What does Mastering for Revox mean to me?
Revox entrusts me with the original master tapes of outstanding, world-renowned recordings – musical and sonic gems. For me, this is a great responsibility, both technically and artistically. It's not just about making a clean copy, but about making the sonic and musical information contained in the original master as audible and experienceable as possible. This involves listening very carefully and understanding the musical flow.
Not making artificially spectacular changes, but allowing the music to sound as authentic and musical as possible. Even if optimizations are made at many small points, this always happens with the utmost respect for the recording – optimized for Revox's different media.
<< 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 intended to be told. >>
Learn more about Mastering | ReMastering by 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 started at the renowned "msm-studios" as a mastering and remastering engineer, and since 2013, he operates under his own label "christoph stickel mastering". To date, he has mastered and remastered more than 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 multiple 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 esteemed prizes.
In addition to mastering current recordings, remastering from the original analog tape is a significant part of his work. Here, 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) as well as at the Hochschule für Musik/ Detmold (ETI) (Germany).
Christoph is a true music lover and a proven music expert.
