Eric Boulanger
Company: The Bakery
Clientele: Neil Young, Green Day, Imagine Dragons
Contact: thebakery.la
Eric Boulanger started classical violin as a fresh-faced three-year-old. His formal engineering training, however, was completed at Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. While working at Capitol Records as its first-ever intern, legendary producer and engineer Al Schmitt suggested that Boulanger meet with the mastering maestro Doug Sax. He worked under Sax for several years and in 2015 opened The Bakery, his own Los Angeles facility.
Aside from budgets, what are some of the biggest challenges that you face today?
Because so many artists are self-produced or on an indie label, you have a lot of people with no clue what they’re doing on the production side. Often times I’ll even get files that don’t have an artist’s name on them. It’s hard to get the label copy––all the stuff we need to encode on the record.
How often do you speak with a mix engineer and at what point does that happen?
Almost always and usually even before I get their mix. The only time that can get squirrelly and impersonal is when I’m working on a big soundtrack. You have many people involved and there’s a label or project coordinator.
What are the best ways to communicate with clients so that you’re sure you can give them what they want?
Very simply: I speak in music. When a client tries to talk with me in technical terms, I tell them to imagine that they’re on stage. Who would they turn to and tell to shut up?
The number of formal engineering education programs seems to increase constantly. Why are there so many?
Because they’re profitable. Are they worth it? It’s hard to criticize education, but it’s what you make of it. My criticism is that any school will promise that you’ll get a job, but you never do. The programs are so focused in one direction.
How should people new to the field approach formal engineering programs?
I don’t see the point of school. If you’re determined to pursue the craft, you may as well spend your time actually doing it and not earning a degree. Learning Pro Tools isn’t that hard.
A number of online music players employ loudness normalization. Are you mindful of this when mastering? Does it create unique challenges?
I’ve been mindful of it for a long time. A lot of my testing has been surprising. At this point, it hasn’t entered my workflow but I see that changing in the next few years. Why it hasn’t entered yet is because there’s no standard. It may as well not even exist because of the vast differences in implementation.
Because of multiple platforms (Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc.), do you sometimes give artists more than one master?
I give them one. It’s a romantic thought to provide more than one, but that’s the business kiss of death. If you give a client two different versions and try to explain it, good luck.
How does automated mastering compare to mastering done by an engineer? Is it a serious threat?
It’s not a serious threat. It’s the same thing as AI composition or MIDI performances. That isn’t what people are making, what they want to hear or what they’re buying.
What happens with vinyl reissues? Are they always mastered for vinyl?
Sometimes the label will only have the CD master and you have to get it onto vinyl. That’s one end of the spectrum. The other end is that I just remastered the famous Telarc Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture. It was originally recorded to a Soundstream machine, one of the first digital tape recorders from around 1978. But it had no digital interface. Someone figured out how to put its internal bit structure into PCM (pulse-code modulation). It originally ran at 50K. They did an SRC (sample-rate conversion) up to 96K. This is the closest anyone’s gotten to the data on the tape.
Many artists want to get their stuff in film or on TV. Are there any special considerations for mastering for those mediums?
No. Unfortunately, in the wild west of music supervisors, most of them want the loudest master known to mankind. Mainly because producers want music supervisors listening on their laptops to have something jump out at them and be chosen.
It’s been said that monitor setup is the most important tool. What do you use?
ATC 150s, which is what we used at The Mastering Lab. Since my room is bigger than the one they had, I presumed I’d need the dual-woofer 350’s. When I gave [ATC’s] Ben Lilly the dimensions of my room, he laughed and told me I only needed the 150’s. My room dimensions were exactly what they were designed for.
What contributes to the truest sound?
It’s only obtained by the philosophy that Al [Schmitt] imparted to me when I first started: get it right the first time. Any notion of getting something right later takes you a step away from fidelity. The goal is to make what’s coming out of your console sound exactly like the master.
