Universal Mastering East and West recently upgraded their facilities with the latest technology from Antelope Audio, Weiss, and Lavry Engineering. Universal chose Sonic Circus Inc as their technology partner. The facilities serve as in house production hubs for the worlds largest collective record company, (A&M, Decca, Motown, Island Def Jam, Interscope, Mercury, Verve and others). 

Universal was quick to embrace the latest advancements in digital audio. Because of this, Workflow is now greatly improved and sonic fidelity has reached an all-time high. Recent projects run the gamut from chart topping new artists in every genre, such as Lil Wayne, Asher Roth and Leona Lewis to deep archival work involving digital transfers of timeless classics by Stevie Wonder, James Brown the Allman Brothers and thousands of other titles.
 
Antelope Audio’s Atomic Clocks are now integrated throughout Universal’s East and West complexes, making them the first mastering facilities that are fully networked with Antelope. They have also just taken delivery of Sonic Solutions Soundblade systems, Weiss DS-1 and Lavry Gold converters - reinforcing their standard as a mastering and production powerhouse. 

Senior Mastering engineer Vlado Meller spearheaded the transition. After critical listening demonstrations of the Trinity and the Atomic Clock 10M there was really no choice but to make the transition for Vlado Meller in New York as well as Erick Labson in Universal’s new Santa Monica mastering facility. Sonic Circus delivered and assisted in networking the entire New York facility with Eliot Kissileff (former Electric Lady and Sony alumni). “Once the units arrived and we started hooking them up to our A-to-D converters, Pro Tools systems and digital EQ’s it became immediately obvious that there is a new level of clarity and quality to our already excellent-sounding equipment. It’s almost as if it’s still in the analog realm after the conversion. You feel like you’re still listening to the master right off the tape machine even though it’s a wav file.” 

Recent Universal highlights: Engineer Kevin Reeves has recently completed two massive re-issue projects, the first being the 10-CD Motown #1’s package, covering the iconic record company’s entire 50-year history at the top of the charts. The second is a 15-CD Box of jazz master John Coltrane’s Impulse albums. Kevin also did his part for our current president, turning around a stunning re-mix of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” for Stevie to play and sing along with at the Democratic National convention back in October. Ellen Fitton has been keeping busy mastering the next volume in Motown’s long-running “The Complete Motown Singles” series with volume 11. She has also been working with new packages for the Marvelettes and the Miracles, as well as sixties legends the Velvet Underground. Seth Foster has been busy working on the latest James Brown Complete Singles series, covering some of his classic material from 1970 like “Superbad” and “Sex Machine”, Universal Mastering’s East and West Coast facilities are full-service mastering, mixing and production houses offering the best in both analog and digital equipment. One of the studios’ main functions are dealing with the constant flow of analog and digital tape of all vintages, from the classic mono recordings of the fifties through every digital format known to man and beyond. One of the main jobs of engineers at Universal is to work towards preserving the legacy of one of the greatest libraries of recorded music ever assembled. As the production hubs for the largest record company in the world, they handle the final phases of production prior to manufacturing- encoding metadata, quality control, as well as watermarking and duplication. 

Another growing area of work on both coasts is mixing for the various music-oriented video games, “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band”, along with a growing host of smaller song-driven games. These games challenge engineers with the object of creating a new mix of both classic songs as well as newer hits that must exactly match the originals so that the tracks can be encoded for game play.