Audio Recording | Recording Studio | Mastering

How I work on ReMastering and Mastering for Revox

The First Look at the Original

When the courier delivers the master tapes to my studio, it's still a special moment, even after hundreds of re-masterings. Often, I'm faced with unique musical historical documents – and with that comes a great responsibility.

The first look is at the condition of the tape. After a careful test run, it's decided whether it can be played directly or if a controlled "baking" is necessary first to make it playable again for a limited period.

Afterwards, the tape is slowly and carefully rewound. This reveals possible mechanical weaknesses such as aged splices or other damage that needs to be addressed.

Optimal Playback of the Original

Before I can even consider the sound, I need to ensure that I am actually hearing what is stored on the original master tape.

To do this, I must adjust my tape machine as precisely as possible to the parameters of the original recording tape machine. This is the only way to hear exactly what the sound engineer heard during the recording. Standardized information on the tape box helps with the adjustment. If this information is missing or incomplete, experience and, above all, a good ear are required. If available, I also use a digitized original vinyl pressing for comparison.

After these settings, a full playback run is performed, during which a digital backup copy is simultaneously created. During this process, I document any technical anomalies and, most importantly, gain an initial intensive impression of the recording and its music.

The Sonic Elaboration

This is where the actual remastering process begins for me.

I listen to the recording repeatedly and first try to understand its musical essence: its timbres, its dynamics, its spatial effect, its musical flow, and above all, its emotional statement.

Only then do the decisions for the sonic treatment emerge.

The aim is not to impose a modern sound on a historical recording or to make it artificially more spectacular. Rather, I try to bring out the qualities already present in the recording and to make the sonic and musical information contained in the original master audible in the best possible way. Not to change, but to support.

This process is different for every production. Sometimes a recording needs more openness or transparency, sometimes more body, warmth, or spatial depth. In another production, the task might be to subtly alter the balance of individual frequency ranges, to better highlight dynamics and transients, or to give the musical event more calm and naturalness.

Many small interventions can work together in this process. However, what matters is not their number, but their musical justification. Every change is repeatedly heard and evaluated in the context of the entire recording.

This is precisely where I see the artistic part of mastering: translating technical possibilities into musical decisions.

It's about nuances. A minimal change can make a voice sound more immediate, an instrument appear more natural, an orchestra unfold better, or a production gain more punch and emotional presence. At the same time, it must always be checked what might be lost through an intervention.

Therefore, the decision to change nothing is also part of this creative process. If the untouched master already conveys exactly what the recording is supposed to express, both musically and sonically, there is no reason to intervene.

My sound processing is done exclusively with analog tools.

Not out of nostalgia, but because this signal path allows me to implement the musical decisions made previously in a way that is particularly natural, musical, and differentiated for me.

From the original to the new master tape

To protect the valuable original tape as much as possible, I first develop the sound settings based on the digital backup copy created previously. This process can easily take an entire workday.

Once all decisions have been made, I make a test recording on a new analog tape and check it immediately "behind the tape." This allows me to make final fine-tunings.

Only then does the final run take place directly from the original master tape through my processing chain to a second tape machine. This can certainly happen in sections, which are then edited back together. The resulting master tape and a parallel analog safety copy then go to Revox and form the basis for duplication.

If the original is already digital

Since the 1990s, many music productions are no longer recorded on analog tape. But Revox also releases these musical gems.

In these cases, I usually receive high-resolution files of the original mix. The sound processing here is also done exclusively with analog tools. The master, in turn, becomes an analog tape. The creative process remains the same: listening, understanding the musical statement, and deriving the necessary sound decisions from it.

Dynamics instead of loudness

Especially in pop and rock music since the mid-1990s, the dynamics of many productions have been increasingly reduced – often with the goal of sounding as loud as possible.

For Revox's sound carriers, we do not have to follow this "loudness war."

Here, the music and the listening experience are at the center. Of course, for pop and rock productions, punch, pressure, and glue are part of a convincing sound image – but never loudness at any cost.

My goal is to preserve the dynamics and musical energy present in the original and make them as audible as possible.

Because for me, the following applies:

»Mastering does not begin with processing a production, but with understanding its musical statement. Every recording tells a story. My job is not to rewrite it, but to make it audible as it was meant to be told.«

About Christoph Stickel

Christoph is a Grammy-nominated mastering engineer with his own mastering studio in Vienna (Austria). For many years, he has been responsible for all mastering / remastering of all master tape copies and other sound carriers produced by Revox.

In 1992, he began working as a mastering and remastering engineer at the renowned "msm-studios" and has been operating under his own label "christoph stickel mastering" since 2013. To date, he has mastered and remastered over 5500 albums. He is known for his work with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Mariss Jansons, the Vienna, Berlin, and Munich Philharmonic Orchestras, John Williams, Arvo Pärt, Yello, Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, Simon Rattle, Die Ärzte, John McLaughlin, John Scofield, Michael Schenker, Gidon Kremer, and many other international artists from all musical genres.

Albums he has mastered have received numerous awards, including the German Record Critics' Award, Opus Klassik, Supersonic Pizzicato, Diapason d'Or, Choc de Classica, ICMA, the Gramophone Classical Music Award, and other highly prestigious accolades. In addition to mastering current recordings, remastering from the original analog tape is a significant part of his work. This includes names such as Maria Callas, Pat Metheny, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arthur Rubinstein, Oscar Peterson, Glenn Gould, Friedrich Gulda, Herbert von Karajan, Baden Powell, Monty Alexander, Ella Fitzgerald, Sergiu Celibidache, Leonard Bernstein...

He is a lecturer at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw) (Austria) and at the Detmold University of Music (ETI) (Germany).

Christoph is a true music lover and a proven music expert.