Senior Mastering Engineer
Eric James has been deeply involved in the music business as a musician, producer and engineer for nearly 30 years. His work has encompassed the entire musical spectrum and his recent credits range from the classical finesse of Alfred Brendel and Leslie Howard, the musical intricacy of the John Taylor jazz trio to the alt/indie rock of The British Public and the Sargasso Trio.
Eric is also an academic and a writer, and he brings to his mastering work a very high level of both musical and technical knowledge. He is the editor of both editions of Bob Katz’ Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science and is a regular contributor of technique and review articles to Sound on Sound.
Audio Equipment
Professional audio mastering requires an acoustically excellent room, top quality signal processing, and the highest resolution monitoring. At Philosophers Barn we have all three. Our facilities are housed in a superb converted 17th century, 50 foot, oak-beamed barn, buried deep in the quiet Norfolk countryside. As well as the mastering suite the Barn has a dedicated listening area and lounge (featuring the best coffee in Norfolk and a wonderful view of the neighbourhood cows...).
Our audio workstations are the hardware based Pyramix (v.6.) with Flux EQ and dynamic processors and SADiE PCM8 (v.6) with CEDAR DeNoise and ReTouch restoration software. We also use the native based Sequoia DAW (v.10) with EQ plug-ins from Algorithmix.
Digital Outboard:
- t.c. electronic Mastering System 6000 with Massenburg Hi-Res EQ
- Weiss EQ1 Mk2 DYN/LP (24/96)
- DD-2 Ambience Processor (with Z-sys EQ)
- dCS 904, 954 and 974 Digital conversion and upsampling
Analogue Outboard:
- Cranesong Ibis Class-A Analogue EQ
- Maselec MEA-2 EQ
- Thermionic Culture Pullet passive analogue EQ
- Pendulum OCL-2 Class A Vacuum Tube opto-compressor
- Maselec MLA-2 compressor
- Grace 801 pre-amp
Monitoring:
- Crookwood Custom Mastering Console/Nagra PL-L pre-amp
- Mark Levinson No.37 CD transport
- Lector CDP7 Class A valve CD player
- ATC SCM 50 ASL main monitors
- Stax SR 404 Signature headspeakers/ SRM006t tube driver
- AKG K-701 and Sennheiser 600 headphones
Analogue Transfer
Nottingham Analogue Hyperdeck; Origin Live Encounter arm; Transfiguration Spirit III Cartridge; Whest 0.20 phono stage