Kevin Gray: Vinyl-Mastering Master

Photo: Charlene Gray

When I need information about recordings, I go to Discogs. At Discogs, Kevin Gray has more than 2500 entries. That's as good an indicator as any of the amount of ground he has covered in his career so far as a creative participant in the recorded-music art known as mastering. Since starting out in the early 1970s, in Los Angeles, he has worked for all the major music labels and many independents, in all music genres.

At one time, behind-the-scenes jobs like Gray's were anonymous and technical—not really viewed as real creative work. When the Beatles started recording for EMI, audio personnel wore white lab coats. No one knew their names. But as the culture of recorded music became more varied and sophisticated, listeners became more aware of the contributions made by people behind the scenes—studio musicians and especially engineers—to the sound of the music they were hearing. By the end of the 1960s, most people knew that the Beatles worked with a guy named George Martin—and that he was called the producer—at a recording studio in London called Abbey Road, to create the music they heard and loved. Today, most fans of the music know the name Geoff Emerick, who served as the Beatles' recording engineer.

Today, Kevin Gray's name is very well-known, especially among vinyl-record fans, as is his reputation for excellent sonics. I—a member of that clan—look forward to listening to albums he has remastered: "Tone Poet" reissues of classic Blue Note records, the earlier, similar series from Music Matters, and LP reissues from Craft Recordings, Intervention Records, Resonance Records, Rhino Records, Speaker's Corner, and others. The odds are very good that any LP he's involved with is going to sound fabulous, or at least as good as the source material (often recorded on aging analog tape) allows.

Not all the recordings he works on are reissues. Indeed, in 2016, I had the pleasure of sitting with Gray in his mastering room as he worked his magic, cutting an LP lacquer for my own record, Tight Lines. Recently, I took time to catch up with Kevin, learn about his approach to mastering and cutting LPs, and hear about the new, all-tube recording studio he built from scratch and installed next door to his mastering studio.

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Sasha Matson: "Mastered by" is a term some listeners may see but not fully understand. Please tell us what it means.

Kevin Gray: When I got in the business, mastering was cutting a phonograph record. Now there's sort of "mastered for digital" and "mastered for vinyl." I am still doing reissues cut from the original analog tapes, and I'm doing all the mastering on that. On a lot of new projects, people send me, quote, "premastered" digital files, which means that typically it has gone through all the compression and every-thing else they do for either CD or hi-rez download. I've been able to work with two or three clients who really get it, at other mastering houses. I ask them to do two passes for me. Do your first pass with EQ and whatever, but don't do the heavy compression, and send me those files to cut the phonograph record from. Then do your other pass to do whatever they want to with that for digital release. And they've gotten on board with this.

Matson: As the sort of final stop on the sonic road, Kevin, describe what you are doing prior to the release of finished vinyl or digital music.

Gray: Basically, for me, it's all about tonal balance. The idea is to try and make the album, if it is indeed an album, flow nicely. And that means that occasionally you are going to have a song that is deficient or has too much of something in a frequency range. You are making adjustments to keep everything balanced, using equalization.

Matson: Is it the same skill set for recording and mastering engineers?

Gray: I think recording engineers are looking at albums as a bunch of songs. They are looking at each song for its own merits, not so much looking at the big picture of how they all fit together. They might sequence it, but do they really want the bass sticking out like that on cut three? I know a few recording engineers who can master very well, but I think they are in the minority.

Matson: Volume issues are basic, but so is tonality. As in "Those strings are a little abrasive."

Gray: Right. That's all mastering. The recording engineers usually aren't worrying too much about that.

Matson: Are we past the loudness wars yet?

Gray: No. People are not compressing more than they were five years ago, but I don't see them compressing less, either. It kind of went to a point where everything is at least 6dB to 8dB off the meters. Sometimes I have to bring it down 10dB, which is just absurd. I understand how it all started, with rap and dance music. But then it filtered into everything. Jazz and classical. It's ridiculous. I have not bought a CD since 1995, when all the heavy compression started. I'm not interested in listening to compressed music. I can't get past track 3!

Matson: Do people at record companies understand what you do?

Gray: It depends who they are. The people at Blue Note are amazing. They get it, and they like what we are doing. Other people ask, "What's the problem doing it from a highly compressed digital file? Lots of records are like that."

Matson: With the increased adoption of high-resolution digital formats, is there more room for dynamic range than previously?

Gray: I'm still seeing a lot of stuff, for digital download and so forth, released after my part of the process, getting compressed heavily.

Matson: Going back in the alley now: Your first job mastering was for Artisan Sound Recorders, in 1972?

Gray: Yes. Artisan was only mastering, one room at that time. My first job was cutting replacement lacquers on Santana, Chicago, and Bob Dylan. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven! In 1977, I did my first direct-to-disc recording on my own Cohearent Sound label. I started building my own speakers and electronics in the early '80s.

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Gray's Neumann VMS-66 lathe, supervised by Mad Mastering's Alfred E. Neumann. (Photo: Charlene Gray)

Matson: "Transformerless." I see that term used as a positive adjective, including on your website about your recording and mastering chain. What is it about transformers that you view as problematic?

Gray: There are some very good transformers, from Jensen and CineMag. Those companies make a big percentage of transformers intended for audio use. But typical transformers used in the '50s and '60s and even later introduced phase shift and distortion and reduced bandwidth. So, we decided to eliminate them. Which is a trick. As you get devices talking to each other, it's very easy to get 60-cycle hum. I'm not talking about power transformers. I'm referring to the interstage transformers that are typically at the input and output points of most pro audio gear.

Matson: What is the most technically challenging part of cutting a lacquer?

Gray: Generally, it's the disc length: getting the record to fit. If it's over 18 minutes per side, compromises have to be made. Usually, the level has to be reduced. There are little tricks that can help get more level or time on the disc. For 33rpm, I tell people to try and keep things to 24 minutes per side as a maximum for pop-type music, 22 minutes for jazz. When you get past 22, 24 minutes, you are going to have to reduce the volume. It's dynamics versus the spacing of the grooves. It's nice to be able to cut a 2.5mil–wide groove when you can. On really long sides, I will go down to 2mil, but I try to never go below that (footnote 1).

Matson: Another important aspect is how the cutting head on the lathe is controlled. Some people object to having anything digital in the process. How does this work in your setup?

Gray: The concept of using a computer to control the groove spacing has been in place since the 1950s. It has just gotten more sophisticated with digital control. But this has nothing to do with the audio chain. It's not in the signal path. It's just machine control moving the cutter head across the disc. A lot of people are taking a two-track analog machine and using a digital delay to create a split signal that feeds the computer and the cutter head (footnote 2). But in my room, I'm doing it the way it was always done. I have a Studer tape machine that has two playback heads on it (footnote 3). The first head, the preview head, feeds the computer. The second head feeds the audio chain. One reason that went away is, it takes two complete stereo signal paths to do that, as everything you do to program has to be done to preview. So, when people started building consoles for digital mastering, they thought, "Oh, we don't need preview anymore." We're doing it the old-fashioned way, and there aren't a whole lot of us doing it that way anymore.


Footnote 1: The longest music LP I'm aware of is 90 Minutes with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. With 45m of music per side, that record had half the groove spacing Gray recommends.

Footnote 2: The computer then controls the groove spacing and sometimes other technical parameters. Cohearant uses a DJR Disc Computer.

Footnote 3: When creating the master for Stereophile's Sonata LP in 1996, I prepared a 4-track digital Nagra-D tape with two tracks containing the 20-bit recording advanced in time to feed the preview mechanism. That way, the decoded analog signal that was being fed to the cutter head from the other two tracks would not have to be redigitized, fed to a digital delay, then converted back to analog.—John Atkinson

ARTICLE CONTENTS

COMMENTS
teched58's picture

This is a great piece of content. Reminds me of the stuff from the halcyon days of Audio magazine, Stereo Review, High Fidelity magazine et al that I first got turned onto as a teenager in the early 1970s.

It's so nice to hear something that's authentic and intrinsically about audio, and get away from the cable wars, audio woo, and oh you're just jealous of my non-performing $30,000 preamp.

Best of all, what Kevin Gray says in this interview means I am not crazy: real audiophiledom is grounded in the reality of how electronics works and how engineers -- whether recording, mastering, or the electrical engineers who designed the equipment -- apply science, real science, which starts from V=IR (though JA2 I would guess might say it starts with F=ma, and he would not be wrong. To that I say, may the force be with you!).

Thanks again, Mr. Matson, and I will check out your music.

DaveinSM's picture

Gotta admit, you have a good point. The quality of the original recording is so much more important that’s the equipment it’s played through.

Recording engineers and those who had a hand in making good recordings are kind of their own rock stars. Good to see that they’re being recognized as such.

Then again, I’m an old guy who also thinks that the breadth and quality of popular music peaked in the 70’s. The 70’s were a time of not only some of the best recorded music, it was a time of some of the best music ever, period.

Glotz's picture

Loved this. I would have preferred more commentary on DDA LP's from Grey's experience.

Ironic that a poster still got stuck in the mud of audio politics. Not sure this interview invalidates anyone's $30K preamp.

AnalogueFan's picture

Excellent interview.!
Thanks.

pwog's picture

I agree with above comment...we want more like this! Please!

tnargs's picture

He should also be putting out digital remasters of his work, as a greater service to the audio community.

Making us go through the travails and audible limitations of LP is tantamount to blackmail, ie we could be getting better sonics for 20% of the price of an LP. Just put out digital remasters at -23 LUFS and dynamically scaled for that, and everybody wins!

Instead, technical and sonic excellence is taking second place to using only the biggest-profit-margin format. Not good.

Fluff pieces like this vinyl promo simply divert attention from the big issue: getting more uncompressed music onto digital formats, starting with Gray’s own portfolio. Come on Kevin!

Archimago's picture

Well said tnargs.

For the sake of the legacy of the music and joy of hi-fi enthusiasts everywhere, it would be much superior to have the high quality mastering in digital available.

T.S. Gnu's picture

…because there are licenses issued as to the number of copies MoFi, APO, and Cohearent are allowed to press of either analog or digital (or both). Remember Kevin’s reply: Record companies don't want that information out there. I was told as early as 2005 by the three big labels: "Do not reveal sources unless we publicize it, and then you can reiterate that." Because they don't want it to affect sales. People never know what they're getting.
Who would bother buying a copy of crushed audio if there were digital versions of the HDR versions floating around.

Also, it’s gonna be interesting to hear the deafening silence of all them golden ears bleating on about how analog is closer to the original source (I.e. more accurate) when the actual mastering engineer says it ain’t accurate; it’s just euphonic 2nd (vinyl) or 3rd (tape) distortion that they like. It would be really nice if they would say, “Hey, we like how it sounds and don’t care whether it’s accurate because we just like the sound better.” It would certainly do more for their credibility than their current entrenched view of digital being less accurate; especially with the Atkinson footnote of the “all analog path.” OTOH, we haven’t seen any airborne pigs, either.

The reality is that euphoric distortion can be baked into a digital recording by bouncing through analog just like Gray and Hoffman do as a production decision, instead of leaving it to the inconsistent vagaries of various analog playback systems. The sooner that the writers in this ‘zine accept, acknowledge and admit that, the better informed and better of the readers will be. Porcine paragliders permitting.

tnargs's picture

I know, I know.

It's all entrenched, ingrained, and against the customer's best interest in getting access to the best audio.

Instead, we are expected to thank them for only giving us access to good mastering on a second-tier (I'm being generous) format at 5x (ish) the price per song. Disgusting.

Thank goodness that classical and jazz suffer less of this. But it just means that we know exactly what we are missing. :(

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