Bob Irwin | TapeOp

If there's a classic tune running around in your head, more than likely you can find the reissue of it on the Sundazed Label. Owner Bob Irwin founded the company on a love and passion for great music that continues to this day. In an industry that churns out corporate music swill ad nauseum, Bob is a music archeologist aspiring to find the treasures of the past and bring them to the light of day. Carefully preserving the original elements, he presents these finds to a new audience that might never experience them otherwise. When I arrived at Sundazed we listened to the Chesterfield Kings on Bob's Dunluvy SC IVA monitors and immediately our conversation turned to gear.

What are the monitors powered by?

I'm in the process of changing over the power amps in this room. I've just been waiting for that right moment when I'm between projects to make the switch in order to not lose my frame of reference. I have a beautiful Audio Sculpture "Equilibre" tube amp that is so well married to the IVAs that I can't wait to get it in!

Do you find the tubes color the sound?

No. I'm very, very used to working with tube equipment. I love the sound, the glow! [laughs] I've heard incredibly good sounding solid-state power amps too, but I'm more comfortable working with tubes. Makes me feel better, makes me work better.

I cherish my tubes on my analog chain side too, but unfortunately a lot of the projects I get in can't tolerate the conversion from D to A and back again.

Well, I'm very fortunate and very happy in working with the kind of music that we do because it's almost exclusively reissue or vintage-oriented work. New projects we do take on are similar to what you've seen, like The Chesterfield Kings, Davie Allan, etc. — artists who are looking to somewhat recreate a vintage sound and feel.

A few colleagues were talking about the Kind of Blue reissue the other day, how several of the songs had a vari-speed issue due to one of the machines being slightly misadjusted. They were talking about aesthetic- ally whether or not it should be corrected in the reissue or not since it came out vari-speeded on the original release. You must run across this kind of stuff all the time.

That and about thirty other issues, you bet. I wasn't involved in Sony's Kind of Blue reissue but I do remember it being batted about back and forth at the time. In the end, I think they corrected it. It is something that we run into quite often. For instance, we recently did all the Lovin' Spoonful reissues for BMG. Nearly the entire original Do You Believe in Magic album was vari-speeded, purposefully, and frankly, you could hear why. I don't know if it was producer Erik Jacobsen or whoever, but someone sped the mixdowns up a bit and the whole program pulled together. And when we were mastering the album, John Sebastian said, "You know, I think that perhaps we should give the world "Do You Believe in Magic" at the correct speed." But, I feel that when you're dealing with music history, it would be difficult to take a hit song like "Do You Believe in Magic" that everybody heard since they were kids and make that into a different animal. So, ultimately, we opted not to vari-speed that song, but we looked at the bonus tracks appended to the reissue and revealed some of them at their actual speed. Further complicating situations like that, you also have to try and figure out what was done on purpose and what the hell was just a mistake in the first place!

I'm sure that is part of the more interesting part of the job.

I love this job! It's very cool because it's not limited strictly to the garage arena or even to the sixties arena. I should preface this by saying that we're not necessarily billed as a commercial studio — I built the new studios to primarily address Sundazed projects. From there, we've been very fortunate in having some industry folks bring projects here that I absolutely can't wait to work on. Whether it's a project for BMG like the Spoonful catalog, or for Verve Jazz such as the Buddie Emmons Steel Guitar Jazz album, which is one of my most favorite albums on the planet, I'm totally excited!

Is that something where Verve contacts you 'cause you guys are the kings of reissues?

Thanks! Yes, I believe initially they had some of our Euphoria Jazz titles. Euphoria is a subsidiary label of Sundazed that primarily reissues jazz guitar titles. Bryan Koniarz at Verve, who is in charge of certain parts of catalog development, acquired a couple things we released and contacted me from there.

That's got to feel good. That's the ultimate industry "pat on the back" right there.

Yeah, it's really nice. And the other side of the coin is that some people are savvy enough to realize that, reasonable rates aside, I won't let anything go out of this place until I feel it cannot possibly be any better. It can't be anything less than stellar. And hopefully, that comes back to reward you in the way of more projects. I guess it would be different if I was sweeping floors or hauling concrete blocks, but I really don't mind being here all the time, I truly love it. Problematic issues aside, at the end of the day you're always glad you did things the right way!

Sure, and you, probably more than anybody, have heard so many bad reissues. When compact disc first started they slaughtered so many good albums going to CD.

It's astounding. People continue to do it. I'm sometimes alarmed at the mismatch of program to either mixing or mastering people. I mean, it's a given — I'm just not the guy to go near a hip-hop project, nor would I ever, not because I don't respect it, but because I don't know it. Yet you see people attempting to do reissue projects of immeasurable value and importance, but when the mastering's done there's no referencing to anything. And that's not to say that you have to be married to your reference. I've always thought that there were great sounding records in the '60s and there were shitty sounding records in the '60s, but you know that if you have a master that is absolutely stellar, living and breathing, and you find that it was killed during the original lacquer cut in 1967, you'll then want to show what that album could have been. Other times, my god — you have all you can do to try and aspire to sound as good as the first vinyl pressing!

Do you ever consult the original producer or engineer on the albums you're working on?

Oh yeah, wherever possible we try to involve the original artists and the original technical people. Not to the point where I have to have the original producer sitting here, but when I was working on the Simon & Garfunkel catalog for Sony, I was certainly back and forth with Roy Halee, talking to him. When you have an artist involved, it can sometimes be wonderful and sometimes be problematic, but fortunately, the good usually outweighs the bad. I've always found that if an artist is the least bit reasonable and astute, you can say to them, "I'm gonna listen to you and we'll work on this together, unless I think you're leading us down the wrong path. Then, I have to be honest with you and tell you that." Artists appreciate the honesty. I find that approach works best for us. Yes, everyone is contacted. For better or for worse, even when you have a band that is splintered...

You want to go to the main guy?

Or go to all of them and explain that I'm the person here who is going to try to make this music right, so let's put personal difference aside for a minute. You don't have to speak together, you don't have to be involved together but I just want you to know that this is going on and invite you to participate anyway you like. That's just the right way to do things, because besides the obvious benefit it can bring you in the studio, that also gains their confidence. An artist may then trust you with access to their photo archives, might possibly make them available for interviews for the liner notes, and makes them a vital part of the project.

How important is it to recreate the original product?

Case by case. My stock line is, again, there were great sounding records and there were crappy sounding records. If it was a great sounding record in the first place, I think we should do everything we can to emulate that sound. Whether it's on compact disc or vinyl, it's always been key to our mastering philosophy. If you have a great sounding record, whether it's a Simon and Garfunkel or a Lovin' Spoonful record, you want it to be as vibrant and as wonderful as that first pressing of that record.

I read with the Simon and Garfunkel releases that you had to actually recreate the room and remix the project.

For certain titles we had to, as there were no two-track masters left. We had to recreate the original two-track masters.

Wow. Over the years the originals were worn out?

Played out, safetied, the safeties burned out, safetied again, burned out. Some albums were on fourth and fifth generations.

I've read where all the records you put out are on 180- gram vinyl. What's the big deal about it?

It's heftier, more stable. It's quieter, it affords you a deeper groove cut. And it's pressed on absolutely pure virgin vinyl. You are able to extract more dynamic range out of a 180-gram pressing. Not simply because of the thickness of the vinyl, but coupled with the right technology and the way that is working with that particular format of vinyl.

So it's way better you would say, kind of like tape formulations?

While I think the technology that exists gets better, I think that cutting a great lacquer is becoming a lost art. Most of the old-timers aren't doing it anymore. There are some young guys that are cutting and doing it well, but the people that were cutting all-analog when, you know, you were doing it with preview and by your instincts, your eyes, your heart and your ears, those guys are tough to find right now. Not many of them around at all. There are computer programs where you can lay something into a hard drive and have the computer determine the cut...that's okay, but that's definitely not what we do. We're all about cutting from analog, wherever possible.

Do you have a cutting lathe here?

No, I work with outside houses. Sony now has a beautiful machine with preview and they're able to cut all analog. Sony engineer Joe Palmaccio cuts our Dylan titles and other vinyl titles that are licensed from Sony. I also use two other houses that are still set up to cut analog. It works a couple different ways; if something is a relatively straight cut I'll supply my EQ and compression notes. Or there are times when I create my own analog cutting master for a record that is very, very involved, and requires a bunch of different moves. I will do every bit of that here, all analog and print back to 1/2" 30 ips tape and supply, in essence, my own analog cutting master for that particular record.

What's your favorite analog format beside vinyl? I keep an old 1" 8-track around to show young clients who've never experienced these old formats and their jaws literally hit the floor when I play something off that format.

Yeah, I feel the same way about 1/2" 3-track tape from the early sixties. It's just a format that sounds so good to my ears that my jaw continually drops. I had Mike Spitz from ATR build me this beautiful 1/2" 3-track that resides in the other room, it's just so glorious. Something about the format. And I love 1/2-inch 4-track, too... but it's not quite as magical as a well-recorded, 1/2" 3-track tape!

And most of those came out a mono recording?

No, it can be stereo as well. Nashville was using the 1/2" 3- track format right up to about 1968. All those classic George Jones and Tammy Wynette songs, they're mostly done on 1/2" 3-track tape. You pull up something like a Tammy Wynette recording from 1966 or '67 from Nashville, and you're like, "Oh, God!" All of my favorite surf and hot rod recordings were done on 3-track!

Sonically can you cross it over into stereo CD?

Yes, absolutely. It's definitely a less-is-more scenario, as many of those things were zero-fader-level recordings. Effects are usually printed right to the track and it's often stupid-simple — left, center, right — here we go. And if you know what not to do, as long as you do a great conversion, you're usually there! I think the most important thing is knowing that you shouldn't do certain things. Don't brighten the upper mids just for the sake of brightening the upper mids, or jacking the level through the ceiling so that it stands up next to a current recording. That's not what this stuff was about. And you know, that's what you see these guys [The Chesterfield Kings] fighting right now. They're looking for that nice fat, round, analog kind of sound.

Do you find you have to get different machines in to reproduce the tape accurately?

Yes, I think so. We have one of the best vintage machine collections of anyone around...a lot of vintage gear. What you see in the two work rooms now are kind of my workhorse machines. I love Mike Spitz' ATR's. Even within these machines I have the HD front-end built in. They're all tube.

Oh, the whole Dave Hill [Aria] electronics front end.

It's program dependent. There is also a set of outputs direct from the circuit boards, bypassing all the metering. Across the street and downstairs I still have my Scully 1/2" 4-track, I've got eight old 440s, I have old MCI machines stashed away, I have the gorgeous all-tube Presto 1/2" 3-track, a Presto quarter-inch 2-track. I've got Ampex 440s and a 300 set up just for full-track mono.