macs so good they even master your tunes for you

A Red Cat’s Journey, Enhanced by iTunes

By ROBERT LEVINE
Published: January 22, 2007
Over the course of his career that has spanned four decades, the guitarist and producer Ry Cooder has recorded with groups from the Rolling Stones to the Buena Vista Social Club. But he hasn’t been prolific as a solo artist recently, mostly because he has had trouble capturing the sound he wanted on a compact disc. On his new album, he achieved that sound with a little help from an unlikely source: Apple’s iTunes program.

Last year, as Mr. Cooder worked on “My Name Is Buddy,” an oddball folk and blues concept album about a red cat that travels through a mythic American landscape, he ran into familiar problems. When he subjected the recording to his usual test — playback in his Toyota, on the factory-installed stereo — the result wasn’t to his liking. “It started to sound processed,” he said. “We were losing the feeling of the thing, and this is not music that can withstand this.”

Then Mr. Cooder noticed something else: When he burned a copy of the album using Apple’s iTunes software, it sounded fine. He didn’t know why until one of his younger engineers told him that the default settings on iTunes apply a “sound enhancer.” (It’s in the preferences menu, under “playback.”) Usually, that feature sweetens the sound of digital music files, but Mr. Cooder so liked its effect on his studio recordings that he used it to master — that is, make the final sound mixes — his album. “We didn’t do anything else to it,” he said.

Mr. Cooder is most likely the first well-known musician to master his album using iTunes, but other producers have also noticed its effect.

“When we made the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah record, they would listen to it on the iTunes presets and say it sounded pretty good,” said Dave Fridmann, a producer who has worked with that band. “It beefs things up and brightens them and you can definitely tell the difference.” ROBERT LEVINE

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/techno...nd&emc=rss

jesus... haha.

time to call up mercenary audio and tell them you need iTunes for your studio.

[Macc]

Ain't they got Level Check or something now too, so everything's at the same level? Sorted.

All you need is a healthy dose of SRS-WOW fx and you have a bare phat master.

old news, there is a several page thread about macc being good enough to master tunes for us already :P

lol i can see the next great teebee quote already...

[Macc]

old news, there is a several page thread about macc being good enough to master tunes for us already :P

Very good

Ah but macc doesn't feature gapless playback with crossfading (aka auto-trainwreck) or a sound enhancement slider that goes from 'low' to 'high' now does he?

[Macc]

That's what you think *saucy look*

Actually that doesn't work at all does it

lol i can see the next great teebee quote already...

please please please share.

j

0=0

[Macc]

where's my bits j