by Vaughan Merrick, whose engineering and production credits include Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson, Depeche Mode, Santigold, Miike Snow, and many more. He is a Grammy Nominated Engineer for Jason Mraz’s “Mr. A-Z” and a Grammy Winner for Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” Record of the Year and Female Pop Vocalist. Vaughan is the owner of an Apogee Symphony System with AD/DA-16Xs and a Duet.

So I was recently asked to host an event in New York City by Shane Koss at Alto Music and Dot Bustelo who is now at Apogee Electronics. I agreed to do it because Shane is a great guy and uses and understands gear and because I have used Apogee products since the ugly days of 16 bit, and they have always been a great enhancement over the standards. I personally own a number of Apogee products and I encourage anyone who hasn’t done so to compare them to what they are currently using; I think you will come to understand the value regardless of the price.

Anyway, I’m not here to justify why I hosted said event. In the time leading up to the event, I got to talking to Dot about my process, about converters, and about why I enjoy what I do. She felt like I should share some of my experience with whoever may have stumbled their way onto this page – my apologies in advance! For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of my job is the documentation process, which is to say, the recording. There is nothing better than to sit back in a control room and listen to a private concert of inspired professional musicians. On some level all of us involved in music enjoy a very personal connection to the music. For me, being a concerned audience member is a joy and a privilege. My job as I see it, is to provide a service to the artist in which I am helping them transmit their artistic vision. I am a conduit and I try my best to remove my personal aesthetic sensibility from polluting that vision unless otherwise called upon to do so. Having a personal aesthetic comes naturally as we all develop one out of personal experience, but adapting to who you are working with requires going the extra mile in empathy and experience. You may hear of engineers who wish to brand their “sound”, and while many of those people are good friends of mine, I just have a different approach. That’s not to say I’m a patsy; if there is a gap in direction, I’m more than likely to fill it by amalgamating the information as I see it!

To this point, Dot asked me, “well what is it that you are doing during the recording stage?”. I told her, ideally nothing! Because all of the work that is required of me is in the preparation. I choose studio, mic pres, microphones, recording format, etc all based on how I think the particular project would be best benefited to its aesthetic. All of those choices are made in advance of the musicians coming in, sometimes in concert, so to speak, with the musicians and sometimes such decisions are left entirely to me. There is a great deal of hustle and bustle getting the right equipment set up in advance of the recording so that when the recording happens, the technology is not interfering with the music being made. Certainly I am not being hired to be an obstacle in the process! Good preparation makes for great sounding recordings in part for technical reasons. But a good recording environment enables the musicians to focus on speaking the musical language with one another instead of being distracted by external influences. So if I get my job done in advance, then I can just sit back and enjoy the performance (ok and keep tabs on levels and gain reduction here and there!).

When I was growing up in this business, the guys who were my mentors were mostly chasing the “best” sound quality. The older school guys were never particularly happy with the fact that the equipment was colouring the sound away from what one heard in the recording room. You EQ’d extra top end to tape because it would wear away over time. You printed hot to tape because you were constantly trying to get away from the noise floor of tape. The saturation that came with printing hot was sometimes frowned upon or was accepted as “nice” because well, you might as well accept the reality and the saturation was certainly less offensive than the noise floor, not to mention more musical. The advent of digital promised to capture things as they are not as they are coloured.

Now we live in a funny era. I work with more and more young producers who DON’T want everything clear and pristine. The very distortions and colouring that many of the old school engineers were trying to avoid were being accepted as “character” by their younger, professionally uneducated audience. And now because of sampling there is an appreciation for the sound of older generations of music. For an engineer this suddenly makes the whole process more challenging yet more interesting in a sense. The focus in audio is becoming less about the best representation of organic sound and more about sonic character. The beauty of digital is that it now offers a choice because it, in and of itself, provides a less obvious colour to the sound. There are many programs and plugins that allow the engineer to spice the sound to a particular vintage or to mix and match eras of sound. An era of creative sonic cooking is indeed upon us in an ever more empowered way!

But there are problems with digital. Its lack of character also comes with some subtle yet distasteful qualities. Low sample rate, low bit depth recordings lack the clarity and punch that analog has. Poor clocking reduces the width of mixes and the clarity of instruments in the mix. Reverbs crumble at their tail instead of gracefully disappearing into tape hiss. Treble can be brittle and fatiguing to listen to. Low end sounds tight and constrained regardless of the intention.

Fortunately, as one raises the bit depth and the sample rate, these problems dissipate. I have heard many arguments about there being no sonic difference as you go above 44.1k or 48k. I will simply tell you quite arrogantly, that anyone who cannot hear the difference, either does not have ears, does not care, or has an agenda. My agenda is to have the maximum choice in sound for the artists who I work for. If they want crap sound, then I do. If they want pristine sound, then I do. I want the choice, I don’t want to be forced into one way of working because of the technology.

I regularly use both Pro Tools and Logic in productions. My preference is to work in Pro Tools for reasons I will not divulge in this blog. But Logic does some great things that Pro Tools does not. One of these things as it relates to this sample rate issue, is that it lets you change sample rates on the fly. From 44.1kHz, much to my surprise, soft synths in Logic sound bigger, more robust, with greater definition in sound at 88.2 and yet greater still at 176.4 (ok or 96, 192, but I like my sample rates divisible by CD quality). I already knew that recording at higher sample rates captures a bigger more complete sound, but I was interested that the synthesizer engines also benefit, despite the fact that they are algorithmic by nature.

For practical reasons, I record everything at 88.2khz/24bit. Recent developments in computing processor advancements have made a rather large impact on how much audio the computer can handle. Intel’s latest miniaturization in circuit width from 45nm to 32nm has increased the number of cores on a chip, thereby allowing for a much greater handling of processes. What this means for digital audio is that it is no longer impractical to record at higher sample rates and no longer excusable to record at lower rates. I am looking forward to moving my standard up to 176.4khz and hopefully one day soon, to 352.8khz. Apogee? If it were my way, we’d all live in a Direct Stream Digital world, but reality and practicality hold that promise to the prison cell – well actually it was Sony shareholders who did that, but since there are too many for me to hunt down and kill, I’ve decided to accept PCM.

I know I know, but everyone just listens to MP3s! But then by that argument we should just record everything to 8 track cassette or maybe wax cylinder! No no. Everyone listens to MP3s because they’re convenient, but for no other reason. Companies such as Cisco who build the physical internet are selling new products and switchers that are ramping up throughput in unbelievable ways. In March, Cisco announced a new router that could pass 322Tbps. As they claim, that’s fast enough to download every movie ever made in 5 minutes. EVERY MOVIE EVER MADE! High bandwidth audio is coming to everyone, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, but soon. I want to think that when I am documenting an artist, every nuance of what was intended to be captured will be preserved for future audiences whether the record becomes a classic or dies in obscurity!

Your converters and your clock should be superior when you are recording and your sample rates should be as high as you dare! As gate keepers between the analog and digital world, your converters should be as transparent as possible, giving you the freedom to make your own aesthetic decisions elsewhere.

Happy recording!