Audio Engineer | Since 2000

Q: Tell us about a project you worked on you are especially proud of and why. What was your role?

A: I did a 3-hour long live concert audio once. It was a memorial concert for my friend and a legendary Russian music artist Kirill Tolmatskiy. It literally took me 28 full days of the month. There were 12 different performers with 3-5 different tracks each and every project was 70 tracks thick. Of course there were video cameras involved and their audio was also abruptly used in weird places. The sync was not synching, the phase was not phasing, the different problems that I have never dealt with were there.. On top of everything there was a huge problem of making the 'sound' sound normal when an overlay of actual real audio that was used for the concert was placed onto the multitrack of the entire venue's console sound. Things were battling the phase of the microphones and so on. Additionally though, the last track of the movie (yes, it was made as a concert-movie available online) was glitching in time, although still playing, and that did not go well. The original audio was much shorter than the sound from the console. Therefore I have had to manually place warping markers and manually move each one through the whole song. There were so many of those, that if you zoomed out just a little bit - the audio region became black just because of the number of those cuts. The sound actually came out very good and I was praised for my engineering work by the entire production team. Something to remember.. RIP my friend..

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Analog lives for ages and needs no firmware updates. Has no compatibility issues.

Q: What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?

A: How much does is cost so that you record and mix my full album? The price depends really, but I give the client a chance to make me a good offer. Album could take anywhere from a single week to a single year to finish.

Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?

A: Because my actual input is not visible to most, they might think it is an easy task. I am not using AI-aided mixing in any way, I am not a piece of furniture that just sits there. Tracks do not mix themselves. But at the end of the day, we all just produce audio files.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: If one would rely on me longterm, looking for the same consistent results - I would ask if working full time is something they are suggesting.

Q: If you were on a desert island and could take just 5 pieces of gear, what would they be?

A: Realistically? Survival tools, such as: Knife, Backpack, Sleeping Bag, Tent, Firestarter and such.. But if it was an island with like electricity, I would consider 'something audio' at my disposal to plug and play through 'something like speakers'.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: Every song that comes off of my bench, starts having some good mojo about it - more interesting than initial version. Those edits that make it reach the 5%!

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: I am working on getting my life together in Los Angeles, CA by looking for a music communities to get involved with.

Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?

A: I am your loyal sound engineer with an honor codex. People work with me for years and years and we trust one another. Hopefully our vision will match and we will shoot to the stars together!

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Making excellent results from less superior audio. But its difficult, and normally no one will thank you for that, so its complicated.

Q: What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A: Recording? Prepare your lyrics, send me the beat, come in time, stay for 3 hours. Mixing? Send me your source material for evaluation, get a quote, wait 2-3 days. Mastering? Stems or 2-track, send for evaluation

Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?

A: My website has the extended autobiography article, which is quite interesting, given that I have started to compose music via the "MUSIC 2000" digital workstation software on Sony Playstation 1, and have recorded voice field notes via portable tape recorder even earlier.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: I have a certain taste and feel for 'black music genres' that was developing for many years. Are we on the same page? Yes? Great!

Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?

A: I like to work with artists that can do a single good recording take to be pretty much done with a verse. This means we can compile good takes into great performance, instead of compiling bad takes into mediocre performance that could realistically fail to become great.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Learning to preserve audio quality (from start, through process and to finish) will definitely be thanked for by the next person. To bring to the table, one has to preserve whatever valuable goods he may offer.

Q: What type of music do you usually work on?

A: Black genres, such as (or similar to): Rap/Trap/HipHop, Reggae/Dancehall, RnB/Vocal

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: If audio engineering is not my strongest skill - then I dont know what is!

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: Importing with sample rate and bit depth conversion; Matching and locking to the tempo grid of the project; Sorting, routing and grouping of every audio track; Checking against the reference audio to eliminate errors; Clicks, pops, noise & hiss removal where applicable; Vocal sibilance fix with complete re-equalization; Compression and saturation in serial and in parallel; Dynamics control and excitement of vocals; Transient response coherency optimization; Reverbs and Delays in general, and with side-chaining; Re-structuring of volume, gain staging; Re-arrangement of music for consistency and groove; Re-arrangement of vocal for clean development throughout; Re-balancing sound field for perception; Compilation of vocals from provided stereo stems; Alignment/syncing of multi-take vocal groups; Automation creation for effects and change of macrodynamics; Tonality optimization; Dynamics optimization; Sound field optimization; Advanced parallel processing; Advanced mid-side processing; Reference match to commercial audio; Final loudness control; Revisions/Additionals/Extras; Delivered on at project sample rate and bit depth, unless agreed otherwise.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I own a Neumann M49 Tube clone microphone (fine tuned via measured voltage adjustment and trialed through a series of sonic tests). You may hear this microphone in the number of releases that I did starting from about 2015. Neumann then follows into my 1176-KT FET compressor and converts into digital audio signal through Universal Audio Apollo. Acoustically I use a pair of mastering grade KRK6000 Passive speakers (I must be mad, because I own 3 pairs total) with a 10" subwoofer. They are connected through an active crossover and out into the amplifier, controlled via passive, clean TC Electronic Level Pilot volume knob. As a second reference I use the NS10s of the headphones - Austrian Audio Hi-X55 and a Subpac M2X, plus smart plugin combinations to be able to disect into the sound. The main audio toolset consists of extensive software tools: Pro Tools Studio, Celemony Melodyne Studio, Synchroarts Vocalign Ultra, Antares Autotune Realtime, Universal Audio UAD-2 + many more renowned and widely used licenced plugins that I keep a good track of.

Q: What other musicians or music production professionals inspire you?

A: I get inspired by whoever applies their best skills and do a bit more than expected. I can sense that in the music of people, through their actual productional input. The genre at this point does not matter, even though I may have my own preferences.

Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.

A: 1. Recording (on-location) : Artists bring music and lyrics, ready to perform. Recording production (advice) is implemented on request. Quick vocal edits and compilation on the fly, project balancing and key edits. 2. Mixing (online) : Separate 'legos' of raw music projects become sorted, synchronized, fixed, balanced to unite into cohesive sound that translates well on different speaker systems, ready to be commercially mastered. 3. Mastering (online) : Certain smart audio editing processes can be applied after you think your song is fully done. Mixed song gets polished to start sounding commercial when compared against commercial releases.