Being a music lover ever since I can remember and a recording engineer since the 70's, I still recall at a very young age, I enjoyed listening to family members and their friends in the living room doing a sort of Friday night jam session. One day my mother showed me a record and said the band that had been playing in the living room, was on the record. She told me that listening to the record would be just like the band was right there. As the record was playing, I kept asking, "when am I going to hear the band"?

If you take the world's best musicians and put them in the world's best recording studio, and offer an unlimited budget for the World's best recording engineers, music producers and mastering facilities, all using the current state-of-the-art equipment, and are still not able to make a recording that sounds real, then somewhere along the current procedure path something is terribly wrong, and it is not the fault of the 16 bit, 44.1 KHz Compact Disc.

The fact is, the format is far more than adequate, if you put the correct information onto the CD. I didn't completely believe this either at first, but after a few points were made that I knew to be true, I listened to a CD with a new "Post Mastering" process, and for the first time, I finally heard a recording that made me feel like I was in front of a performing band! So, . . . it became obvious, the reason CDs have not been sounding like real music is not because of the limitation of the 16/44.1 industry standard, but something else.

If you think about it, listening to the mixer's stereo output (before it is converted to digital) is really superior to listening to any digital rendering of the that signal, even if it were to have infinite word length and infinite sample rate. No matter how many bits you use and no matter how high the sample rate, you can not get better than 100% of the original source that you are working with.

Anyone who has been involved in a tracking session can recall a situation like this. You were in the control room listening to a really great tracking or overdub, but when the musician(s) came into the control room to hear a playback, they were very dissatisfied and asked for the engineer to listen to the performance in the sound room and duplicate what was heard there. After some time and effort, it was determined that it just could not be done. Now that is way before a 16 bit storage occurs, and already the recording isn't sounding like a real performance. Keep in mind. Digital storage does not improve the sound information.

Moving to the time of the mix, the concern is making the recorded multi-track information sound the best it can. However, at that point in the production, your perspective is already somewhat diminished about the actual nuances, character and feel of the live band. Further, you get more deeply into the information that is there, over the many times you listen to the tape, as you are setting the tones, levels, balance, position, reverbs, echo, compression, on and on, for each individual track, and perspective of the original performance is further lost.

You work the mix to as close to "perfection", as you can, or until all involved are happy with, and accept the mix as being as good as it can be. Someone will probably make the comment about how good it sounds now, and wished that everybody could hear it sounding as good as you heard it in the studio. Then they lament that mastering is going to make it lose something, and of course the 16/44 standard is going to totally wreck it. It's so sad.

In reality, you're caught up in the playback sound that didn't sound real in the first place, even at the time of the tracking session, let alone mixing. But because you had listened to it so many times, you bought into it and your listening judgment is impaired. If at that time you were to actually scrutinize the sound of your "live" mix coming through the monitors, and do an A/B comparison with a live performance, you would very readily realize that you are definitely not listening to something that sounds like an actual band. Your really great mix that you wish everybody could hear the way you are hearing it there in the studio, is quite lacking compared to the original source. (And that poor CD is going to get blamed again)

You ask, "If I am listening through the control room monitors, can I tell if I am hearing the band playing live (through the monitors), or if I am listening to the multi-track playback"? Good question. I can certainty tell you if I am listening to the control room monitors, or if I am in front of the actual band as they are playing live, and that is what I am talking about.

This comparison extends to all listening situations, whether in studio or live onstage. As soon as the acoustic sound is captured by a microphone, run through the electronics then replicated using speakers, no matter how flat the equipment or straight the wire, it no longer sounds real. Even for a direct to 2-Track recording (i.e., No Multi-Track mixing). To try to make a recording sound real by making a "straighter wire", is equivalent to using a sharper lens to make a photograph look more like a real person. It is just not going to happen.

Further, Mastering has never helped a recording sound more real. The primary need for mastering is to provide uniformity from song to song for the entire CD so you never have to jump up to change the volume, balance, or tone from one song to another. Sometimes "edge" is added for the benefit of airplay, but with all that mastering does accomplish, it never makes the recording sound more like a band. In fact, the trade off is, mastering makes recorded music sound more like a recording, and less like the original performance.

In the future, microphones, electronics and speakers will be improved to better replicate the portion of the recording chain for which they are responsible. Right now, there is no such thing as a microphone that works like a human ear, therefore, if everything else were perfect, it would still be impossible to make a recording that would sound real. If that microphone did exist, there is no such thing as a speaker that has the ability to convincingly replicate a human voice, a grand piano, or anything else acoustic, so because of that, it is impossible to make a recording that sounds real. If the speakers and mics were perfect, still the human ear has the ability to detect if a signal is going through electronics or not. Just by-passing a console channel that has no E.Q. can be heard, not to mention running something through a VCA. Therefore, if you are using musical information that has passed through any of these devices or stages, and that is the information you are putting on your CDs, regardless of the format, your recording is never going to sound real. Are you starting to get the picture?

Keep this in mind, any analog signal is at it's finest, before becoming digitized. Hearing the mixer's stereo outputs is the truest and best you will ever hear from that recording. Yet I have heard recorded music on a standard CD that is far superior to that mixer output, in the studio. Listening to this music is shear enjoyment, and is 2nd only to being in the same room with the actual band.

For a CD to sound like this, requires a Specialty Mastering "Post" step. This "Post Mastering" is not to be confused with any other process which includes the word "mastering", and standard mastering is still required first. The process (in short) reforms the complex audio signal to compensate for the deviations in accuracy that have occurred through all the recording and mastering stages, and for further deficiencies to be encountered by the speakers. When a recording with this modified signal is driving the speakers, a much more accurate replication of the original performance is experience by the listening audience.

By way of illustration, adding this new process makes a greater difference towards sounding more like a real performance, than say, the difference between AM and FM. The most common statement by people listening to this added Post Mastering enhancement is, "It's like I'm there!". As a listener you are able to hear and sense the depth and separation of instruments, which is very similar to being in front of the band's actual performance. The life and excitement that is lost in ALL recordings (yes, audiophile CDs too) is returned and because the previously unrealized irritation is greatly reduced, you want to listen louder, and to hear more of the detail that is otherwise "masked" on normal unprocessed CDs.

Another plus to all of this is, you do not need to buy any additional equipment. It is completely compatible with all existing playback media. There is no encode/decode, it is mono compatible and the entire room is the sweet spot. Plus, if the industry ever changes format (even though there is no need to), it will have No effect on the percentage of improvement this enhancement makes.

So, I say to those complaining about the wrongly accused 16 bit, 44.1 KHz CD, who think they'll never be happy until the industry makes a change, this is a quantum improvement over simply raising the sample rate and word length. All you have to do is use this Specialty Mastering process on your project, and then . . . "It's like you are there!"

As you might imagine, it's difficult to keep something this good quiet for very long. It has already caught the attention of several Record Producers who are also unhappy with the way recordings have sounded in the past, and have embraced this new technology with outstanding results, including Kevin Dorsey (Music Director for Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson), Don Peake (Film Scoring / Producing), Greg Williams (Boyz II Men), and Martin Kloiber (Mixer for Sony Pictures). You can read their comments on our Web Site at: http://Live-WireMastering.com/response.htm Additional information on the Web or (818) 990-4889.