Welcome to the third episode of the Truth About Recording & Mixing, hosted by Crackle & Pop!’s Johnny Sangster. This week, we explore the career of Ed Brooks, who has worked in most all facets of professional audio and now runs Resonant Mastering.

Some of the topics discussed on this episode:
1:40 Omni Sound Project: A resource for women engineers (link)
2:45 Johnny demo on figure of 8 microphones
13:00 Special guest: Ed Brooks – starting with his path into audio
14:45 Working for Tapco and doing live sound
18:45 Moving into tech work with Matt Sutton
22:00 Seattle’s old recording studio landscape: Kaye Smith / Lawson Sound
24:20 Recording & mixing R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People
29:50 moving to freelance engineering and eventually to mastering
33:30 Mastering Botch’s We Are the Romans
34:55 What is mastering?
41:10 Listener question: Why mix in a control room?
52:25 Listener question: What’s the difference between dynamics compression and bitrate / codec compression?
60:00 What’s more important sample rate or bit depth?
62:40 Let’s talk about acoustics! What is a room mode?
67:00 Things to do when designing a space
77:20 Ed’s pedal steel guitar solo record

Submit your questions for Johnny by sending us a voice memo or email to podcast@fretboardjournal.com.

The Truth About Recording & Mixing is a bi-weekly podcast produced by the Fretboard Journal magazine, loosely based on our Truth About Vintage Amps Q&A podcast. If you enjoy it, please leave us a review and share it with friends.

This episode is sponsored by iZotope. Use the discount code FRET10 to save 10% off your next iZotope order.