Carl Saff - mastering, chicago

are you vinyl mastering, or CD, or both?

If you send him a track he'll master it for free as a sample. I almost used him but ended up going with someone local so I could attend the session. He used to post a lot on the TapeOp message board, maybe he still does. He seemed like a nice fellow.

Also this thread is giving me deja vu.

I was a big fan of Carl Saff's band Pencil when I was living in Bloomington back in the 90s. He is a really interesting guitarist. Because of the Bloomington connection, he seemed to master a few Secretly Canandian releases when they were getting started.

I haven't heard much Carl Saff has mastered in a long time (since the mid 90s), but some of the stuff he did for Ativin quite a few years back sounded excellent, especially German Water.

If it means anything, the guy has been doing the audio thing for quite a while.

I've always had his name in the back of my mind to use as a mastering engineer for quite a few years, but sadly I have not really finished anything that I would want to put the money into pressing or pushing out (Man that is something I really need to get done, at least once.)

this dude masters basically every indie release that comes out in the midwest i think. he mastered my band's album and i cannot speak highly enough of him. he was really cool with the shittiness of our recording (ie didn't make fun of us and seemed to understand that we weren't going for a really clean, perfect sound), let us hang out in his basement for four hours, was very affable, etc. we did have him do a second run at the master because in trying to handle our overloud hi-hats he had lost too many of the high frequencies, but he did the second master quickly and at no extra charge. i can't see using anyone else for future masters

i'd like to try this guy for the brass band album this summer.

^^^lol @ "10 months ago"

anyway, now we're done and will be ready to master soon and this still seems like the best deal. there are lots of really pro mastering places, but he seems good and trustworthy while being cheaper than almost everywhere else.

we went back to him for the mastering of 'laugh tracks,' he got it in ahead of schedule (by a few days) and we were happy with his first take this time

how far in advance have you had to schedule with him?

went back and checked my email ... looks like it was around 6 weeks (ie we "reserved" a mastering date that was 6 weeks later, though we didn't get him the final mixes until a couple of weeks before the mastering date) but that was right around the holidays

the other guy i'm looking at has mostly done, like, grammy-nominated smooth jazz records, which seems kinda lame at first but might work out for us (considering that we're an instrumental horn band but closer to pop than jazz in terms of dynamics).

xp

CS is going to do it in mid-may.

i wonder if he follows this thread?

i wouldn't be surprised if he does!

hi carl!

a+, would definitely hire again.