Interviews

Ask the average jazz-loving audiophile to list his favorite recording engineers, and such icons as Rudy Van Gelder, Roy DuNann, and Fred Plaut would top their lists. but if you asked a handful of current and recent New York City jazz musicians to cite their favorites, one name would leap to the front of the pack: James Allen Farber.

Farber's engineering and mixing credits span nearly 1000 albums, dating from the mid-1970s to the present day. He has won five Grammy Awards, in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album (three times), and Best World Music Album categories. The New Jersey native has worked with jazz artists as diverse as Michael Brecker, Melissa Aldana, Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman, Ravi Coltrane, Jerome Sabbagh, John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, and Dave Holland. And many more.

Farber got his start in the 1970s as an assistant at New York City's famed Power Station. He went on to work at Sear Sound and Reservoir Studios (formerly Skyline). Soon, Farber found high-profile favor with such mainstream artists as Nile Rodgers, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Philip Glass, Rickie Lee Jones, Talking Heads, Traffic, Carly Simon, Madonna, Laurie Anderson, Diana Ross, Patti Austin, and Graham Parker.

During a recent visit to Power Station, one step into the studio's large, wood-paneled Studio A revealed the sound that Farber has so beautifully captured. Yes, this is the room—the sound—with its honest acoustics and the purity. This is how Farber is able to avoid the capsule-like sheen of studio production. It starts with the room. On such albums as Michael Brecker's Impulse! debut, Melissa Aldana's Visions, Joshua Redman's Wise, and Jerome Sabbagh's Heart, Farber masterfully—magically—seemed to remove production artifice, leaving only the communicative spell of master jazz players.

The son of an engineer who worked at the 10-acre RCA tube factory in Harrison, New Jersey, a young Farber used an early Wilcox-Gay tape machine to capture the sound of birthday parties and eventually, his own bands, in which he played piano. After attending the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he began his apprenticeship at Power Station in Hell's Kitchen, the neighborhood then controlled by the Westies crime gang. Most Hell's Kitchen residents never ventured out at night unless they were musicians and engineers leaving the Power Station in the wee hours.

Farber lived to tell the tale and agreed to speak to Stereophile about his role, approach, preferences, and of course, his hi-fi, which includes a Technics SL-5200 turntable with Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge (backup Shure M111HE), Adcom GCD-750 CD player, Sony TC-D5M cassette recorder/player, Panasonic SV-3800 DAT recorder/player, Adcom GTP-500 preamp/tuner, Adcom GFA-545 power amplifier, Canton CT-800 speakers, and "Radio Shack Speaker Wire!" James wrote over email.

Ken Micallef: Please tell us what a recording engineer does.

James Farber: I meet with the artist. We talk about the recording. What studio is appropriate and within the budget? How do we want to set up in the room? Is everybody playing in the same room, or do we use isolation booths? How complex is the music? How clean do you want it—or can it be a little raw? I'll choose the microphones and set them up. We'll do a sound check. Then we'll start recording takes.

Micallef: What does the mix engineer do, as opposed to recording engineer?

Farber: The mix engineer decides on the balance of the instruments, the panning—whether something is heard from left speaker, right speaker, or in the center—and how much reverb there should be. I do very little EQ on the recording or mix. I like to choose a good mike and put it in the right place. My whole idea is to give as much control to the musicians as possible.

If I am going to do both, record and mix, I make a live rough mix while the band is playing and compare it while mixing. My final mix is often only 10% different than the rough mix, and usually 10% better, though admittedly sometimes a few percent worse, which says a lot about the importance of instinct.

Micallef: You prefer to record to tape?

Farber: Not multitrack tape, unless somebody requests it, because it's too expensive and too inconvenient. I know a lot of your readers like everything to be on tape. I love tape, but I have to take my client's time and budget constraints into account. I mix to two-track tape almost all the time. I like to work with an Ampex ATR 102, or a Studer A820.

Micallef: Why is that?

Farber: It's a jazzy sound. It glues things together. It's got depth, it's got width, it's got texture. In a way, it's almost like a processor. Analog tape also provides some natural limiting, which gives the mastering engineer headroom to raise my zero-VU mix to a "competitive" level before their limiters kick in. Most of the records that I listen to at home were all recorded to tape.

Micallef: Where do you work currently?

Farber: Sear Sound is a favorite (footnote 1). I'll record in both Studios A and C, but I always mix in Studio A on the Neve 8038 desk. I love Power Station Studios A and C because that's where I started my career, but now it's very expensive. Oktaven in Mount Vernon has two of the best Steinway D Concert Grand Pianos that you will ever see in a recording studio. Samurai Hotel in Astoria is a nice room with a Neve desk, and it's more affordable. Reservoir, which is the old Skyline Studios, is my most affordable mix room, but their Neve console is small, so I can only mix smaller groups in there.

Micallef: In the audiophile world, we're listening as much to our rooms as our systems. How does the studio space affect the recording process?

Farber: One of the chief things I look for in a studio is visual communication and sight lines. The musicians have to feel like they're in close contact with each other. When the musicians are comfortable, they play better, and my recording sounds better. So I will often prioritize improved sight lines over a room that is better sounding because it's going to result in better music. I've made a lot of records where everybody's playing in that main room in Power Station Studio A. Joe Lovano's 52nd Street Themes, which won a Grammy, was recorded in that room. That was mixed live to two-track analog tape. Everybody in the room. No multitrack backup, two five-hour sessions. I can't do any better than that.

Micallef: What are your favorite monitors?

Farber: At Power Station, I'm using ProAc Studio 100s with a vintage Yamaha P-2200 amp, a good combination. In most studios, I'll use Genelecs, because they're prevalent. They have settings on the back for bass and treble, which I'll set differently in different rooms to compensate for uneven room response characteristics. I often wish that control rooms had the level of monitors that audiophiles listen to.

Micallef: Wouldn't that affect the sound of the records?

Farber: When I started out, we were using Altec Big Reds. They weren't accurate sounding, but we learned how to work on them. And then we switched to Yamaha NS-10s. They sucked, but let me tell you, I made some great-sounding jazz albums and two great-sounding James Taylor records on those speakers. I don't know how I did it, but I learned them over time.

Micallef: You have a fondness for live two-track mixes: Joe Lovano, Larry Goldings, Peter Erskine, Georgie Fame.

Farber: I'm almost the only one who does this anymore. I love the energy of being part of the band and having them trust me to make a live mix like Rudy might have done back in the day. The great live recordings of Rudy Van Gelder and Fred Plaut at Columbia are the ones I admire the most. Recording live to two-track saves the artists a lot of money because they don't have to come back to the studio to mix.

Micallef: For live to two-track, you're mixing in real time while the musicians play?

Farber: All of saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh's records, including his latest, Heart, are live to two-track tape. I've been recording Sabbagh's albums for about 20 years now. The recordings are all analog. The band always plays together in the same room, with no earphones. I use early stereo-era (pre–pan pot L-C-R) stage panning to reflect the setup of the musicians in the room. Often, a bass amp, which is not recorded, is set to a low level and used as a monitor in the room so that the players can clearly hear the bass without the need for earphones. Jerome's saxophone is recorded with either a Telefunken 251 or Neumann M 49, depending on which studio we're working in. Preamps are generally early '70s vintage Neve 31102 or 1081 modules. An EMT plate with pre-delay is used for reverb. I mix live to two-track analog tape with no multitrack backup. As of late, we record to Jerome's and Pete Rende's customized Ampex 351 machine, which has been modified for 1/2" tape at 30ips. We've been using ATR tape on that machine. The master takes are assembled on two reels, sides A and B, and sent to Bernie Grundman in L.A. to master the LP from the tape.

---

Footnote 1: James Farber engineered and mixed Fillmore Street, one of the works on Sasha Matson's latest album at Sear Sound.—John Atkinson