"Mess Of Blues", Stoney Plain Records/Ruf Records, is the last recording Jeff Healey completed before his untimely death. It features the house band Healey assembled to perform blues/rock at his club in Toronto, Jeff Healey's Roadhouse. The recordings include four live tracks and six studio tracks and the content is an eclectic mix of covers. It was produced by Jeff and award winning producer/mixer/bassist Alec Fraser. The mastering was done by Andy Krehm, our resident mastering engineer.

Andy also mastered Jeff's previous three releases plus two more which will be released sometime in 2010.

Here are some thoughts and recollections from Andy Krehm:

"When producer/mixer/bassist Alec Fraser, a long-time client and friend, called to book a mastering session for "Mess Of Blues" I had no idea that Jeff's illness was so serious. He'd battled cancer before and had overcome each bout but this time, it was not to be.

We completed the mastering of "Mess Of Blues" on February 24, 2008 and he passed away on March 2, 2008.

Although I mastered several albums for Jeff, he only came to my control room for the first album and didn't stay long. I think he just wanted to introduce himself and give me an overview of what he was hoping to accomplish. When I mastered the next two, he met me on the front porch of our building to give me a disc of the files to be mastered. He would also come by when the master was ready to be picked up. Why he did that, when he could have sent the material over by messenger and have the final delivered the same way, I will never know but it was always nice seeing him, even for those brief moments. He was hospitalized while we were mastering "Mess Of Blues" so I never saw him again.

My impressions from my brief meetings and phone conversations was that he was fiercely loyal to his music "team" and a kind and honest man. He also had a good sense of humour!

I have an amusing story that I'd like to share with you.

For those of you who don't know my background, I was a Toronto based studio and theatre guitarist for over twenty year before I became a full-time mastering engineer. Of course there was a lot of "glamourous" and high profile work that I did but like most busy free-lance musicians, I also had to do my share of "one-nighters" to fill in the calendar. These were anything from weddings and bar mitzvahs to outdoor park concerts. While they weren't as prestigious or well-paying as playing on movie soundtrack for Porky's or playing with the Pointer Sisters they did help to pay the mortgage!

One afternoon, I was playing with a Dixieland band at a park concert (yes, I had a white suit but no straw hat!) and during the first break, someone told me that Jeff Healey would be sitting in with us next set. So I asked if Jeff would like to use my guitar and/or amp and he said no.

The next thing I knew, we were on stage and up comes Jeff with Cornet (in the trumpet family) and proceeded to play that instrument very well! I was quite surprised as I only knew Jeff as a rock/blues guitarist.

What I didn't know is that he had a lifelong love of traditional jazz and owned a huge vinyl record collection of 78's and 45's. In fact I didn't start mastering his albums until he started recording trad jazz albums which was not until 2002. His first jazz album was "Amoung Friends" and he recorded two more in that genre before returning to his blues/rock style with his last album, "Mess Of Blues".

I don't believe that I ever told Jeff that I had actually met him and played on stage with him many years ago at that park concert but I'm sure he would have had a good chuckle at how our paths crossed earlier in life!"

On May 17, 2008, Jeff Healey's "Mess Of Blues" hit #1 on Billboard's "Top Blues Albums" Chart.

"Mess Of Blues" also received a nomination for a Juno Award in the BLUES ALBUM OF THE YEAR category and Jeff and his bandmates were suitably rewarded at the Maple Blues Awards in January/09.

And the crowning touch was that "Mess Of Blues" won the 2009 Blues Music Award for Rock Blues Album of the Year.

But really this is it! We now have a new studio, a new monitoring system, all new mastering wire and a gear list that puts Silverbirch in the same company as the elite mastering studios found world-wide.

So, the last major piece of our upgrade puzzle was to find the right analog precision solid state equalizer.

A good mastering studio has to have an excellent selection of equalizers in order to handle a wide variety of musical styles and the many different scenarios that may present themselves during the various mastering sessions.

We already have "colour" eq with the wonderful sounding Manley Massive Passive tube eq and the quirky Nightpro EQ3-D, with its amazing sounding airband and thumping sub frequencies. Our Weiss EQ1 MK2 LP-DYN is a most impressive, transparent sounding digital outboard eq, suitable for dynamically controlled equalization or general equalizing work. And occasionally, we will turn to our Massenburg Design Works TDM High-Res Parametric EQ plug-in and the eq in our TC 6000 mastering unit.

Clearly what is missing here is an analog precision solid state equalizer. Analog because we already have a great digital outboard piece in the Weiss and our mastering engineer prefers not to use plug-ins. Precision because the Manley and the Nightpro colour with broad strokes. Solid state because we don't need any more tube gear, already owning three wonderful tube compressors and the Manley tube eq.

Careful research pointed us to the Prism Sound Maselec MEA-2 Master Series Equalizer as the best equalizer to compliment the gear we had already have. This is a unit that is found in the majority of A-list mastering studio's gear lists. Once we brought it in for trial, it was obvious why.

It meets all of our criterion including stepped pots for accurate stereo imaging and precision recall. The sound is not exactly neutral but is not excessively coloured either. It goes about its work in a fairly subtle way. The frequency bands are well chosen and they all sound good, even when pushed.

So, not as sexy or spectacular as some of our other upgrades but a welcome one that just arrived one day and is now being used on almost every session.

As our mastering engineer, Andy Krehm, worked his way down to the bottom of the three year upgrade plan he came to the "upgrade wiring" note.

The majority of research indicated that a mastering studio's signal path (i.e., the route the audio travels as it moves from the mix to the master) could be improved in one of three ways. Firstly, by eliminating the TRS patch bay (standard for recording studios), upgrading the wiring and by either patching directly from unit to unit or a by using a mastering quality patch bay (very different from the TRS patch bay).

For those that need a quick primer on patch bays, studios with analog gear usually have a patch bay. This is in order to select which piece of gear they want to use and in what order without going behind the equipment racks every time they need to use a unit.

In order to use an analog unit in one's session, it has to travel to and from the patch bay and then on to the next unit. This involves many extra feet of cable plus four input and output jacks, potentially causing some degree of degradation of the audio signal. Think about how long the cables have to be to go to a patch bay and back from five or six different analog units not to mention the four jacks per unit!

So why not just connect one piece to the next with a short cable. Well, no reason at all except that we only have one control room here and our mastering engineer uses the analog gear mostly in one or two configurations and the recording/mixing guys use it in many ways. In other words, the order and amount of gear changes much more for the recording/mixing engineers than they do for the mastering engineer.

At first glance, it seemed that we couldn't do the direct wire setup for mastering because the rec/mix guys need a recording type of patch bay and the mastering patch bays are not flexible enough for use in a recording mixing setup. Our mastering engineer decided he didn't need a mastering patch bay as his current system allows him all the flexibility he needs.

So, our resident visionary, doubling as mastering engineer by day, proposed this idea to the resident mixer and tech guy. How about a designing a rack for the analog gear that rotates in order to have quick and easy access to the backs of the gear. The theory was that the mastering gear would have its short cables going "point to point" and next to each piece of gear the old cables, already wired to the patch bay, would be hanging in readiness to be swapped with the mastering cables when needed.

Ted set up a design for the new desk in Auto Cadd and after consultation with our room designer, found the best angles to minimize the sound degrading reflections that are always created by the sound from the speakers hitting various surfaces at different times.

The new desk was built, installed, looks beautiful and rotates just as planned. The mastering gear is all wired point-to-point and the mix engineers flip the rack and put their choice of analog gear into the patch bay so they can configure it for their particular session. Changing the cables around is a lot easier than it sounds and the system is working very well for us.

The main purpose of this exercise was to connect each analog unit in the mastering chain point-to-point and upgrade the wires to Requisite Cable. The wire for the recording/mixing department is "recording studio" standard, i.e., Apogee, Mogami and Canare and now the mastering wiring is "mastering studio" grade.

Oh, you probably wanted to know if there was any difference in the sound of the point-to-point Requisite wire mastering set-up as compared to the gear running though the TRS patch bay and well over a 100 feet of studio grade cable.

Well, Andy finished his mastering one day and Ted took over to put in the new cables he had prepared (the new desk/racks had previously been installed). Fortunately, there was no other session after that and so the next morning, out of curiosity, Andy pulled up his previous day's mastering session. The equipment was untouched from the day before and so all he had to do to listen to the difference was to play the last master of the day against the same mix playing through the exact same signal path but running through the new wire, point-to-point.

Well, the difference was quite obvious and remarkable. The stereo image seemed wider and deeper with more clarity and also a little bit louder. This was the second last major change in our mastering setup so stay tuned for the last!

Why bother to go the analog world for processing? Because our excellent selection of analog outboard gear sounds wonderfully different than our digital gear. And since we own great analog EQs, compressors and a mastering quality tape deck, we wanted to be able to fully capture their class-A sound.

Technically speaking, in order to run a digital mix to our analog gear, one needs a digital to analog converter (DAC) and an analog to digital converter (ADC) to get back into the computer. In the mastering world, this is known as an analog loop.

This is ideally done with the best set of converters one can afford. The DAC that feeds the analog chain is the first critical step before analog processing. And you need a top of the line ADC to get back to digital in order to preserve all that excellent analog work you just did.

Upgrading our converters was the third last stage of our two year commitment to rebuild and upgrade every aspect of our mastering suite (stay tuned for the last two!). After extensive research, we decided to purchase the LavryGold DA924 and the LavryGold AD122-96MKIII, a round trip of LavryGold converters. There were a couple of other worthy contenders but the mastering engineers we consulted who have heard the top rated brands recommended Lavry as the best of the best.

Our mastering clients will be very happy with Silverbirch's new sound of gold.

And of course our recording clients will also be able to take advantage of our improved analog to digital conversion. Imagine the sound of your favourite vocalist singing into a Neumann U-87 microphone to a Manley tube or Millennia solid state pre-amp to a LavryGold analog to digital converter. Perhaps add in a little Manley or Requisite tube compression and you have a recipe for one of the best sounding recording set-ups ever!

The new A/D converter also benefits the mixes that are run analog through the Dangerous 2-bus unit. The old mixes travelled through the ApogeePSX-100 and now they are converted to digital by the LavryGold ADC, a noticible improvement

Since the majority of our independent clients mix within digital workstations, why would we invest over $15,000. for a tape deck?

Well, historically, some of the best sounding albums ever recorded were mixed to 1/2" tape. Secondly, quite a few major label projects are currently mixed to this format. Thirdly, hardly any indie projects are mixed to 1/2" and that's where we can help bridge the gap.

We are offering a service called "Layback Mastering". That simply means that your digital mixes will be passed through the record head, tape and playback head(s) as part of our mastering process. It is not necessary to actually record the audio, stop and play it back. One only has to put the deck in record and rewind as necessary. It is still recorded to tape but the audio returns to the mastering session it real time. This makes for a an easy to compare experience. It is easy to quickly hear whether the tape will be helpful to the mix, or not. The tapes can be recycled many times with no significant sonic degradation.

Most of the mastering work here is done analog anyway and so by using our Lavry high-end converters, any infinitesimal audio changes caused by leaving the digital domain are far offset by the quality of sound that class-A analog gear can potentially add to your project. Of course, not all audio will benefit by going to tape, but it's a powerful option to have available.

If you have worked at our studio before and have noticed the imposing tape recorder in the corner, you may well ask what the fuss is all about! Well, that was a Studer A80 1/4" deck running at 15 ips only. While this was used successfully on quite a few blues and roots albums, this particular model, using 1/4" tape, doesn't offer the fidelity and low noise floor necessary to be used on most modern recordings and therefore, although a great sounding machine in its class, it had limited use here. Our new machine is a quanatum leap forward in sound and versatility.

In keeping with our almost completed two year commitment to rebuild and upgrade every aspect of our mastering suite, our research revealed that every world-class mastering suite had a 1/2" deck. They are used to transfer audio mixed to 1/2" and also for layback mastering.

It was also clear that the most popular deck was the Ampex ATR 102. In addition, as we did our searches, we saw various words and phrases such as "ATR Services", "Mike Spitz Remanufactured", "Flux Heads", "Aria Electronics", etc.

We learned that the Ampex brand was the first reel to reel tape recorder to be used in professional applications. ABC started using one to record the Bing Crosby shows in 1948. The last ones were produced in the '90's when it appeared that digital was going to take over all the pro audio applications. Well, it appears that a great many people still like the sound of tape, analog summing and analog mastering.

Mike Spitz of ATR Services has built up a loyal following by rebuilding Ampex tape decks. He calls it remanufacturing, . Flux Magnetics are a company that makes new and improved head stacks for these machines. The heads on our machine are the Flux Magnetics Mastering Series Extended Response Heads. Designed by David Hill of Cranesong and ATR Services, Aria Electronics are a modern alternative to the original Ampex electronics.

In other words, a Spitz remanufactured Ampex deck with Flux heads and Aria Electronics is a hybrid modern machine that never existed in days when these machines were still coming off the production line, but it still sounds like tape. We also decided that the original electronics might be useful so our machine is the custom built version, with both electronics, so that we could also offer the vintage sound.

Here's a quote from the ATR website: The classic Ampex ATR-102 recorder/reproducer is completely restored, updated and modified to be as reliable as possible. Our machines perform at or better than original Ampex specifications, in some cases besting tolerances for mechanical and audio precision by 60% or more!

Oh, and if the noise floor isn't low enough for you, we bought a Dolby SR noise reduction unit, just in case!

Silverbirch has offered high quality analog and digital mastering for years and so it's only appropriate that we add a high quality tape deck in order to offer you the sweet sound of tape.

Andy Krehm, our mastering engineer, was expecting to this machine to be a useful addition to his already formidable arsenal of gear but was not prepared for the wonderful effect it can have on some tracks. In fact, he has used the deck on all, or parts of, about 30% of the albums he has worked on since it has been up and running.

As a bonus, our recording clients can now cost effectively mix to 1/2" tape and any studio or band is welcome to book a couple of hours and run their mixes to or through our Ampex 102 at $50. per hour. If you don't need your mixes archived to tape but just want them run to tape and back in to the hard drive, there is no charge to use our recycled tape which is replaced as soon as it shows any signs of degradation. Obviously this is a effective option for recording and mastering clients.

Besides the experience of the engineers, the other major assets of a world-class studio are a professionally designed and built studio, the quality and quantity of class-A equipment, the digital audio workstation and the monitoring system.

Since January, 2004, we have been implementing our commitment to bring every aspect of Silverbirch up to the level of the best mastering studios in the world. Our most recent goal was to upgrading our monitoring system.

The music enthusiast and even most audio engineers usually use words like great sounding, kick ass, gorgeous, sweet, etc., when describing speakers that they like. When evaluating speakers for a mastering suite, the words that are used are honest, detailed and transparent. Mastering studios tend to have speakers that are either audiophile grade or hybrids of audiophile and high-end studio.

It took us over six months to evaluate speakers that we thought would be right for our room and in the end, we settled on the combination of Lipinski L-505 satellites, dual Velodyne D-10 sub woofers and the Dangerous Monitor ST.

THE MAINS

The Lipinski brand caught our attention as one of the bright new companies that were dedicated to building reference level monitors. The reviews were really excellent and the speakers were appearing in more and more really good mastering suites, replacing well-known brands such as B&W, Dunlavy, Eggleston, PMC, etc. So, we brought in a set to try, liked them and purchased them.

These are passive speakers, meaning they needed an external power amp. We chose the Bryston 3B SST. This amp is found in many, many studios world-wide as well as in the homes of the most discerning audiophiles. The description of the Bryston amps are roughly the same as mastering speakers, honest, transparent and important for studios, absolutely reliable. We got a kick out of the following quote from a very good mastering engineer who was describing his Bryston amp. "No colour, no hype, no lies, no down time, no mistakes! "

The L505's do not go down to the very lowest frequencies and so have to be mated to a sub woofer in order to reproduce the entire audio spectrum necessary for mastering.

THE SUB WOOFER

And so we began our search for sub woofers. The idea of stereo subs had intrigued our mastering engineer for some time.

Again, we tried several different brands but couldn't duplicate that "phatt" bottom end that we were used to hearing with our old system until the Velodyne DD-10 active sub appeared. As a bonus, the Velodyne D series offers unprecedented digital control of frequencies. The digital controls made it easy to blend the satellites with the subs to make a seamless frequency spectrum, without any added room equalization.

Because the crossover (the point where the main speakers roll off and the subwoofer begins to be heard) is relatively high, you would be amazed at how much stereo signal is subtly reproduced with stereo subwoofers. A simple example is listening for the sound of toms across the soundstage. With a mono sub, the lowest part of the floor tom is summed to mono but with stereo subs, you hear the sound as it was recorded.

These are subs that are made for music, not special effects. The sound of the bass instruments are very clear and yet hip hop and reggae tracks sound as they should!

THE MONITOR CONTROL SYSTEM

The last important detail to attend to was to find the best way to control the volume of the system. We also needed to switch to other devices in the room, like the CD player and alternate speaker sets.

Following the philosophy that less is better, we didn't want to add a preamp just to control the volume. So, when running a passive speaker powered by an amp coupled to an active stereo sub, how do you control the room volume?

These problems are addressed by a monitor controller/speaker switcher.

While controlling volume and switching to other devices, this device must deliver clean, uncoloured sound. After spending $10,000. for our speakers and amp, we didn't want to colour or degrade the sound by adding what is essentially a volume control and a few switches.

While the concept is simple, we discovered that the design reality takes a lot of expertise and high quality components to be realized. A couple of years ago, we bought a very reasonably priced passive studio controller but after our third unit developed problems, decided to look elsewhere! We discovered that if one is willing to pay at least three times the price, there are a number of mastering-grade units available.

We turned to the Dangerous Music company as we already owned one of their analog summing amps, the Dangerous 2-bus LT (more info). It has been totally reliable for two years and sounds great. It also helps to know that the company is co-owned by Chris Muth, who spent a lot of time as in-house technical chief and custom equipment designer at the highly respected Sterling Sound mastering studios in New York.

The description of the Dangerous Monitor ST sounded just right for what we needed and so we brought one in for trial. After installation, we noticed that the sound was immediately more clear, as compared to our old unit. So much for inexpensive passive boxes that claim to be uncoloured!

Long story short, we now own the Dangerous Monitor ST.

And lastly, one needs to convert the digital audio signal coming from the computer into the analog world in order to hear it through the speakers and controller. This converter is usually known as the room digital to analog converter (DAC). So just to sprinkle the last bit of angel dust on our system, we replaced our Pro Tools DAC with a Weiss DAC1-MK2 converter.

Our new full-range system is simply stunning in detail and accuracy. Good mixes sound good and problem mixes show themselves immediately. There are no "hyped" frequencies here. Absolutely perfect for mastering!

We decided to add a precision outboard equalizer to our setup. We already the have Manley Massive Passive tube equalizer but that is more useful for broadband work and colour, rather than corrective work. We also have extensively used the George Massenburg designed MDW High-Res Parametric EQ, which is a precision plug-in and is one of the few plug-ins to retain an excellent sound in the computer environment. However, we had vowed that by 2006, we would be able to run an entire mastering session without using any plug-ins!

After much consideration, we chose the Weiss EQ-1 MK2 Dynamic & Linear Phase Equalizer. Not only is this an excellent equalizer but it has a dynamic option available, and this is what sold us. One of the problems in mastering is when two instruments are playing in the same frequency range but one is louder than the other and shouldn't be. So by activating the compressor function triggered at the appropriate frequency range, you can set it to soften the louder instrument when it is playing and when it rests, the quieter one is not affected. The ads for this unit say"...compressor or equalizer?...". We can't really answer that question but it works like a charm and more subtle than doing the same thing with a multi-band compressor! As a bonus, this unit also functions as an M/S mode (see TC Electronic 6000 for more info).

Due to lack of available computing power, TC Electronic has not been able to release their full complement of software in the recently released versions for Powercore and Pro Tools. So, although the environment for plug-ins is gradually improving, our outboard processors can handle more functions while consistently sounding better than plug-ins!

The TC Electronic Mastering was the 2005 TEC Award winner for "Signal Processing Technology/Hardware". TEC is short for "Technical Excellent & Creative Award" and is presented yearly by MIX Magazine at the AES Show in New York.

.Mastering 6000 contains the new MD4, a 5-band dynamics processor with phase linear reconstruction that can operate in dual mono, stereo and MS modes, and has DXP low level detail enhancement capability. Additional processing includes BrickWall Limiter 2 to prevent distortion and listening fatigue.

The above algorithms offer a superb 5 band multi-band compressor, eq, expander and transparent brick wall limiter. These algorithms work in stereo and M/S stereo. The latter is a most useful tool in perfecting stereo mixes during the mastering process

The M/S stereo mode provides a way to be able to adjust certain elements in the stereo field, almost like having access to the individual tracks, but working from a different angle. An M/S device will convert the stereo field into two channels. I.e., one channel being everything mixed at 12 o'clock on the pan pot (called M or middle) and the other being the combination of everything mixed to the right and left (called S or sides). Although not as discrete as an individual channel, the elements are usually separated enough to able to effectively alter the mix. Imagine being able to equalize, compress or adjust the volume on either of those elements on any frequency spectrum. Obviously not as good as having the individual tracks to adjust, but a real problem solver when you don't have time to remix and you need, for example, the lead vocal louder, M, and the cymbals softened a bit, S.

Another use of M/S is to alter the stereo field to make the image bigger (or smaller, in rare cases). Previously, we could only do that globally with our K-Stereo Processor but now, there are selective options available. A recent example was a track that was too monophonic sounding for the rest of the album. Fortunately, there were some stereo acoustic guitars panned slightly to the side. The fix was to find the frequency where they were most prominent and raise the level of the sides at that point. The result was almost the same as going back to the mix and moving the pan pots of the guitars out a bit, a subtle but useful addition to the sound of that track.

As the TC System 6000 is a standalone system, it offers several optional licenses (i.e., reverb, dynamics, surround, etc) in order to allow studios to configure it optimally to suit their own needs. We brought in the unit to demo the mastering features but when it was noticed that the famous TC reverbs were also available to try, well, who could resist!

The mixing engineers started using them immediately in their mixes to great effect. TC Electronic and Lexicon have absolutely the best reverbs on the market and the TC 6000 reverbs are the best algorithms that the company has to offer. Even though we had heard they were great, we were still surprised how much better they sounded compared to our best plug-in reverbs.

Needless to say, we had to purchase this licence and so Silverbich has graduated from plug-in reverbs to TC Electronic 6000 reverbs and as a result, our reverbs and delays are equal to the best studios in the world, at any cost!