Meeting Topic: A Mastering Panel/Workshop-Carving out a career in Audio Mastering — Four next-generation pros "Tell it like it is"
Moderator Name: Eric Johnson/Mike Wells
Speaker Name: Pete Lyman, Infrasonic Sound; Warren Sokol, freelance; Maor Appelbaum, Maor Appelbaum Mastering; Mike Wells, Mike Wells Mastering
Other business or activities at the meeting: Elections this Month. Voting at meeting.
Meeting Location: Sportsmen's Lodge Event Center, 12833 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA 91604
Thanks to everyone for making it out to the Mastering Panel/Workshop for the Tuesday, May 28 meeting. We had a lively panel discussion,
with mastering engineers Pete Lyman, Warren Sokol, Maor Applebaum and Mike Wells discussing their views on mastering in today's
Los Angeles scene, and what it's like in the small-business and big-business markets.
Some of the topics for the evening included the challenges they face with client communication (phone call versus email, and even text
messaging versus Facebook messaging); how leveraging investments early with mastering engineers (hearing rough mixes, having a deeper
knowledge of the record at hand, etc.) can pay off big with returns in mastering, not to mention client loyalty and satisfaction; and the benefits
both of high-end and low-end gear.
A very open format was used for this workshop, which not only allowed each panelist to dig into their own thoughts on the state (current
and future) of the mastering art, but it also provided a platform for the audience to jump into the conversation as it was happening to create a
much more social and engaging night. We talked signal chains, gear lists, favorite picks, do's and don'ts, to plug-in, or not to plug-in, tube?,
etc.
Thanks to all and a special thanks to Doug Sax for his appearance and feedback during the discussion; Doug brought a lot of great wisdom
and positivity to the room.
Written By: Mike Wells
