spare moments.”
With mastering clients including the Wu Tang Clan, GZA, Alpha & Omega, King Cannibal, and DFRNT amongst many others, and releases of his own on numerous labels, Mastering Engineer/musician/producer/audio magician and general top bloke Bob Macc is something of a legend. Always inspirational and insightful, we’re delighted to have some of Bob’s thoughts here for you to examine. Read on…
£10 Bag: Firstly, thanks for agreeing to the interview Bob, how’s it going?
No problem at all man, my pleasure. Everything’s good here, always busy but never busy enough!
What do you do? What on earth is a Mastering Engineer?
I take the audio cakes that people bake, and put the sonic icing on them.
My job is to ensure that the final sound is balanced, in every possible sense. It should be appropriate for the genre while still sonically balanced within itself, and in line with the artist’s intentions while still satisfying my quality standards. The song presents the idea, the mix presents the song, and the mastering presents the mix – each stage should do its thing to the best possible degree. Then you’re onto a winner.
How did you get started with this mastering malarky?
Through being a physics geek with a passion for good sound, a fascination with making tunes from samples that were ostensibly way too bad to use, playing drums and other stuff for nearly 20 years, and of course attending numerous mastering sessions for my own and other people’s music. It all led to the feeling that in truth, this is what I was meant to be doing. Everything before has been pointing me this way; I just didn’t realise it for way too long!
Do you ever find it difficult to sit down and just listen to an LP? Do you start over-analysing what you hear and deconstructing the production/mastering qualities, detracting from your enjoyment of the music?
Haha, well, one lucky thing for me is being able to switch that off. When the music is good enough it does that for me – stick Wayne Shorter’s All Seeing Eye or James Brown’s Motherlode on and that’s taken care of. I’ve done my share of brocking out, don’t worry about that! If I didn’t love music so much I wouldn’t be here. On the other side of the coin, it comes in useful. I can switch it on when the lady puts some god-awful stuff on the radio in the car – I can zone into the production and forget the musical travesty I am hearing.
Which well-mastered releases or mastering engineers do you particularly respect?
Beau Thomas who works at Masterpiece. He kind of flicked a switch without knowing it when I attended a session with him, for one of my dnb releases. Looking back that was when I knew I should be doing this. Since I started taking it more seriously he has been nothing but encouraging, forthcoming with advice and helpful in every possible way. His work makes me sick as he makes it look so easy and it sounds so good. And he convinced me to buy the Summit DCL-200 which I love to bits!
A thoroughly, thoroughly nice bloke and a mastering legend in dnb/dubstep circles.
Sonically, the album that immediately springs to mind when thinking of something that makes me go ‘holy SH!T that sounds good’ is Bill Frissell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones. Most of Frissell’s stuff sounds gobsmackingly good; this is just unbelievable. In fact I started writing a big essay about it but I have removed it cos people will think I’m a poncey wanker. It’s as much down to the recording as the mastering, but who cares, it all contributes to incredible sound.
How do you feel about sub-standard mastering? Does it make you cringe, or must there be bad mastering for people to appreciate the good mastering?
I dunno man, you have to be fair. Everyone wants their music out there. I mean, gawd knows I was keen enough to get stuff out when I was starting out. Thinking about giving out tapes where I’d overdubbed things by recording drums into a condensor mic, then putting one tape player next to the tape player’s condensor mic and the amp, same again for bass, more guitars etc… Then making ten copies of that and giving it to my mates at school. Haha, I mean, can you imagine how bad that sounded? I’m glad I cant remember! Point is, people always want to get their music out there, and now they can. That’s more important than mastering, just having it out there. I certainly wouldn’t say ‘you’re crazy to put out music without it being mastered’. Plus, the sound quality people are capable of compared to what I started with is ridiculous.
However, the easy availability of software does mean that there’s a huge amount of music being put out by people with very little experience. That – if someone is serious about their stuff – is where people can benefit from having more experienced, objective ears cast over it. Those are the key words – experience and objectivity. Anyone can ‘master’ a tune by adding bass and treble, compressing, limiting. Instantly it sounds ‘better’, it’s a glamour job, like a woman with too much makeup and fake boobs. You don’t need experience to do that.
So long as people are happy. That’s the most important thing. As their ears develop and they hear these masters out and about, they often start to be less happy. Then they start to look for more as they develop their listening skills. So (to answer the bloody question!) shoddy mastering is on the one hand a shame as some pefectly good tracks get spoiled; and a good thing on the other as the serious but inexperienced artist knows that there must be better out there and sets out to find it.
What kind of level of equipment & skills do you believe a person should reach before they can seriously start trying to sell their mastering services to people?
The toughest question in this interview. It’s a combination of things, but above all, listening is the key. It is a craft where listening and hearing come first and above all else. To correct something you have to be able to hear it. To hear it you need the ability to listen, and something that tells you as much as possible about the audio. This equates to experience, and excellent monitoring. The experience comes from years and years and years and years of listening and working with audio. There’s also the technical background as there is, to some extent, science involved. One should, in my opinion, be extremely well-informed about why things work the way they work, what the potential positives/negatives of a given process are, etc etc. What makes a sound sound the way it does?
Equipment, in terms of processing, is kind of by the by. I love the analogue gear I have because it sounds incredible and makes my job a lot easier. But you can certainly do excellent work with the plugins available these days.
So in answer to the question, one should be completely and utterly dedicated to audio, and it should have been that way for a very very long time. Ideally one should have mixed songs for a very very long time, to understand that side of things from a practical perspective. One should have been to mastering studios and seen how it works there. I could go on and on, but the point is that one should be thoroughly and completely informed and understanding about all aspects of audio, and have a background in a wide range of music.
Relating to equipment, in my opinion and experience, one should have much better equipment and vastly greater/wider experience than the people they expect to pay them. If you make your tunes on Alba hifi speakers, would you pay someone to master them on Kenwood hifi peakers? What are they really going to hear that you didn’t?
I think the only way that works is if the engineer concerned has a proven track record for professional work on that setup, preferably with a long list of happy clients that comes from experience. However, most professionals will have invested heavily in their tools in order to make their job easier. If people aren’t dedicated enough to invest – heavily – in the required equipment (including time in associated research/testing), they simply aren’t dedicated enough in my opinion. Mastering IS an expensive business, if you’re serious about it.
I heard nobody enjoys their job. Is this true? Or are you living the dream?!
I believe in the saying ‘if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life’. I love audio. It’s my obsession. I do however work extremely hard, and work extremely long hours.
When I’m finished working on some track or other, I might chat to someone on AIM who is asking for help with their mix. Or I might email someone to ask about their new cable, EQ, subwoofer or plugin. Or I might read an article about sampling theory or acoustics, or be figuring out what I can do to improve my work or posting on some forum about any of the above like a sad case. I’m obsessed.
The point is, I’d be doing it anyway. Getting paid for it is really nice, but make no mistake – I have bills to pay and have to work bloody hard to stay in business. It’s a competetive market. So it’s a good thing I love it!
Do you get more pleasure from improving an already well-balanced and dynamic mix, or working your black magic on a haggard mono 192kbps .mp3 and turning it into something big and beautiful, almost alien to the original?
Both, all of it. Not knowing what is going to come out of the speakers when you hit play, listening, figuring out what you’re going to do – I love it.
Knowing when you shouldn’t touch something is the hardest thing. Having all this kit and leaving something in bypass feels terrible!
By the way, not meaning to go off on one but I don’t dig all this black magic talk [editor's note: Macc is indeed an audio magician, if a modest one]. There’s no magic, only the right decisions. Magic is a term people can hide behind – ‘I’d love to tell you how I did it, but it’s a secret’ and all that sort of thing. In my experience when someone says that it’s because they’ve used a processor or plugin which they don’t want anyone else to have. There’s no magic in that. It’s quite sad if you ask me.
I’m not one for hiding anything that way. I’m all about sharing information – if it helps someone make a better mix then it’s beneficial for everyone.
Mastering – its an art and its a science. Are you biased towards one side?
Nice question. I am exactly in the middle and, in truth, this is why I know I am on the right road. I feel extremely lucky to have found something that satisfies both sides of my nature equally. I am fascinated and obsessed with importance of honest expression of the self through improvisation – jazz, combat, my own drumming, etc. I am also a complete and utter geek with an astonomy/astrophysics degree who (and this is the sad truth) reads papers on jitter performance of various DACs in spare moments.
I suppose that makes me a loser on two counts. Doh!! Mastering definitely satisfies both though.
What pisses you off the most about mastering?
‘Man that sounds amazing! Perfect, wow, great!….. now can I just have it 3dB louder?’
Macc works for Subvert Central Mastering, part of the Subvert Central Underground Music Network. If you need your music mastering with uncompromised quality, at reasonable prices, don’t hesitate to get in touch with them.
Subvert Central Mastering is a high-quality, low cost online audio mastering service. Our aim is to provide the best possible results for our clients using top class monitoring, high end analogue equipment and the best in digital processing.
Powered by