From PARIS to Masterlink: Producer Jason Miles Shares His Secrets

By Gary Eskow

Interfacing project studios with professional mastering facilities presents a slew of problems that all home recordists encounter. To provide expert advice on how to achieve a good sound in a project studio and successfully import it into a state-of-the-art mastering facility, we asked producer Jason Miles to discuss the strategies he used in the production of his latest project, a tribute to composer Ivan Lins.

Jason Miles has been around the block. A pioneering synth programmer/player, his contributions to the recordings of Miles Davis, The Crusaders, Michael Jackson, and others have helped pave the way for the "smooth jazz" sound that has become increasingly popular over the last decade. The Ivan Lins project is a two-fold labor of love for Jason, who considers it to be his finest recording to date. "Not only do I love Ivan's music, but the project is a tribute to Miles Davis as well, in a sense. One night I was hanging out at Miles' house and he played me a bunch of Ivan's songs. Miles told me that he planned on recording an entire album of Lins' material, but then he died. I thought it was an amazing idea, and I decided to carry it out."

Never heard of the Brazilian composer who Jason pays homage to on this CD? Jason reckons to right this slight. "Lins is one of the all time great melodists in popular music. Musicians know and love his work, as a rule, and I was able to attract some of the biggest names in the industry to work on the project."

How big? Well, Sting came on board to track She Walks This Earth - a tune featuring lyrics by Brenda "Piano In The Dark" Russell - over at Sound On Sound recording studios in Manhattan. Vanessa Williams, Chaka Khan, the late great Grover Washington Jr., Diane Reeves, Freddie Cole, Dave Koz, Peter White, and bassman-supreme Marcus Miller also appear on the album. How did Jason approach the recording of such a high-profile album, and how did he interface his home studio with larger facilities in New York and L.A.?

Jason's studio features an Emu-Ensoniq PARIS hard disk recording system and a multiple ADAT rig. Arrangements start with his extensive synth and sampler rack and a pair of sequencers: the Mark of The Unicorn Performer and a stand-alone sequencer, the Akai MPC 300. When a piece is far enough along to send out to singers, he prepares ADAT tapes for them. "Generally, I execute 2-track reference mixes of drums and percussion, plus a stereo pair of the music. If a particular instrument is prominently featured I'll break it out to a separate track." When complete, vocals are transferred back into PARIS. "PARIS is an incredibly good sounding work station, and flying around vocals to create comp tracks is especially easy and musical…The Nudge and Slip feature is fantastic - it lets you move things around in small increments to get the timing right in the pocket."

Once he's got his outside tracking completed on ADATs, Jason ports all of his preferred takes into his Mac G3 (a G4 is on the way). As PARIS is a card-based system, its internal DSP chips supply most of the needed processing power, so the latest and greatest computer is not required. Jason also uses a hot swappable Cheetah 18 gig hard drive, which lets him take his data to other PARIS equipped studios like Bear Tracks.

Jason gave us some further advice about the strengths of certain ADAT units. "When we worked in L.A., we got to work with the more expensive ADAT M20, Alesis' pro model. They've got stronger transports than the other ADATs, quicker time lock, and they read SMPTE. The units can run off a BRC (Alesis' Big Remote Controller which acts as a hub for multiple ADATs) but the company recommends using the M20's CABI system. It locks more quickly than the BRC."

All mixing takes place in the computer. With a number of very good internal effects and access to VST plug-ins, PARIS is capable of handling lots of mixing on its own. Jason also busses individual tracks in and out of his system in order to take advantage of his ample supply of outboard effects. "I ran all of the vocals through my TC Electronic Intonator. What a beautiful sound that box has! Very smooth, and it tracks pitch flawlessly. Plus it has a really good de-esser." Jason also cites Summit and Joe Meek compressors, the TC Electronic MC3000 reverb, Neve equalizers, and the WAVES Native Power pack II as essential processors.

And then there's mastering. Let's face it, the concept terrorizes most project studio operators, even those who feel good about the way their mixes move from system to system. The reality is that everyone who can afford to have a top flight-house master their album takes advantage of the opportunity. Jason Miles took the NY State Thruway into Manhattan and mixed with Leon Zervos at Masterdisk, one of the city's top mastering facilities.

Jason had several options when it came down to transferring completed tracks onto one of Masterdisk's Sonic Solutions workstations. They don't own a PARIS system, so he could have packed up his own, but who really wants to do that? Since he owns a Tascam DA-45HR 24-bit DAT player, he laid mixes to this medium. Jason also laid down 24 mixes from PARIS directly onto his Alesis Masterlink, Alesis' new, comprehensive mastering unit. He recorded straight to Masterlink's hard drive and took this box into the studio as well.

How did it sound?

"I was really impressed with the Masterlink. We went AES/EBU directly out of it into the Sonic Solutions and it sounded great. The Tascam sounds great too, but Masterlink gives you all these other features for roughly the same money. I don't need to add any DSP, because I master at facilities like Masterdisk, but [the Masterlink] has normalization and EQ that sound pretty good. I do take advantage of the extensive editing that can be done using Masterlink's playlist structure. It's simple to record all of your tracks and then experiment with different ordering and times between cuts. Some people say they can hear a difference between the DA-45HR and the Masterlink, but I can't. All I can tell you is that being able to transfer 24-bit material - and one day stuff that's been tracked at 96kHz - is very attractive."

The Alesis Masterlink is one example of the kind of DSP tool that's now on the market. Learning just a little bit about digital signal processing, sample rate conversion, and the differences between various digital work stations can help any project studio owner max out his or her own studio, and interface with a wide variety of professional facilities as well.

A Love Affair, The Music of Ivan Lins will be released on the Telarc label in September 2000.

To learn more about Jason Miles' tribute to Ivan Lins, visit Jason's homepage at www.mediusvision.com/jmiles.

Further information concerning the life and music of Ivan Lins can be found at www.ivanlins.com.br.

Gary Eskow is a composer and producer who lives in central New Jersey. He writes on music and film industry topics regularly.