AH: Did you get your start recording classical music?
JK: No, just rock and pop mostly. Mostly punk rock and lots of jazz. I was in a band. I'm of this new breed of engineers: they were calling me for keyboard and drum programming. The Yamaha DX7 was my first, and it brought me the most jobs. No keyboard player knew how to change even the release time — you know, with six operators and the explanation deep in the manual. It was like, "Can you make the release on these strings longer?" And drum machines — we had at first the Roland TR-808, and then the Yamaha RX11. These were my first jobs. Then I just started playing around with the tape machine.
How did you get involved with the Filharmonija?
This one is the best orchestra in the country. I got the job because the National Radio usually records this session and there are 24 mics in the orchestra. You can mix and stuff, but the sound is just not the sound of an orchestra. It just gets muddied with too many mics — phasing problems. You have a lot of control — you can lift up cellos, whatever — but the sound is not the right one.
Is that a 63-piece orchestra you're working with today?
Yes, I believe so. With five percussion players for this piece.
I noticed that the space is fairly dry sounding.
Too short and too small for this size. This should be a 20 to 25-piece orchestra for this space.
Will you add artificial reverb to make it sound bigger?
Just longer. Not louder. Because the reverb itself is pretty strong — but short — like wooof wooof. Like one big kitchen. I'll be adding a tail — a couple of seconds long and very long pre-delay — not to change the perception of the hall, but just to make the breaks longer so they are not so dry.
How do you work with the fact that there's a short pre-delay already but not a lot of diffusion coming from the hall picked up by your mics, and then you also add additional reverb? It's like two different spaces.
We're happy that brains are not perfect and can be fooled easily. Especially if you come from the stance of physics — soundfields and theory — there are so many things we're doing wrong completely. But they work.
JB: Do you use a convolution reverb?
Last time I used a Lexicon 480 and a Quantec [QRS]. The Quantec is unbelievable. Also, there are two beautiful EMT 140 plates at Metro with vacuum tubes. In the end they will be really, really quiet — just slide them under.
Will you also master it at Metro?
I'll do all the mastering at Metro. It's the best-equipped studio in Ljubljana.
Do they have a separate mastering room?
No, in the same room.
It's just one process?
Yeah. It's not much mixing because it's stereo mics.
So you just add reverb? What about compression and limiting and EQ?
I do all parallel processing, like adding top end but not sending the whole signal through. Just record the EQs back to the workstation and add these tracks in slightly. At Metro it's mainly Manley Massive Passive. You just slam it — 10 kHz on up. Then a Summit Audio [EQP200A], which has a little bit less distortion than the Manley, and slam this, also like 10 kHz on up. And Night Technologies [EQ3D], which is the most precise. Then I mix together in parallel all three and record a mix of all three EQs back to the workstation. Then I add this layer to the original, so the original is untouched. The same with compressors — multiband or just mix compression — just to lift up the quiet parts.
Do you find that you hear any phasing from adding the Massive Passive to the original signal in parallel?
No, but you have to take care to use bell curves and not shelving. Shelving can become a bit funny with phasing. And filters — low-cut, high-cut — they're not really phase-linear. But bell curves are perfect. The Summit is also perfect. Completely phase-linear. Just high-cut gets a bit weird — some phase anomalies.
Is this something you do only with classical music?
No.
Do you tend to process everything you do in parallel? You always have the original signal untouched, and you add to it the processed signals?
Yes. For top end I don't just use one EQ, I use three. For full-range compression I use three different compressors in parallel.
You never put them in series?
No, not really. Sometimes multiband and full-range after it. It's always a question. Sometimes when you set a compressor on slow release, it's like wooof wooof [slowly]. It's cool. But also on fast release, it's like oomph oomph oom [quickly]. Also cool. But if there are no in-between settings you can use two compressors: one long release, one short release. That's the advantage. Metro is great, but in the end, when I'm doing this mastering and I process top end separately and midrange, like 200 cycles, separately, I end up with seven layers. To do this in real-time, I'd need something like eight Summit EQs and six Night Technologies EQs and five Massive Passives. But I only have one piece of each. It's fine economy-wise. You may only have one EQ and one compressor, but you use them ten times, over and over, each time recording back to the workstation.
What do you sum it all with?
Just in Nuendo. Digital summing.
You prefer doing your mixing and mastering in Nuendo, but you're recording today with Pro Tools.
Yeah, it's just convenience. It's "house" Pro Tools. Doesn't make me bring a different computer. They're all basically the same — it's just a question of which mindset.
JB: Have you done any experimentation with Altiverb or other sampling reverbs?
