FFW08: Hearing it like it is

Hard love… It’s rarely given without controversy, or taken without offense. How do you tell an entire industry that it’s below par? After spending the best part of a week listening to dozens of locally-produced CDs while voting for Engineer Of The Year (13th ARIA awards), I was left with one sadly obvious conclusion: the work of Australian engineers and producers was not up to an international standard. So I wrote about it with the hope of opening dialogue and perhaps even motivating local engineers to push a bit harder. But it didn’t go over too well, as will be seen later… Here's First Word #08, from sometime in late 1999.

Hearing it like it is
A couple of issues ago I discussed my approach to voting for Engineer Of The Year for the 13th Annual ARIA Awards. Now that the awards are over and we’ve enjoyed our moment of self-congratulation, I’d like to air some related dirty laundry. Some of you won’t like what I’m about to say, and some will disagree strongly. I couldn’t care less. This is my magazine, and I’m going to say it like I hear it.

As you’d expect, a major part of my voting process involved carefully listening to each nominated recording – a daunting task, considering there were 42 CDs submitted. While listening to each recording, I’d occasionally hear something that sounded truly world class and worthy of an award. Excitedly, I’d scan through the CD’s documentation to find out where it was mixed and mastered. To my disappointment, the vast majority of the recordings I considered world class were in fact mixed and/or mastered by US engineers in major US facilities. (The few exceptions were mixed by local engineers with considerable overseas experience, or ‘immigrant’ engineers who honed their skills overseas before taking up residence in Australia. Most were mastered at Studios 301.) Because the US engineers were not eligible for our awards, the local engineers who tracked the recordings received the nominations by default! Make of that what you will. It’s the numbers that bother me…

I was unable to find mixing and/or mastering details for seven of the 42 submitted recordings. Of the remaining 35 recordings, eight were mixed by overseas engineers in overseas studios, and 10 were mastered overseas. Assuming the seven recordings I couldn’t find details for were mixed and mastered locally (a best case scenario), we can safely say that 20% of all nominations were mixed and mastered overseas. That’s one in every five, but it gets worse. That same 20% of recordings included many of our bigger budget mainstream artists for that year, and therefore represented significantly more than 20% of the total recording budget for Australian artists over that time period. Interestingly, they were also the artists who enjoyed the most local chart success during that time period (e.g. Human Nature, Bachelor Girl, Taxiride, etc.)

Think about it. Our record companies are sending our big budget artists overseas for mixing and mastering, while many of our smaller budget artists are opting to mix locally but master overseas. Why?

Some dismiss it as ego-driven ‘wank factor’, but that’s a serious case of denial. Record companies aren’t stupid – if they weren’t seeing any financial benefit from sending work overseas, they wouldn’t be doing it. The reality is that albums mixed and/or mastered in the USA consistently sound better and sell better than those done locally.

Others argue it’s for the overseas technology, but if that were true we’d be sending our local engineers overseas to do the work – the same engineers who track the recordings and are intimately familiar with the artists’ intentions. Besides, we’ve got similar facilities with the same ‘brand name’ equipment here in Australia. Not as many as you’ll find in the USA, and few as glamorous, but certainly enough to service our meagre handful of big budget artists.

If it’s not for the wank factor or the technology, could it be for the people overseas? You bet. Witness the speed at which our local record companies and artists form a queue at the studio door whenever an overseas engineer or producer drops in for a working holiday!

Has our local industry lost faith in itself? The answer is obvious. As far as our record companies and artists are concerned, Australian engineers are not up to the international standard. Unfortunately, I think they’re right. Anyone who critically listened through all 42 nominated CDs, as I did, will agree that there’s a definite Australian sound. But it’s not a good sound and it’s not a sound to be proud of, either. It’s cheap, dry and two-dimensional, and rarely possesses the polish, sparkle and depth required to make it world class. Most locally mixed and mastered recordings sound like demos on steroids, cheap imitations of the real thing. Why? I’d like to think it all comes down to markets and budgets…

Let’s look at some statistics. Australia has a population of 17.8 million people, mostly concentrated around the edges of a country encompassing an area of 7.7 million square kilometres. In contrast, the USA (where the bulk of our overseas mixing and mastering was done) has a population of 273 million people distributed throughout an area of 9.2 million square kilometres. In other words, the US market is potentially 15 times bigger than the Australian market, yet their country is only 1.2 times larger. Assuming an Australian artist produced an internationally competitive recording, they could expect to sell 15 times more CDs in the USA than they’d sell in Australia, for about the same pro rata distribution costs!

Is the entire US market too mind-boggling? Let’s scale it down. The state of New York has a population of 18.2 million people distributed throughout an area of 122,309 square kilometres. That’s a population equivalent to all of Australia, but concentrated into an area that is 63 times smaller! The infrastructure to reach all those people is much simpler. How many newspapers and magazines do you need to advertise in? How many radio stations and music video shows do you need to get onto? How many record stores do you need to distribute to, and over what distances? It is cheaper and easier to reach the same number of people in the USA than it is in Australia.

No wonder we’re always trying to crack the US market! It is the single largest English speaking market in the world. But the secret is to produce something that holds its own among the dozens of international recordings presented daily to the program directors at the radio stations and music video channels across the USA. If the program directors don’t like the sound of it, it’s not going to get played and you’re not going to reach that huge market. Simple. (The same rationale applies locally, too. Many Australian mixed and mastered recordings stand out like sore thumbs when heard on local radio or video shows. Licensing requirements mean that broadcasters must present a certain percentage of Australian content, otherwise much of it would never be heard at all!)

Which leads us to budgets. With the potential for 15 times more sales, recording budgets in the US are understandably higher than they are in Australia. And this, I believe, is the core of the problem. Australian engineers don’t get the necessary studio time to refine their skills and work towards achieving that truly international sound. Australian record companies and artists want their recordings to sound international, so they do whatever’s necessary to add a dash of that truly international flavour – to make them stand out from the rash of locally produced ‘demos on steroids’, and to improve their chances of cracking that huge US market. And that means getting all, or part of it, done in the US. Historically, many of our most successful bands end up making their entire albums overseas, particularly in the USA. As the budget gets lower, the options are to mix and master in the USA, or just to master in the USA. Obviously, our record companies and artists can afford to pay for this type of work, so what can we do to keep that money in our own pockets?

We must learn how to create that international sound, and we should start by studying the people who are taking our work. Read their magazine interviews. Visit their websites. Listen carefully to what they produce. Analyse what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. We must learn to think like they think, because that’s where the difference lies.

It’s time to break free of the “near enough is good enough” and “she’ll be right” restraints that have obviously become so prevalent in our studios - particularly among our younger generation of engineers. We have to swallow our pride, take a detached and critical listen to what we’re doing, and ask ourselves, “does this sound truly international?” Hear it like it is. Because, at this point in time, we’re obviously not cutting it.


The number of emails crowding my In Box left me in no doubt that issue #08 had hit the streets. Most applauded me for bringing the topic into the open. Then the phone calls started - and didn't stop! Angry industry pros were ringing the magazine's office and being deflected to my mobile phone. Most began with a barrage of insults and threats, during which I applied a valuable philosophy I'd learned from Philip Spencer: "it takes two to argue". After letting each person vent their spleen, constructive conversation followed. In most cases the caller reluctantly agreed with my statement that Australian recordings were not up to an international standard, but disagreed with my assumptions and conclusions. From those discussions I wrote the follow-up piece 'Hearing it like it isn't', published in issue #09. Stay tuned...

FFW06: Relativity & the whispering Chinese engineer of the year

In mid 1999 I was invited to be a judge for the categories of Engineer of the Year and Producer of the Year for the ARIA Awards (Australian Recording Industry Association). These are very important awards within the small Australian music industry, so I took this invitation seriously. The winners can look forward to regular work for the coming 12 months or so if they play their cards right.

Chinese Whispers is a game where a message is passed from one person to another by word of mouth; typically by whispering so that no-one else can hear it. After passing through five or more people, the message delivered at the end is quite different to that at the beginning.

Relativity & the whispering Chinese engineer of the year
Wednesday, 8th June, 1999. 10:30AM. The following telephone conversation takes place:

Philip: “Hi Greg. There’s a letter here for you from ARIA.”
Greg: “What’s it say?”

Philip: “Um, something about voting and Engineer and Producer Of The Year. You’ve been selected…”

Greg: “Oh, cool! ARIA’s Engineer and Producer of the Year awards, huh? I accept!”

Philip: “Okay, gotta go, got some clients here at the office, we’re designing ads for them.”

Greg: “Thanks mate, see you later…”

I was taking a break from giving a lecture at Sydney’s JMC Academy, and some of the students in the room must have overheard my side of the conversation. Likewise, the clients back in the office must have overheard Philip’s side of the conversation. Well, word spreads quickly in a small industry, and this was no exception. Like a game of Chinese Whispers, the message got more and more distorted until I started getting congratulated for winning all kinds of things.

Let me put an end to this rumour right now. I was not nominated for Engineer Of The Year, I was not nominated for Producer Of The Year, and I was not nominated for anything else – much to my regret! The letter was, in fact, an invitation to vote for the categories of Producer Of The Year and Engineer Of The Year for the 13th Annual ARIA Music Awards. I was flattered.

Here’s how the voting system works. ARIA send out forms with all the preliminary nominations listed on them (approximately 30 entries for each category). Each preliminary nomination includes the name of the engineer or producer and the recordings to judge them by. It’s a preferential voting system in which you list your top three candidates – in order of preference – on the supplied voting form and send it off to an independent auditing firm who tally up the scores. Immaculate procedure!

I don’t know how or why ARIA chose me to be part of their ‘Specialist Voting Panel’. Perhaps because I’m always preaching sound quality in the pages of AudioTechnology, perhaps in recognition of the support we gave them during their fight against the Parallel Imports bill, or perhaps because someone else dobbed me in. Either way, I considered it an honour. But with that honour came a certain responsibility, and the more I thought about it, the heavier that responsibility became. How do you determine who should be awarded Engineer or Producer Of The Year? What criteria do you use? It’s not as simple as it seems.

Consider the category of Engineer Of The Year. Scanning the list of preliminary nominations revealed a decent cross-section of recordings to judge by, from big budget mainstream artists to low budget ‘indie’ artists. And therein lay my first problem. A big budget recording, by its very nature, is likely to have a better overall sound quality than a low budget recording. Bigger budgets mean more time and better equipment at your disposal – both important contributors to creating a good sound. So, a low budget recording that sounds ‘just okay’ may actually represent better engineering skill than a big budget recording that sounds ‘brilliant’. It’s all relative.

Big budget recording artists usually have better quality instruments and a lot more studio experience under their belts - more factors that make it easier to get a good sound. Conversely, lower budget recording artists generally have less studio experience, cheaper musical instruments, and greater time constraints. All these things conspire against getting a good sound, and make the engineer’s job that much harder. Getting a commercially acceptable sound under these circumstances requires an enormous amount of engineering skill. Once again, it’s all relative. (And we haven’t even touched on the benefits of big budget mastering…)

Then I thought about what goes on during a session. Without being there, how can you really tell who was a good engineer and who wasn’t? Engineering involves much more than just getting a great sound. It’s also about handling the numerous stresses of a session, internalising your own frustrations while outwardly projecting a positive vibe, and continually applying the right psychology – all with the aim of extracting the best performance from the artist. Without a good performance, a great sound is meaningless.

There’s also the style of music to consider, and its context. Some styles lend themselves far more readily to good sound than others. For example, a female vocalist crooning love songs is likely to sound better than a thrash guitar band screaming angst! Yet, each one has to be considered in the context of the market it is aimed at, and how well the recording meets that market’s expectations.

Each nominated engineer’s level of involvement also had to be taken into account. While some engineers tracked, mixed and produced the complete recording, others were only credited for tracking (the mixing was invariably credited to an international engineer or producer). How do you judge an engineer who was not credited for mixing, or whose only engineering credits are shared with a handful of US-based engineers?

Finally, I thought long and hard about what it meant to be voted Engineer Of The Year. In a small market like Australia it probably means you’ve got a guaranteed income for the next 12 months. And if you’re smart you’ll choose your clients wisely, aiming to firmly establish your reputation as a ‘hit maker’ (or whatever you want to be) so the work doesn’t suddenly dry up when the next Engineer Of The Year is announced.

Considering all these points, I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of judging Engineer Of The Year purely on the basis of recorded sound quality. So, for each preliminary nomination, I also considered: 1) the facilities used for recording, mixing and mastering; 2) the engineer’s studio experience and history; 3) the artist’s studio experience and history; 4) the engineer’s level of involvement; and 5) how well the recording met the market’s expectations. I applied a similar thought process when voting for Producer Of The Year.

After many hours researching and listening to the nominated recordings, and considering all the other factors listed herein, I think I made the right decisions. I don’t know who the other members of the Specialist Voting Panel are or what methods they used to choose their preferences, but I’ll be thrilled if I’ve managed to pick a winner or two. Either way, I’m convinced I took the best and fairest approach I possibly could.

What would you do?


In the following years I became increasingly disillusioned with the voting process for these awards, as later First Words will show...

FFW03: Level headed

It's late 1998... popular music is getting increasingly louder and I'm feeling increasingly exasperated. I gave up listening to commercial radio years earlier due to the excessive amount of processing used to make it loud, and now commercial CDs are sounding just like commercial radio - continually loud and in-your-face, with no contrast, no room to breathe, and no space to appreciate the little things that make music great.

The saddest part about this time in history was that recording technology had advanced to a point where we could have all the dynamic range imaginable - more than could be reproduced through an analogue playback system, in fact - and yet sound engineering had 'advanced' to a point where it wanted virtually none of it. The Loudness War, as it came to be known, was in full swing. Since then, loudness has triumphed and sound quality appears to be lost forever - at least in commercial music. But like a beacon of hope, the third and final part of my interview with Rupert Neve, published in this issue, closed on an uplifting and reassuring note. As long as designers like Mr Neve are around, there's still hope for quality audio!

Here's First Word #03...

Level headed
“Not more Chesky!” cried Philip Spencer, AudioTechnology’s sales director, as I tossed a new set of discs in front of him. “Chesky! Chesky! Chesky! It’s all you ever listen to. You’d think they were the only record label in the world!”. “Well,” I said defensively, “they are one of the only labels releasing 24-bit 96k recordings on DVD…” I could see I’d gotten his attention. “You, er, want to hear some?” “Yeah, right, with what?” He cautiously surveyed the room, then fixed a triumphant stare on me. “In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a DVD player…” Moments later, Sony Australia’s Peter Norman waltzed through the door with his usual boyish grin. “Hi Greg, here’s that DVD player you wanted to borrow.” While Peter and I got in each other’s way setting up the DVD player, Philip reluctantly tore the shrink wrap off the discs while muttering something about doing some real work. “But Philip, this is work”, I taunted.

Peter had brought in a Sony DVP-S715 DVD player, which plays DVDs, CDs and Video CDs. It’s a fine sounding machine, with a good solid drawer, a well-appointed remote control and, most importantly, 24-bit 96k converters. It’s one of a select number of DVD players capable of playing 24-bit 96k audio, and we were about to hear this emerging format ourselves for the first time.

The source material was Chesky Record’s excellent Super Audio Collection & Professional Test Disc. Along with some very useful test tones, Chesky have compiled a selection of their 24-bit 96k recordings onto the DVD Movie format disc, which supports two channels of 24-bit 96k audio. These are master recordings of tracks that have previously been released on Chesky CDs, so it’s easy to do a direct comparison between 16-bit 44.1k and 24-bit 96k versions of the same recording. Which is exactly what we did.

So what does this new 24-bit 96k format sound like? Personally, I think it’s stunning. It’s not a radical difference from 16-bit 44.1k, but it’s the right difference. If human perception has a quality threshold – a minimum level of sonic quality required for things to sound natural and real – then 16-bit 44.1k audio falls below that threshold, while 24-bit 96k clearly exceeds it.

One of the standout tracks on the Chesky DVD is an acoustic cover of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely’, performed by Livingston Taylor. This beautiful recording takes full advantage of the 24-bit 96k technology’s wider dynamic range, higher resolution and extended frequency response. The CD version is noticeably lack-lustre when compared to the DVD, yet, as far as CD quality is concerned, it’s still a standout recording. Which brings me to the point of this editorial: dynamic range. It’s the wonderfully subtle dynamic range of this recording, on both CD and DVD, that really got me thinking.

One of the theoretical rules for digital audio states that you get 6dB of dynamic range per bit (actually, it’s 6.0206dB, but who’s counting?). So a 16-bit recording has a dynamic range of 16 x 6dB = 96dB, while a 24-bit recording has 144dB (in practice, problems such as thermal noise restrict this to around 120dB). How much dynamic range do we need? Let’s consider the dynamic range of human hearing. If the softest sound we can hear is 0dB SPL (Sound Pressure Level), then the threshold of pain is somewhere around 130dB SPL. That gives human hearing a dynamic range of 130dB. Yet many of our latest commercial recordings have a paltry 6dB or less!

Dynamic range – the ability to play softer or louder – is one of the most important forms of musical expression. So why are we so hell-bent on reducing it? There is a commonly held belief that for a recording to be commercially successful, it must be as loud as every other commercial recording, or louder! Because we can only get so much level onto a CD, this perceived loudness is created by applying powerful compression during the mastering stage, thereby sacrificing dynamic range.

Many musicians compare their mixes against songs heard on commercial radio. Invariably, the radio songs have more ‘punch’, so musicians want more punch (i.e. compression) applied to their mixes to make them competitive. What they fail to understand is that commercial radio stations apply considerable processing, including multiband compression, to their audio before transmitting it – and that’s what produces the extra ‘punch’. Broadcasters have their reasons for doing this; some good, some bad. Nonetheless, what we hear on commercial radio is a heavily processed version of the artist’s mastered mix. Using commercial radio as a mixing or mastering reference is a big mistake.

Once upon a time, all mastering was done by talented specialists who understood the concept of dynamic range and the processes used in broadcasting, and strived to produce a finished result that translated well into any environment. These people truly deserved the title of ‘mastering engineers’. Many are still in business today, but staying in business means doing what the client wants – including heavy compression. It compromises the sound quality, and it therefore compromises their professional reputation.

Worse yet, the true professionals now face a particularly ugly competitor: backyard wannabes with PCs, soundcards, six months experience and the nerve to call themselves mastering engineers! Ask these people to define ‘mastering’ and they’ll tell you it’s the process of making each mix as loud as possible. As Charlie Brown says, “Good grief…”.

Maintaining your dynamic range is an important part of maintaining your musical expression. Remember, it’s the soft parts of your mix that make the loud parts ‘loud’. I’m tired of listening to music that’s compressed to the max and continuously in-your-face. I’m tired of listening to commercial CDs that are designed to make my high quality monitoring system sound like commercial radio. It sounds bad, it’s fatiguing to listen to, and it implies that I, as a listener, have a limited attention span. It’s just as insulting as the excessively loud canned laughter you hear on TV sitcoms. AND IT’S JUST AS ANNOYING AS PEOPLE WHO WRITE EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

So, when it comes to mastering your mixes, keep a level head and say ‘no’ to heavy compression. (Your mixes will still sound punchy on the radio, because commercial broadcasters will still be doing what they’ve always done.) As for me, I’m saving to buy a DVP-S715 DVD player and as many well-recorded 24-bit 96k DVDs as I can get my hands on. Philip, on the other hand, is waiting for the Spice Girls to be remastered at 24-bit 96k. In the meantime, he’s borrowing my ear plugs…

FFW01: The money, the box, and the $5000 question...

This First Word was published in AudioTechnology #01, our premiere issue, in February 1998. One of the highlights of that issue was part one of a fascinating three-part interview I'd conducted with equipment designer Rupert Neve (parts two and three were published in issues 02 and 03 respectively). I knew after completing the interview that I was onto something special, and decided to use the topic of equipment design and pricing to introduce our new magazine to the market. Combined with the Rupert Neve interview, I figured our readers would quickly realise that AudioTechnology was going to be a magazine that tried to tell it like it is; rather than being yet another fanboy magazine that never said a bad word about anything...

Here's the first First Word:

The money, the box, and the $5000 question
I was recently given a new product to review, which I’ll refer to as ‘The Box’ for reasons which will become obvious later. The Box was a stereo version of a tool that every sound engineer uses on a regular basis – except this one was a tube device, and therefore added that warm and fuzzy tube sound to whatever signal passed through it. I immediately thought of Rick O’Neil.

Anyone who knows Rick will know these three facts: Firstly, he has the smartest and most screwed up cat in town, which has nothing to do with this story. Secondly, he’s a lover of all things warm and fuzzy, including his cat, which still has nothing to do with this story. Thirdly, he’s never short of an opinion, and will probably denigrate me for mentioning his cat when it has nothing to do with this story.

As a lover of all things warm and fuzzy, and one who’s never short of an opinion, Rick was the obvious candidate for the review. I gave him The Box, a deadline and a word count. Soon after, he called with a problem. The Box was working perfectly, but there was a similar product in his studio – which we’ll call The Other Box – that was considerably cheaper. It offered the same features, looked and sounded almost as good, and was built almost as well. But The Other Box cost only $2000, while The Box was $5000 more expensive. When describing The Box in comparison to The Other Box, Rick’s enduring words were: “It’s better, but I can’t hear $5000”.

Those words have stuck in my head ever since, alongside other gems such as “That’s a problem we should be glad to have” (G. Maxwell Twartz, Technical Audio Group), and “Show me the money” (Cuba Gooding Jr, Hollywood).

Rick’s comment raises an interesting question – what is $5000 supposed to sound like? More generically, what is a 350% price differential (from $2000 to $7000) supposed to sound like? What do you hear for the extra money?

Audio Technology’s Sales Director, Philip Spencer, has a story of his own. Before coming to Australia, Philip ran a recording studio in England based on a low cost but popular brand of mixing console. One day he had the opportunity of visiting the offices of AMEK, and was given a demonstration of their ‘Big by Langley’ console. As the salesman talked him through the channel strip, Philip said, “Wait a minute… My console has most of these features, and can do most of these things. How do you justify charging three and a half times the price for this one?” The salesman directed Philip’s attention to the EQ stage, rolled the tape and walked out of the room. Never being afraid to give a knob a twiddle, Philip reached for the EQ and answered his own question. He heard the difference. Whether the increase in sound quality was proportional to the price increase is debatable. But once again, what is a 350% price differential supposed to sound like?

In the case of The Box, Rick has been around high end studio gear long enough to know that he wasn’t hearing a $5000 difference. Perhaps a $2000 or $3000 difference, but not $5000. Philip, on the other hand, had been using the same console for so long that he no longer ‘heard’ what it was doing to his sound. He didn’t believe that a console offering similar features, but costing three and a half times more, could be worth the investment – until he heard the sound of that extra money. To badly paraphrase Cuba Gooding Jr, “Hear me the money!”

So what do you get for the extra dollars? You get that wonderful tonal character we call ‘the sound’. Good musical instruments have it, high end hi-fi gear has it, even Harley Davidson motorbikes have it. When you enter the world of expensive pro audio equipment, it’s one of the things you’re paying for.

With state-of-the-art electronics, any technician can design a circuit that satisfies the technical criteria for low noise, low distortion, wide bandwidth, linear frequency response, etc. Those old challenges have been well and truly overcome, and the circuit design process is cheap and easy. The rash of low cost, high quality products entering the market over the last decade are testament to this. They’re clean, they’re quiet, and they do a great job for the money – but few of them have ‘the sound’.

So why does it cost so much more to get that little bit extra, that elusive quality we call ‘the sound’? It costs more because you’re paying for an experienced and talented designer who knows how to build warmth and musicality into a product. These qualities don’t come cheap, and they can’t be added to an existing circuit. They have to be engineered into the circuit from the very beginning. And that’s expensive.

No matter how good a circuit’s technical specifications are, it will always contain certain non-linearities that define its characteristic ‘sound’ – for better or worse. When you buy a premium product, you’re paying for a designer who knows how to tweak those non-linearities into musically pleasing sounds. You’re paying for someone who knows how to control the harmonic content of the distortion so it sounds warm and smooth, rather than cold and harsh. You’re paying for someone who knows how to shift the energy spectrum of the noise floor into less audible frequency bands, and how to minimise the detrimental effects of phase problems and ringing.

If all these tweaks are considered a science, then the art lies in the designer’s ability to engineer them directly into the fundamental signal path of the circuit. They are the inherent non-linearities of a circuit designed to sound warm and musical, while still satisfying all the technical criteria.

And that’s the kind of specialist designer artwork you should be paying a premium for, no matter whether you’re buying audio electronics, a prestige car, a Stradivarius violin, or a suit from Giorgio Armani. Designers of the calibre of Rupert Neve et al, have advanced the design of audio circuitry to a sonic artform. Who can put a price on that kind of talent?


I was always fond of mentioning my interactions with the other AudioTechnology writers and staff members in First Word, because it showed the sense of community that existed behind the magazine - and, ultimately, behind its success. This First Word makes references to Philip Spencer and Rick O'Neil.

Philip was my business partner in forming Alchemedia Pty Ltd, the publishing company we created for AudioTechnology. We met while working on Australian Digital magazine for The Federal Publishing Company; but, more significantly, we started Sound Australasia magazine for Pacific Publications. It would be fair to say that neither of us was particularly happy with that magazine - it started off with much promise, but was continually pushed in the direction of sensationalism and gossip. (What would you expect from a publisher of celebrity gossip magazines?!?!)

Not long after I resigned from Sound Australasia, Philip presented the idea of starting our own magazine. And thus was born AudioTechnology - the audio magazine that I always wanted to read. Philip continues to run and grow Alchemedia, and continues to be one of the coolest guys I've ever worked with. (Anyone who could put up with the pretentious bullshit I carried on with in the early days of AudioTechnology - all with the intention of making the best audio magazine ever, of course - deserves much respect!)

In addition to being one of Australia's top mastering engineers, Rick O'Neil is a great story teller and writes a regular column for AudioTechnology that continues to this day. Called 'Last Word', it is the last thing published in each issue. By placing my somewhat serious First Word at the start and Rick's humorously provocative Last Word at the end, Rick and I formed the bookends for each issue of AudioTechnology.

Last Word began life in AudioTechnology's miserable predecessor, Sound Australasia. One day in 1996 Rick visited my office at Pacific Publications saying he wanted to write a regular column similar to the late great Stephen St Croix's 'Fast Lane' column in Mix magazine. I figured he was worth giving a chance, and it paid off: Last Word has been one of the most popular columns in AudioTechnology for more than a decade now, and Rick's name has become a household word in the Australian recording industry. He also runs a lively on-line audio forum.