May Featured Speaker

A Mastering Panel/Workshop

Carving out a career in Audio Mastering — Four next-generation pros “Tell it like it is”

In 2013, the world of audio mastering is often discussed as a two-tier eco-system: The “Old Guard” at the top and “Everyone Else.” In reality, the current state of audio mastering looks much more like a three-tiered model, again with the legacy “Top” engineers, and the ever-growing expanse at the bottom of people trying to enter the mastering game. However, there is a very large market segment in audio mastering that has been at the trade for well over a decade.
   This four-member panel will focus on what it’s like to dedicate yourself to the mastering segment in today’s market. How do you build your career? How do you differentiate yourself and your business in a segment plagued by promises of “everything you want for no cost,” while simultaneously trying to grow a client base, gain market recognition and build a real, profitable business?
  Join us for a real, ground-floor discussion of not only surviving in today’s audio mastering industry, but how to start and build your business, differentiate yourself, exist in an ever-changing climate where prices are always going down, managing and building an industry reputation … and more.

About the panelists:
Pete Lyman is the co-owner of Infrasonic Sound, overseeing both audio and vinyl mastering. He first developed his skill set while apprenticing with acclaimed RCA mastering engineer Richard Simpson. Venues like The GRAMMY Museum, SXSW and pro-audio staple Pensado’s Place have hosted Pete for panel discussions and feature interviews, highlighting his extensive discography – including work on albums for No Age, Rival Sons, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Best Coast, Jason Isbell, Fool’s Gold, iTunes and more.

Warren Sokol started out working as a freelance recording and mixing engineer in Phoenix, mainly at Living Head Audio Recording, which led to a contract doing all recording for the Phoenix Symphony and  teaching at Mesa Community College and The Conservatory of Recording in Tempe, AZ. He started Warren Ross Audio Mastering with the intention of making the projects he worked on better than the other engineers and realized that he had a special talent for mastering. Warren started at Universal Mastering Studios in 2010 as a temporary analog-to-digital archiving engineer; soon after he was brought on full-time as a mastering/production engineer, working on projects from major label releases to local independent artists.

Maor Appelbaum is an Israeli-born mastering engineer who now runs a mastering studio in Los Angeles. With an international clientele that includes Sepultura, Rob Halford, Yngwie Malmsteen, Anvil, Dokken, Walter Trout and Nekromantix, he hosts a wide variety of clients while at the same time having a specialized focus and industry respect in the metal genre. Maor has also worked with Sylvia Massy, Toby Wright, Roy Z, Warren Riker , Ryan Greene, Fabrizio Grossi, Billy Sherwood and more. He has been running his mastering business since the end of the 1990s, before moving his operations to these shores.

With over 25 years experience of audio engineering, Mike Wells became fascinated with mastering in the early 1990s, which lead to the opening in 2001 of Mike Wells Mastering in San Francisco. In 2011, the operation re-located to Los Angeles to continue growing the company. A metadata evangelist, Mike has pioneered the integration of metadata services into the modern mastering process and continues to educate and speak on the topic of audio metadata to artists and engineers worldwide. While primarily serving the indie community, Mike has also worked with The Mother Hips, Nicki Bluhm, STS9, Jello Biafra, Ron Blake, The Swingin Utters, and Rykarda Parasol. As a mastering engineer Mike has also had the privilege of working with producers & engineers Prince, Billie Joe Armstrong, Chris Lord-Alge, and Vance Powell.