Audio&Video producing company

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: So much I can't even get started answering this question! I am cleaning, comping, editing, quantizing, tuning, mixing, mastering projects for musicians (music), corporate (ads, shows, institutional, courses, tutorials, etc) and regular people (weddings, graduation, parties, etc) while the other team is doing video for all that.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Digital allows us to do so much that analog can't even start to grasp. It is also more viable. And it has been proven by blind testing that most "analog feel" claims are myths caused by human flawed and biased perception.

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

A: You are going to be satisfied.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: When I put away a finished job for a couple months then I listen to it again. But this time I am not anymore thinking of every parameter of every single tool processing that audio. This time I can really lay back and enjoy it as a regular listener does. And it feels great and I feel proud.

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

A: Be patient and remember the famous triangle of quality, speed and price. You must choose a balance focusing two of them and letting go of the other. You can't have all three.

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

A: Started nearly 10 years ago buying simple home user gear and learning by myself with trial and error and lots of reading. I have since gone professional, studied music and music production in renown schools including Berklee (Professional Music Studies Degree in Acoustics, Mastering and Music Licensing) and went to Technology in Music Production college at Anhembi Morumbi. Diapason started 5 years ago when me and my business partner did our undergraduate thesis on recording audio and video simultaneously with all musicians playing simultaneously in one single studio room. The thesis became our company's most important product and after this many years we are now a solid business with a big and knowledgeable team, one awesome beautiful headquarter studio, and most importantly lots of satisfied customers.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Human perception is biased and flawed. Don't believe in miracles and don't chase the "perfect mix" because it simply doesn't exist. What exists is tastes and what works (or not) in the way of communicating the song's ideas into real world sound. Be objective, yet not lazy to take the longer course when it is beneficial.

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

A: Most genres made of mostly real instruments and real musicians. Although I have worked with entirely sampled and synthetized jobs before and really enjoyed it.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: It is being persistent and accurate, meaning I don't give a job for finished until I am absolutely sure it is done.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I believe my job is to bring the song out of the imaginary realm and allow everyone else to listen to what you are listening to in your head. Bring you imagination to life. I am the one who understands what should it sound like and then I make it happen for your fans.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: Answering specifically about the kinds of services we are offering at soundbetter.com, I will first get to know your project, start organizing and cleaning it up, and ask for one or two comercial releases for reference so I can easily understand what are you going for. Then I will work by myself and do some revisions of my own until I get to a first rough version of what could be a final delivery. With your feedback I will then make fine adjustments and send it again. Once approved I will do one final revision on my own looking for fine technical details to make sure everything is ready and good to go.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: The main recording studio is quite big with nearly 100m², fitting several musicians comfortably to record and film. It is also adaptable for different kinds of recording and most needs for scenario, including infinite background. The control room is specially designed for audio editing, mixing and mastering. A secondary recording room offers an alternative, drier sounding, smaller room for recording isolated vocals, guitar cabinets and others. The cinema bears 200 inch Full HD projection screen and 1200w 5.1 top quality surround sound. Everything has been designed and built with care to the finest details and each room with specific acoustical qualities. We believe though that more important than having all this beautiful and high quality rooms and gear is to have a team. A crew that knows how to work around all of this and make good use of all the company's structure to deliver results to our clients, and make their imagination become real.

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

A: Our studios, I believe have somewhat of a feel like what I've seen of Abbey Road studios. It is very ample and comfortable.

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

A: Although Diapason works with audio and video for musicians, corporate and regular people, the work we do most often in the Music area is what we call a Session. It is a very time and cost efficient way of producing complete songs with music videos by having all musicians record at the same time. Simultaneously, a video team films the whole thing complete with scenario and clothing specific for each project. We then do all audio and video editing, mixing, mastering and publishing in house.