Up Close: Sound Affair Mastering

Part of the SoCal Sonic Landscape For Nearly 40 Years: Prior to launching his own studio, Sound Affair, in Santa Ana, CA in 1978, Ron Leeper cut his proverbial teeth as a mastering and recording engineer at Quad Tech Studios, DCT Recorders and the Record Plant in Los Angeles. Originally, Sound Affair was a recording and mixing studio. But with the rise of independent home studios, Leeper decided to focus exclusively on mastering, and in 1990 converted Sound Affair into a first-class mastering facility.

Legendary and Contemporary Clientele: Having engineered and mastered over 2,000 recordings, Leeper’s clients have included artists (Gregg Allman, Adam Ant, Slash, Jane Siberry, Jose Feliciano) and companies like the NFL, MTV, HBO Films, Warner Bros., Universal Music Group and many indie labels. Other projects include Delta spirit, Big Ott whose This Is The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, was NPR’s album of the month; and remastering the 25th anniversary of the Kickboxer sound track. Currently Leeper is working on new albums with reggae veterans Soul Syndicate; a restoration project that features guitarists Les Paul and Basil Hutchinson and the 20th Anniversary re-issue of renowned jazz pianist Tom Ranier’s In the Still of the Night.

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Resurgence of Vinyl Mastering: It’s not just the classic or the major artist’s albums that are selling well on vinyl. Indie artists are also benefiting from the growth in record sales, with a 37% increase just in the last months of 2015. With the massive growth of vinyl, Leeper has once again made disk cutting for vinyl a core element of his business. Sound Affair is only one of 20 or so disk cutting studios in the U.S. The mastering studio is a dedicated room, for the highest quality masters, reference discs and copies for archiving. Adjacent to Sound Affair is Groove Productions, a recording studio available for direct-to-disc sessions. A live band’s performance can be directly recorded onto a lacquer master disk. Working closely with nearby JNE Media Services for pressing and printing, Sound Affair Mastering is a one-stop solution for all your vinyl record needs.

For more information, visit soundaffairmastering.com.