Jeff Lipton is a mastering veteran with an impressive 30-year career under his belt. He's been nominated for four Grammy Awards in the Best Historical Album category, thanks to his extensive work restoring and remastering music for the Numero Group in Chicago. Jeff's journey started from humble beginnings in his bedroom in 1993, and he's come a long way since then. Today, he owns and operates a cutting-edge, two-room Dolby Atmos-equipped mastering facility outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Surviving the turbulent music industry and a challenging economy, Jeff is pushing forward with a new venture that sets him apart from the pack. Jeff is helping artists and engineers who don't have access to Atmos-equipped rooms by having them send him stems. With his expertise, he can optimize their music for the Atmos format, ensuring it sounds its best in any environment. Jeff's character shines through in everything he does. He's a kind and generous professional who's always looking for ways to help others succeed.
The last time you spoke with Tape Op was 20 years ago [Tape Op #34]. A lot has changed.
The music industry has changed a lot in the last 20 years. My clients went from being primarily labels to mostly individual bands and producers. I feel like the industry is in many ways less centralized now; anyone can release an album and have worldwide distribution through streaming services. This change has made good customer service even more important for our studio, as many clients are less experienced with the process or don’t have any team helping them. Also, modern technology has made giving clients more personalized service easier. I now do video calls with every client before I work on their projects. This allows me to get to know the people I’m working with better, wherever in the world they are. It’s so cool to talk to people face-to-face all over the world. For example, I’ve spoken to people in Taiwan, New Zealand, Israel, Scotland, and Germany, and it's like we're in the same room. I find this to be a fantastic format for communication and working on art. Email is acceptable for straightforward requests, but allowing clients to schedule video chats with me at any time during their project provides for much better and personalized communication, which translates to a better master for the client. The last time I spoke to Tape Op, I was only eight years into being a full-time professional mastering engineer. I still had a little bit of my cocky youth side, and I wasn’t thinking about the way I say things as much as I think about them now. I don't believe that it was a problem because I was so young. If I showed confidence, they were like, "Oh, okay. He's wiser than his years." But now, as I'm older, and older than most of the people I work with, I try to emphasize the client experience and set the expectation of excellent communication through the process. I want my clients to feel comfortable reaching out to me about any concerns or issues they have. I also implemented a free revision policy on the mixes we work on, which certainly helps if a project doesn’t meet the client’s expectations. I find 85 to 90 percent of our projects have no sonic revisions, but in the 10 percent that need them, our goal is to do whatever it takes to figure out what the client wants.
Treating it more like a service industry.
Exactly! I feel like mastering is a service industry, and I enjoy the creative relationships I have with my clients. I feel my job is to achieve their creative visions as much as possible. It’s fun to try to think about their material from their point of view. I also think part of the service is setting expectations, and also being truthful about what is possible. I have accumulated a lot of knowledge in my 30 years of doing this. That said, I am constantly learning new techniques for fidelity and problem solving. If a client asks for something I don’t believe is possible, I usually attempt the request to see what can be done. I love that I’m still learning and doing better work all the time. With expertise, there's sometimes having a tough conversation of explaining why doing something a different way might not be a good idea. For example, it might not reproduce as well on specific systems, or there might be other issues with it in ways that a client might not foresee. After I explain something, I will still make their requests if they say, "Okay, I understand that, but I still want to do it my way." I feel that I'm doing a much better job of communicating with people. That's been a massive focus of mine for at least 15 years.
I totally agree. Have you used any tools to stream audio to clients, like Audiomovers?
No. I have yet to try that. I’m not 100 percent convinced that it translates as well to mastering as mixing. With mastering, I don’t feel that real-time feedback is as effective as posting files and...
