Just over the East River from New York City in cool, funky, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, sits a small gem of a studio called Timeless Mastering. Combining a high-end chain of analog and digital processing, owner/engineer/musician Adrian Morgan grew his experience and background at the renowned Sterling Sound before custom-building his own shop catering to vinyl, CD and DVD work. From Jane's Addiction to Ari Heist and Bobby Tinsley, he seamlessly blends technology and instinct to assure every project leaves sounding better than when it came in. Working directly alongside Morgan is Nina Boneta, who has jumped head over heels into learning this highly respected craft. We sat down recently to learn how Timeless mastering can truly be.....

So tell us about your backgrounds....

Adrian:

I moved to New York after graduating from the Berklee College of Music, and worked odd jobs while playing small jazz gigs at night. Eventually, pure luck and my Berklee background led me to Sterling Sound, the world's oldest mastering studio where I was taught the art of vinyl cutting. Soon after I became mastering engineer Tom Coyne's assistant and worked on albums by artists like Dido, Busta Rhymes, Common, De La Soul, Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys, etc. My next move was to Sterling's DVD department as head of audio production., DVD was just coming of age and I worked on many groundbreaking projects such as The Beastie Boy's Video Anthology, Moby Play, and the Metallica Black Album DVD-Audio disc. In 2001 I left Sterling to formTimeless out of my mastering and DVD freelance career. I'm also still active as a musician, mainly as a bass player these days.

Nina:

In 2006, after studying audio engineering and production at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Arizona,. I moved to Los Angeles to finish my internship credits. I was also doing small live sound gigs, and recording local bands. Later, I got a sweet gig at Joey's Place a quaint, vibey studio on Melrose Ave. I got to record music that I truly loved, and all 24 track analog. After experiencing the LA scene, I decided to head back to New York.

Timeless combines both analog and digital processing. What do you feel that brings to the table?

The analog gear does the heavy lifting. The dynamics, the tonal shaping, and the quality of gain in the analog domain exudes musicality. In mastering you want a minimal set up and that's where the plugins come in handy, The digital processing is used when we need to be more corrective or for additional tweaking, it's nice to have those extra digital tools handy. Except in the case of the Sonnox Oxford plugins, those are always used creatively in our session, not just for corrective purposes.

Tell us about some of your analog gear.

We are fortunate to have a classic I.T.I equalizer, which is essentially the first fully parametric EQ's designed. Our corrective analog equalizers include the classic Sontec and the Focusrite blue series I.C based equalizer. For dynamics we're working with a Focusrite blue limiter/compressor. We do the averaging compression through a Shadow Hills master compressor and we get the last little bit of the depth from a Requisite L2M.

Which Sonnox plug-ins do you use on the digital side?

They're all really great in their own way, but for mastering we find ourselves relying on the Limiter and the Inflator which we mainly use at the end of our mastering chain. We realtime monitor through them on the output monitor buss.

They pretty much 'live' there, ready to go, on our default mastering sessions. Out of all the similar plug-ins on our mastering machine, the 'Oxfords work best 99 percent of the time. The Limiter gives the perfect lift to the music, and doesn't alter or distort the overall tone like so many other software limiters.

The Inflator can really be key for adding that extra bit of heft to wimpy sounding mixes and filling in the low-mids a bit. Sometimes we'll use the Oxford Equalizer as well, usually for corrective purposes. Just the other day, I used it for an especially challenging piece I was mastering. After I had done all I could with the analog gear, I tried several plug-in equalizers. When I brought up the Oxford EQ, it totally put the finishing touches on the mix. I really like the hi-mid range on it. I found that it brought some clarity to the sound. It didn't leave behind the usually annoying phasy, harsh side effects of many digital plug-in EQ's.

Why did you choose those versus other brands/models?

Definitely the transparency factor. They don't leave as big of a sonic footprint as other plug-ins. which can be too overbearing. That's exactly what we want to stay away from. We don't want to hear any digital artifacts, especially since we are running a pretty pure analog chain. I find that Oxford plug-ins tend to be perfect for that. All of the Oxford plug-ins have exceptionally clear, concise layouts - which I find very helpful.

What do they do for the sound of a mix?

That extra "Umph". There's something about the Oxford plugins that just feels right in the music.They don't tire my ears. In fact, they enhance the listening experience. Being an analog gear lover, it means a lot to say that we use Oxford plug-ins as the secret ingredient for all our masters.

Interview and editorial provided by Rich Tozzoli