Operating Philosophy
We encourage our clients to join us in the mastering sessions and welcome any input offered. We will not brow-beat you with our personal tastes but instead, will show you what sonic options are possible, within "industry standard" parameters. We invite you to bring in a wish-list of requested changes and we will attempt to carry them out. It is helpful to bring in reference CDs (i.e., your favourite major label CDs that sounds closest to how you want your CD to sound) so that you can see how they sound in our room and so we can hear the "production ball park" you would like your masters to sound like when finished.
The Premises
Silverbirch Productions is located in the Harbourfront area of downtown Toronto in the Arcadia Artist's Co-operative at 680 Queens Quay West (Lakeshore/Bathurst area). The facility is on the sixth floor with both a city and harbour view. A private direct phone line with fax and internet connections are available for clients. There is often street parking and an inexpensive parking lot is close by.
Mastering Room
In January and February, 2004, we built a brand new studio.
The studio was designed by Terry Medwedyk of Group One Acoustics. Terry is one of Canada's premier studio designers and has done work for almost every major recording and mastering studio in Canada.
This bright, comfortable room sounds great and features lots of windows and wood and has received rave reviews from our clients.
A Note re Mastering Room Acoustics
Our control room was designed to have enough reflections to create a natural sounding environment but to also have a reasonably "flat" frequency response. The room allows one to evaluate the music accurately and work done here translates well to outside environments.
If you master in a room that has not been tuned, the engineer usually compensates with equalization that is unnecessary. When playing recordings mastered in such a room on stereo systems outside that studio, you may find that they sound radically different from what you thought you heard at the session.