In the last year, or at least most of 2008, we've had problems here at the studio in that we've lost one partner / co-owner, another is one who tends to travel (which has really helped our Loop-O-Mat business by sending back native recordings from Asian countries, but it's left us with only one person, who was already responsible for all the accounting and such to also do the work.
Sadly, he's not been well, and is under diagnosis for a weird blood disease. As such, we've been sitting on some simple cleaning and adjustments for two NM- Roland RE-201 tape echoes and two Electra EP 350 echoes.
We've some good news in that we've got a (hopefully) mint NOS Roland RE-301 / RE-501 / SRE-555 replacement motor coming in, although it's not by Samyana / Pioneer which makes us suspicious of the manufacture, as well as possibly another Electra EP 350, which we'll discuss in a later posting. The problem is that the studio has one fairly sick (and potential fatally ill) person manning it at this time. Not great news, but at least an update.
There's another studio in the Portland metro area that's all over the place: recording studio, although far less of that in recent years, manufacturing, and lately a push for mastering work. And seemingly really busy.
So we get the most recent issue of "Mix Magazine" (http://www.mixonline.com/) and while having a pint we notice in the back that there's regional announcements of work and/or changes at various studios. And this one has a huge list of clients they've been working with. We were really impressed and blown away, because while we don't think this studio does bad work, it's not better than ours and is more expensive.
But one of us points out that we've never heard of any of the bands listed. So sure enough, we get home, do Web searches, and these bands don't exist. Just making it up. Bring in business by looking like you're actually really busy and popular. There was actually one real band that seemed to be working with them, and the rest were pulled out of their ass.
That's why we always list the record label(s) that end up releasing material we've worked on. It's too easy to bulls**t in this market and pretend you're doing booming business by making it up, because let's face it: there's about a zillion bands out there, and Portland, Oregon is one of those towns like Austin, Texas where it seems everyone is in a band.
That's also why we make sure we have up-to-date, excellent references. And why someone looking for a studio to work on their recordings should take the time to check into those things. Because you might be paying top-dollar for what's basically a sham!
Funny thing is they're running some super-cheap deal on small run CDRs with full graphics and all that, and we're actually thinking of farming out some of the manufacturing work through them - let them do the work at a loss to "network", and it's our and our clients' gain.
And at least all of our clients are real. We're tempted to write Mix Magazine to narc them out but that seems unfair - if people are pulled in by that kind of stunt, they get what they deserve, and they can pay twice the hourly rate for the same work we provide. After all, if name-dropping non-existent band names is what it takes, we'll pass, because the folks who'll go for that are probably not the kind of people we like to work with.
But it does remind us to write to Mix Magazine and mention the work we're doing, even if it's 1/10th the amount - although since 90% of theirs is made up, guess we're even. Ha!
Herein we'll be keeping a blog of the work we're currently doing, without mentioning names or such until projects are completed and released, so that one can learn the art of post-production and mastering, and why almost no recording studios, who have to invest massive amounts of time and money into recording gear, can really do a proper mastering job for whatever format(s) you want your recording in:
* CD
* DVD
* 5", 7", 10", 12" vinyl records, in many colors
* MP3, OGG, and other compressed, lossy formats
* FLAC, APE, and other lossless compressed formats
* Online audio and/or video media
To get things started, here's an essay by a former client explaining exactly why he turned to us to master two of his releases and why it made a huge difference to both his recording style as well as the final product:
Greg Headley on The Art of Mastering