Show Notes

About Our Guest

JJ Golden is a mastering and vinyl cutting engineer at Golden Mastering in Ventura, California, the family run studio hisfather John Golden opened in 1992. JJ joined full time in 1998 after training at SAE Technology College in London and working as a technical supervisor there. He mastered the Grammy nominated Black Pumas self titled album, reissues for Sunny Day Real Estate and Band of Horses, and albums for American Music Club, Calexico, and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings.

Topics We Covered

• A childhood spent listening for the details. Growing up around Golden Mastering, riding in his dad's 1964 Ford Econoline van, and learning to hear things like a well placed reverb on a snare hit from the passenger seat

• The Tascam 388 years. Buying the eight track reel to reel Porta Studio in 1988 for junior high and high school experimentation, backwards guitar solos, blown channels, and a machine he still owns today

• London, SAE, and Pathway Studios. Getting married at 20 and moving to London for a nine month audio engineering course, grading student mixes as a signal flow supervisor, and the 24 hour solo session at the now defunct Pathway Studios that ended with a kick drum that had gone missing for half a song

• Coming home to mastering in 1998. Choosing the steadier rhythm of mastering over the unpredictable pace of tracking sessions, and starting full time at his father's studio right as digital was taking over

• The hidden zero track. DASH machines, 1630 videotape CD masters, SADiE and Sonic Solutions, and the enhanced CD era trick of hiding reversed audio before Track 1

• The global lacquer blank shortage. Test cuts, cutter head overheating, tariffs and supply chain squeezes on lacquer blanks, and how the entire global vinyl industry now depends on a single manufacturer in Japan since the Apollo plant fire in 2020

• Taking the limiter off for vinyl. Why a heavily peak limited digital master loses depth and impact on a lathe, and the client conversation that comes with asking a band to hear their record without the squash they fell in love with

• New Slang, Garden State, and a run of Grammy nominated records. Hearing The Shins' "New Slang" for the first time while working on the original Oh, Inverted World!, baking half inch tape to restore Band of Horses' "The Funeral" for its 20th anniversary reissue, and a mastering career that includes multiple Grammy nominations

• Phone calls, landlines, and life on two wheels. Why a five minute call beats a week of emails, the old school answering machine that keeps work off his personal line, and riding a Triumph through the orange groves near Camarillo

Links

• Golden Mastering: https://goldenmastering.com

• JJ Golden at Golden Mastering: https://goldenmastering.com/engineers/jj-golden/

• The Shins, Oh, Inverted World! (Sub Pop, 2001): https://www.subpop.com/artists/the_shins

• Band of Horses, Everything All the Time (20th Anniversary Edition, Sub Pop):

https://www.subpop.com/releases/band_of_horses/everything_all_the_time_20th_anniversary_edition

• Black Pumas: https://blackpumas.com

• Muttering, "Saturday Afternoon" from Love, Keep Me Afraid: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/muttering/1548588841

About Our Guest
Idania Valencia is a mastering engineer at Sterling Sound, where she has worked for 11 years, starting as a production engineer for Tom Coyne. Originally from Mexico City, she studied music composition at Academia de Música Fermatta before Full Sail University's recording arts program, and now works out of Sterling's Los Angeles location. Her mastering credits include Sam Smith, Shawn Mendes, Charli XCX, Ariana Grande, Coldplay, and Of Monsters and Men.

Topics We Covered

• The backup plan that wasn't. Growing up around music through her non-musician, bohemian father, choosing composition for college, and her parents' insistence on a backup plan that happened to sound like "an engineering" degree
• Finding mastering on purpose. Trying recording and a physically demanding, male-dominated live-sound gig first, and being drawn to mastering specifically because it was the mysterious, unexplained part of the process
• The resume that got the callback. Applying to every studio in New York, getting turned down by Sterling for an internship, and going in person anyway with a resume in a nice folder
• Trained by QC, not theory. Years assisting Tom Coyne, mentored by Aya Merrill and Will Quinnell, learning to tell the difference between a mix problem and a mastering problem one distortion at a time
• The moves nobody else can hear. EQ changes so small other engineers insist they're inaudible, but they're the difference between a master getting approved or rejected. Feel and instinct over pure technical process
• Stacking limiters. Why she sometimes runs two or three limiters instead of one, same type or different, for more control than any single limiter gives her
• LUFS, true peak, and the loud-ref epidemic. Her real-world targets (around -8 to -6 LUFS depending on genre), rarely applying true peak limiting herself, and her nuanced take on loud references: it depends entirely on who the mixer is
• Burnout, fibromyalgia, and finding balance. The insanely paced years assisting Coyne and then Randy Merrill, the chronic pain that followed, and the therapy and boundary-setting that got her to a healthier place
• NYC vs. LA. Sterling's self-contained East Coast culture versus the more open, curious engineering community she's found since moving, and why Mexico City always felt more like LA than New York ever did

Links

• Sterling Sound: https://www.sterling-sound.com
• Idania Valencia at Sterling Sound: https://www.sterling-sound.com/engineer/idania-valencia
• Idania's Mix with the Masters mastering workshop: https://mixwiththemasters.com/masters/idania-valencia
• Rose Gray, "Club to Your Arms": https://rosegray.lnk.to/clubtoyourarms
• Academia de Música Fermatta: https://www.fermatta.edu.mx
• Full Sail University: https://www.fullsail.edu
• Maddie Ettrich: https://www.maddieettrich.com

Speaks Volumes is back for Season 3, and we're kicking things off with someone who went from mopping floors at Chicago Mastering Service to owning the place.

Greg Obis interned at Electrical Audio, talked his way into CMS in 2012 by offering to vacuum and grab groceries for Bob Weston and Jason Ward, and spent a decade working his way up from quality control to full-time mastering engineer. Then in 2024, Bob announced he was moving to Portugal, and Greg made him an offer.

Mat Leffler-Schulman and Dan Coutant talk with Greg about the surreal jump from employee to owner, the lost art (and real fear) of cutting lacquers, why he asks clients to remove peak limiting, the loudness "come to Jesus" talk, reference mixes from The Replacements to Converge, and balancing life as a business owner with his band Stuck.

Greg's latest record with Stuck, Optimizer, is out now on Exploding In Sound Records.

Music in this episode: "Sicko" by Stuck, from Optimizer.

About Our Guest

Greg Obis is a mastering engineer and the owner of Chicago Mastering Service, where he has worked since 2012. He has mastered records for artists on labels including Sub Pop, Matador, ANTI-, Numero Group, Sacred Bones, and International Anthem. He also co-founded Born Yesterday Records and plays guitar and sings in the band Stuck.

Topics We Covered

• From intern to owner. Greg's path from Bennington College and an Electrical Audio internship to offering Bob Weston studio chores in exchange for a foot in the door, then a decade climbing from QC and archiving to a full mastering workload
• Buying CMS. How Bob's move to Portugal turned into a handover instead of a shipping container, why building a new room from scratch priced itself out of the running, and the "child emperor" phase of suddenly running the show
• Wearing every hat. Taking over project management, invoicing, and scheduling while keeping his own clients happy, and how coming up through quality control made him a better communicator
• Revisions and being the fall guy. Why the mastering engineer, like a monitor engineer, is the last one in the chain and the first to catch blame, and why recall requests are the most valuable education in the business
• Reference mixes. Greg's listening playlist: "Bastards of Young" by The Replacements, Yes, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Kendrick Lamar, and Converge for when he needs something absurdly loud. Plus the legend of a Daft Punk record allegedly mastered twice
• Lacquer cutting. Learning on Bob's Neumann VMS 70, the fear of a blown cutter head, how cutting changed his digital work, and the great lathe-versus-house-down-payment debate now that the VMS 70 lives in Portugal
• Peak limiting and loudness. Greg's "limiter on or limiter off" philosophy, asking clients for unlimited mixes, 32-bit float delivery, and talking a client back from the loudness ledge with help from Tone Projects Uni-L
• When to say no. Mostly when it's a mix problem mastering can't solve. Otherwise: offer the professional opinion, then respect that it's their record
• Life outside the racks. Stuck's new album Optimizer, touring while running a business, cooking, weightlifting as a third space, and Greg's dream of a gloriously unlistenable side project made purely for the joy of it

Links

• Chicago Mastering Service: https://chicagomasteringservice.com
• Greg Obis: https://www.gregobis.com
• Greg's Substack, Live. Laugh. LUFS.: https://livelaughlufs.substack.com
• Stuck, "Sicko" from Optimizer (Exploding In Sound Records): https://stuckchi.bandcamp.com/album/optimizer
• Born Yesterday Records: https://www.bornyesterdayrecords.com