Bounce to Disk

Carl Saff is an excellent mastering engineer who has been operating Saff Mastering in Chicago since 2000. He recently took his business to the next level, making it a full-time gig. His affordable rates have always helped bring the clients in, but his work and service really stand on their own.

Can you tell me a little bit about your business model, your schedule while you were splitting your time between mastering and your old day job, and how you came up with your rate structure?

Saff: My pricing is the result of inching my rate up along with increasing demand for the service, accumulated experience/credits and ever-improving gear. My rate now feels commensurate with my experience and gear, but had I started out charging what I do now, I think it would’ve been hard to justify. I was exclusively using plugins in a less-than-ideal room back then.

Also, there are several factors that contribute to the monthly overhead of most mastering studios that don’t affect me the same way, and that allows me to keep my prices very low while still making what I consider to be “enough” while not resorting to rushing jobs through “assembly-line” style.

For starters, my studio is in my home, which I don’t advertise, but it’s not something I hide, either (though I keep my address off my website). So if I have a rare off day without work, I’m not losing money that day, I’m just not making any.

Also, I had a two job arrangement going for years so that I could pour 100% of my studio’s income into gear, which got me over a lot of the big hurdles
towards having “real,” mastering-grade equipment. As a result, I now have a refurbished 1/2″ and 1/4″ capable tape machine, world-class monitors (PMC IB1), nice converters (Lavry Blue, Benchmark), 3 great analog EQs (Manley Massive Passive, Millenia NSEQ-2, and API 5500) and 3 great analog compressors (Requisite L2M mk.III, Crane Song STC-8, and API 2500).

Having two jobs only really became difficult in the past 6 months, though I had a modified schedule with my day job that helped. My mastering workload seemingly doubled right around the 1st of this year. I guess word finally got out! Certainly, my sleep schedule suffered in the past year or so. But, the studio is now full-time and I’m excited to devote my full attention exclusively to mastering projects and get some more sleep.

I’m happy that it appears my rate won’t need to change much any time soon, either. Well-equipped, experienced mastering studios that place high value on customer service AND are affordable seem quite rare, and I love being able to occupy that niche in the marketplace. My clients seem truly grateful that I’m doing what I do at the price I charge. That is very gratifying. I can’t deny that fierce competition in this field has pressured me to adopt guerrilla pricing, but the good news is that my rate doesn’t feel like a compromise.

I have about 7 years experience mastering records, so I still consider myself a newbie compared to most of my favorite mastering engineers. In time, I might feel differently, but I’m not sure I’ve yet earned the right to charge more than I do today!

I can master about 60 minutes of music in a day, which at my rate, is enough for me to do quite well, even taking into consideration the parts of my day that aren’t mastering work (bookkeeping, answering phone calls/emails, shipping packages, etc.).

Since the mixes you receive must vary so wildly in EQ, dynamics, track quality, and musical style, how do you develop techniques that you can reuse? Are you developing specific technical methods or accumulating a general intuition about how to shape and improve the material?

Saff: It’s both technique and intuition in tandem. I have a “toolbox” of learned techniques that are applied based on intuition I’ve developed through years of intensive, daily critical listening. I’m glad you used the word intuition, as I have been thinking about that word a lot lately. I have a feeling this is something that most mastering engineers must develop over time. I feel I’m relying on mine quite often. The process of mastering is first and foremost listening, on a system that really lets you hear it all. And then you ask questions, all of which are variations on the theme of “could this be any better than it already is?” You build a toolbox of “fixes” every time you find solutions to a problem that critical listening reveals.

Now that you’ve amassed some great outboard gear, what plugins do you find yourself still going back to and using?

Saff: The three main companies I rely on for plugins are Universal Audio, PSP Audioware and Voxengo. I’m going to start evaluating more of the Algorithmix plugins soon, too.

I still rely on software for digital peak limiting, and think I’ll always prefer to. I use UAD’s Precision Limiter most often, and less often the Voxengo Elephant 2. I like leaving limiting as a software step post capture instead of “freezing” it at the audio capture stage, so that output level can be quickly adjusted after the analog work is done.

I’ve grown accustomed over the years to the power of EQ automation, and so I still use software EQs fairly often, especially for precision work (leaving shaping and color to my analog EQs). I really like PSP’s MasterQ and Neon EQ plugins, and Voxengo’s GlissEQ, which is a very unique, affordable and underrated dynamic EQ plugin. I hope to add the Algorithmix Blue to my choices soon, as well. I demoed it recently and thought it sounded brilliant.

Do you have any experience with Har-Bal, the “visual mastering system”?

Saff: I demoed it once years ago when it was new, and it gave me such a headache I stopped using it after about 5 minutes. Using my ears is easier!

It’s safe to say that the inexperienced shouldn’t try to master their own records. However, for the purposes of putting a new song on their website or MySpace page, this might occasionally make sense for some people. What’s a quick-and-dirty “bare minimum” mastering approach someone can apply to get their material a little bit more cohesive, and within a reasonable loudness range? Some kind of combination of EQ, compression and limiting perhaps?

Saff: A typical chain would be:

eq -> compression -> peak limiting -> dither

But, of course, every recording is different, and assuming that one chain will fit all is a recipe for potentially muddled output. In general, I’ve found that the least offensive way to make recordings louder is to have a few processors in the chain doing a little bit of gain reduction along the way rather than leaning hard on a single processor (the peak limiter, for example) for level.

When and how often do you find yourself using multiband compression?

Saff: Almost never, or so subtly, it’s more akin to slight dynamic EQ shaping. I rarely use it to fix major problems, though most would say that is what it’s best suited for. I usually prefer EQ for fixes of that variety.

What’s your favorite type of project?

Saff: It’s not possible to always be excited about the actual music you’re mastering. That’s not a problem from a work perspective — I treat every record with the same respect and give each project an appropriate amount of time and effort. But easily my favorite projects are the ones where the music is something I’d seek out even if I weren’t involved.

What about a “nightmare” project?

Saff: The hardest ones are those where the recording is inherently problematic but the desired result is, of course, something truly fantastic. It’s a hard road trying to make bad recordings sound great.

I should add that I find it incredibly gratifying when a band ends up very happy with my master of a recording they had serious concerns about. That type of project can be one of the very best experiences for both myself and the client. Mastering problematic recordings is only a nightmare when magic doesn’t end up happening, even after many, many passes.

What are some of your favorite bands and records?

Saff: My tastes have shifted over time, but I’ve always had an interest in and attraction to ambient and minimalist music, so I’ve been a long-time fan of Steve Reich and Brian Eno, and in recent years I’ve really enjoyed The Dead Texan’s self-titled on Kranky and the Goldmund record on Type. I also love the band The Books. Their records are some of the most exciting I’ve heard in the past 10 years. In the rock realm, I’m pretty well stuck in the 90s. I still love those Jesus Lizard records on Touch and Go and stuff of that ilk. My tastes are pretty broad, tho. I also listen to a fair amount of classical (Shostakovich and Prokofiev especially) and old country (George Jones, Loretta Lynn, etc.). Opera is the final frontier for me — something has always kept me from diving in.

You mentioned that your mastering room is in your house. What kind of modifications did you need to make? Did you use an outside designer and/or contractor? Did you employ any specific design techniques? What about room/reflection analysis tools?

Saff: When I first moved into the house in 2001, I immediately envisioned a studio of some sort in the basement, as it is quite large. At the time, I was doing almost as much tracking and mixing as mastering, and I wasn’t sure in which direction I would choose to focus my energies. But the ceilings were so short, I couldn’t imagine any room down there sounding good with a drywall ceiling, which I assumed to be the only option.

With the help and advice of John Sayers and others on his studio design board I realized I could put in a “false” fabric ceiling with absorption crammed into the space between the joists. This would make headroom in the basement livable and make the room more acoustically ideal. Additionally, I could nail 2 tons (literally!) of plywood into the ceiling between the joists to keep noise transference between the basement and first floor to a minimum.

I knew that I’d have limited space for the room, so I planned to build it in a non-square shape, as small square rooms are acoustically problematic. Basically, I drew up plans for the largest trapezoidal room I could manage in the space I had. The trapezoidal shape would eliminate side-wall flutter echoes entirely and relegate standing wave issues to primarily between the front and back walls. However, I hoped that with seating and speaker placement tweaks, there would be an ideal spot to listen despite the room’s inevitable modal issues.

So, with a new plan finalized, I coordinated with my father in law and his brother, both expert drywall finishers, to start construction. Construction took five weeks. I’m incredibly happy with the result. Basically, the entire ceiling is an absorption surface, which makes the acoustical height of the ceiling far greater than it’s actual height. It looks cool, too! Instead of fabric, I stretched black nylon insect screen tautly across the joists as a finish, and the result is a slick, gleaming black surface that is mirror smooth. I couldn’t be happier with the look or performance of this part of the design.

I did some DIY acoustics testing (not entirely scientific) when the room was done by running swept sine tones in the room mode range and also by shooting “snapshots” of white noise played through a single speaker and recording that with an omni condenser microphone at my listening position. This was, again, not terribly scientific, but did help to identify the best places to listen in the room, and the more obvious null and peak spots.

Eventually, after driving myself nuts playing DIY acoustician, I decided I had the room sounding about as good as I could imagine it sounding given my limited knowledge of acoustics. I then called in Doug Jones, a local acoustics professor and studio designer who has a long history building studios in Chicago, to see if he would mind evaluating the space and giving me tips for the remaining issues. He brought some electronic analysis tools, but stressed the importance of listening to familiar music in the room to determine the room’s strengths and weaknesses. I was happy that he was generally very impressed with both the design and sound of the room, and while he made some good suggestions, most of which I followed through on, he encouraged me by saying that he felt my room was exceptionally well thought out, especially given the limited space I had to work with. Felt good to hear that from someone who has built so many studios over the years.

Please describe the diffusion and/or absorption in your room.

Saff: I’m not currently implementing any diffusion, though it is in the works for the rear wall. Mostly, I just have bass trapping. Lots of bass trapping. Small rooms typically require it. The front corners are packed floor to ceiling with insulation, there’s a 6″ x 4′ square bass trap in the middle of the front wall. There are 2′ x 4′ x 4″ Owens-Corning 703 traps at the mirror points between me and speakers on the side walls, and similar traps on the back wall and in the rear corners. There’s also the ceiling, which as I’ve described is a gigantic absorption zone. This is key as the floor is concrete and staying that way.

Who does your equipment maintenance?

Saff: Luckily, I haven’t needed much, but Greg Norman at Electrical Audio has been a lifesaver where my tape machine is concerned. He’s fixed it a couple of times, and I’d be hosed without his help. I’m certain he could and would repair anything in my room. He’s a great engineer and a great tech, and an all-around gent.

Do you have a patchbay? How is your studio wired? Are devices “hard” wired in a specific order?

Saff: I do in fact have a patchbay of sorts. More accurately, an XLR thrubay, into which I’ve patched all of the gear in my studio. Though often advised against, I like being able to take all but one device out of the chain at times, for example, or bypassing devices that don’t have true hardwire bypass (like the Massive Passive). The thru bay is great for that. I fully trust it sonically — it’s a no-nonsense, hand-wired Canare/Neutrik bay I had custom made.

How often do you take on mixing projects?

Saff: Almost never. There’s no time anymore. I do work for some friends of mine who have a band, but every other mix project I’ve taken on in the past two years has suffered from my lack of time due to the mastering schedule. It’s all just as well — I’d really prefer to be mastering records, even though I know that recording them is usually more fun! I guess all mastering engineers are weird that way.

You post your work on the web for client approval. I like how quickly that allows for decisions to be made and revisions requested. When did you start doing that, and how has it effected your workflow and business?

Saff: I consider this the only way I could possibly run a mastering business like mine, which is doing 90% unattended work, mostly from out of town, sometimes even out of country. I never assume that my first pass is “the one”. I much prefer dialog with the client and approval before shipment, and online approval makes that process fast and affordable. Fortunately, the prevalence of speedy internet connections and CD burners makes this a very feasible way to work. That said, I do sometimes ship reference discs to those without the ability to do approval online.

Online approval is a big positive for my clients and I would much rather do 1 or 2 additional passes and have the client walk away feeling that there’s nothing they would change in the final master than have them saying to friends “it sounds pretty good, but we would’ve liked to have changed x, y and z.” I’ve known many musicians who received and approved masters from rather big-name MEs that they weren’t completely happy with. They simply felt uncomfortable confronting the mastering engineer about revisions for one reason or another (fear of additional costs, inability to contact the engineer directly to communicate about issues, lack of time for changes, etc.). They simply felt that what they got was “it,” whether they were 100% happy with the end result or not. I’d much rather do free revisions than have my customers walk away feeling stuck with a master they don’t really want to use.

I don’t charge for revisions as I feel that doing so sets up a very unfriendly dynamic. Charging for revisions sends the message that the revision is somehow the fault of the client. Why is it the client’s fault? Lack of communication or misdirection? Obviously, it’s just as likely, or really more likely that my instinctual reaction to the material wasn’t quite in line with the client’s view of the final product. Without them in the room to give direction, it makes sense that I might be a bit off the mark in my first pass. I’d rather do free revisions than play a kind of “blame game” about why we’re doing another pass. Fortunately, most additional passes are requested to fix very minor issues, like pacing, sequencing or fades, overall output level, etc. rather than radical tonal changes. Tonal changes require much more work.

I know that this is not the way many other mastering businesses operate, but I like that it sets my business apart from the pack. And even though I work at a flat rate, I don’t mind multiple passes to get a job where it needs to be. I just want happy customers and a balance sheet that says I have what I need at the end of the month. That’s much better than clients who leave wanting more and me watching the clock all day to keep track of charges.

Where do you see the recorded music industry going from a mastering perspective? It seems to me that delivery will eventually go download, and the CD could become extinct. How will this effect your industry?

Saff: My guess is these changes will have no effect on mastering businesses. It’s true that anyone can post electronic files to the web for electronic delivery. But it’s also true that anyone can burn a CD and send that to a pressing plant. The existence of CD authoring at the consumer level hasn’t affected the demand for CD mastering, so I don’t see the ease of electronic delivery affecting demand for the mastering of that audio, either. In fact, I’ve already mastered several online-only releases.

I think that most people understand that the value of mastering extends well beyond mere delivery of a quality production master (tho that is certainly an important part of the process). With more and more music being made in small home studios, there’s more need than ever before for a third party with excellent monitoring and world class processing to prepare the audio from such studios for audiences.

I’m not even sure the full shift to online-only media is just around the corner, either, at least in my market. I’m doing more vinyl premasters than ever before these days!

What’s your typical turn-around?

Saff: Usually 2-3 weeks from the time I receive the materials until I can have a first pass ready for review. I book attended sessions about that far in advance, too. I can make allowances for rush work, but that’s a slippery slope that I try to avoid!

Are many potential clients using your online rate calculator?

Saff: Yes! I’m really glad I had my friend Andy Surratt, who codes for a living, write that. It’s been a very handy sales tool.

How many of your clients have very specific feedback and changes, as in types of compression, attack/release times, frequency ranges that need work, etc? Do a majority of clients have this deep a level of understanding of audio, or is most of the feedback/guidance you get more general/nebulous/artistic? Do you have a preference?

Saff: I’d say it’s about 50/50 (techy vs. artistic) on the feedback/direction. I’m not sure I have a preference for either kind of feedback/direction, although “nebulous” rarely helps! On the other extreme, being handed a list of frequencies to tweak complete with Q and gain settings is a bit restrictive (but, also, quite rare). Slowly, I’m starting to get clients who trust me because they’ve heard my other work, and want me to trust my instincts with their recordings, as well. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee there won’t be revisions once the process starts, but I’m starting to hear “just do what you do” a lot more often when projects begin and receiving a little less of the more heavy-handed technical direction right from the outset.

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, Carl. Keep up the good work! Readers can contact Carl and have him master a sample track for free at saffmastering.com.