Bob Katz Interview – Part 1

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Bob Katz is a relentless propagator and an untiring educator of anything relating to high-quality audio. He has spent decades recording, mixing, and mastering high-fidelity music, in addition to raising the awareness of sound quality among audio creators and consumers via articles, books, workshops, and online forums. We had the chance to chat with Bob on various topics related to audio and audiophilia. This is Part 1 of the interview.

Simply introducing Bob Katz as a mastering engineer would be selling him short. Indeed, he is one of the most respected mastering engineers on the planet, with three Grammy Awards on his shelf. But perhaps more importantly, Bob Katz has made it a larger mission to propagate high-quality audio in general. Through countless talks and seminars, through all his articles on sound and sound equipment, through sometimes heated online debates, and not least through his brilliant book Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science — Bob Katz is spreading the audiophile gospel. And he never seems tired of talking about improving audio quality as a creator, engineer, and music listener.?

Bob Katz on Being an Audiophile

Bob, how do you view the relationship between those who create sound and those who listen to it? Pro audio engineers sometimes sound condescending when they talk about the hifi world. But, on the other hand, pro audio engineers can sometimes seem to not care all that much about having a perfect listening environment.

– I am still and continue to be an audiophile in the sense that I love audio. That’s what I am, and I’m proud of it. I love good sound, and I have a hard time listening to poorly recorded music. It has been that way since 1971 or 1972 when I started out as a recording engineer. I can’t get that part out of my head. I try my best to ignore bad sound when it’s good music, it’s just really hard! We could take the approach that there are so many good recordings out there and so much good new music that I can find a bit of both. Or rather, a lot of both and just ignore the parts I don’t like. I’m a very strong advocate for loudness normalization in streaming and for achieving dynamic recordings. My head is wired for dynamics! Most of my clients come to me for the dynamics that I can either produce, enhance or retain in their recordings. So as a result, I have a wide collection of great recordings.

Bob Katz on being an audiophile

– It’s very common in the professional world to look down at hifi audiophiles. I can’t blame those who look down on what I’d like to call voodoo because I also look down on voodoo! Many of my audiophile friends come to me and say, “Have you checked out this latest cable?” I try to respond as courteously and logically as I can: “I only have so many hours in the day. In terms of listening to new equipment, I try to pick the gear where there’s actually a chance it makes a difference”. Because unless they’re into the far side of voodoo, where they’re into the stratosphere, they understand that I can’t listen to their latest cable discovery.

Interestingly, professional engineers can often work in rooms and with monitors that aren’t particularly good-sounding.

– And do we then call them audiophiles? I know many engineers like that; many are my friends. When they come to my studio, they love what they hear, and maybe they just can’t afford it, but there are a lot of monitoring systems costing a lot less than mine that can sound excellent and better than whatever it is they’re using. I also think they can get quicker from A to Z if they have speaker systems or monitoring with higher resolution that can reveal more about what’s in the recordings that they’re making.

I find that when I go to my mix room to mix or to the mastering room to master that it takes me very little time to decide half a dB of EQ or whether I’m using too much or not enough compression — any number of things. I can get there quicker, which reduces listening fatigue. So there are a lot of things they could do. But money is an object, and their priorities are often to purchase recording gear rather than better monitoring. I think better monitoring, including a good room, should come first because you don’t need as much of all the other gear then. I think George Massenburg could make a great recording using two tin cans and a piece of string — as long as he had good monitoring. I’m joking, of course, but my point is that good monitoring is essential as it informs the various choices you make as a recording, mixing, or mastering engineer.

Bob Katz on the importance of proper studio monitoring

Bob Katz on Working With Different Musical Genres

It seems audiophile recordings are primarily of acoustic music, such as jazz or classical. Do you ever get to work on other genres?

– I try to open my mind to as many different kinds of music and as many styles of recording as possible. I made my earliest reputation as an audiophile recording engineer with minimalist miking, but today I do everything from progressive rock to occasional hip-hop to a little bit of metal, and still a lot of acoustic music. People come to me because they enjoy what I do. Some of my classical music clients have no idea I just finished an incredible hard rock recording the day before. I’m also trying really hard to open my ears.

I’m currently mixing and mastering an excellent Texas rock group, and in the first go-round my mixes were very conservative. But in the second revision for some of the songs I went full-tilt boogie and pushed the compression much harder. It’s not like the master you would get from some of the most aggressive mastering engineers but people would hear that and say “Bob Katz made that?” So I try to keep my ears open. So is that an audiophile recording? Well, it’s good distortion, not bad distortion! How about that?!?

Can you ever enjoy good music with bad recordings?

– I have a really hard time with that. That’s my neurosis, it doesn’t have to be your neurosis! Haha. I’m very sorry that there’s a lot of good music that has been recorded and mixed badly. But there is a such a world of great recordings AND good music that is left to be heard. I have such a collection now, such as my playlist on Qobuz. There’s even a metal band in my playlist that I consider to be an audiophile recording. So it’s possible to have your cake and eat it too. With that said, I was just playing an old Billie Holiday recording in my car the other day and I was loving it. Of course, a lot of the time my head will go “oh, if only they had recorded it differently”. It was almost all vocal and the band way, way in the background. But I still enjoyed it. I sort of regretted that it had been captured that way, but that’s the way it was. I try hard to enjoy the beauty of it. It’s something that I can hopefully grow with, but it’s hard. It’s hard for me when the sound is flawed.

Bob Katz on the Vinyl Format

Speaking of flawed recordings and formats … what’s your take on the vinyl resurrection that happened in the last decade or so?

– Ohhh, do I have a good story for you! In my view, one of the best cutting engineers working today is Eric Boulanger whose studio is called The Bakery. He is a disciple of Doug Sax who was an incredible mastering engineer and we miss him dearly. Now, not everybody can afford Eric. I don’t get to send all my vinyl-intended masters to Eric but when I do, it’s a pleasure. Well, the other day, I got proofs of Judith Owen’s new album Come On and Get It. These were lacquers, acetates. And I put the lacquer on my turntable and it was so quiet and so pure and so transparent that for many moments I thought I was listening to my 24-bit 96 kHz master that I had sent to Eric. It was the best vinyl that you may have ever heard.

Bob Katz on the relevance of vinyl

But I talked to Eric about his incredible cutting system and asked him, “If the very best that vinyl can do is to duplicate the original master, what’s the point of vinyl?” He had an answer to that. He said — “You know, vinyl customers are the ones that we seek. Because they pay attention to the artist’s music. They spend time in their living rooms, carefully put the record on, and listen from beginning to end. They don’t skip around like so many of us do when we listen to streaming”. And a light bulb went off in my head — that’s why we still have vinyl. For people who care and who do what I like to call slow listening. So there’s your answer.

Bob Katz’ Three Tips For High-end Hifi Enthusiasts

1. If leaping to conclusions was an Olympic event, audiophiles would get first, second, and third place! Our emotions affect how we listen. We can’t help it. If we spend a lot of money on a piece of gear it affects how we hear it, and if we spend very little money it affects how we hear it. So my first advice would be to try not to leap to conclusions.
2. Get yourself a voltmeter. If you’re going to compare this preamp to that preamp or this headphone amp to that headphone amp, make sure that the output levels of the two units exactly match within a tenth of a dB. Because if not, the louder of the two will probably sound better. In fact, I find that if you get even a tenth or two dB louder it gives the impression of having more depth and dimension. So whenever I read a review an audiophile has written where they don’t mention they matched the level, and they say “Wow, this new piece of gear has so much depth, and the sound stage is incredible” — I think maybe it’s just because it was louder. I don’t want to seem facetious or obnoxious about this. But it is absolutely 100% true and a known psychoacoustic fact.
3. You are not immune to psychoacoustics. Make sure you know about them. Especially about cognitive bias.

Bob Katz’s three tips for high-end hifi enthusiasts

Bob Katz’ Three Tips For Pro Audio Engineers

1. Recording, mixing, and mastering professionals are not immune to cognitive bias either. That includes me. At least once a month, maybe more often, I will work on some knobs, and then “oh my God” — the equalizer wasn’t engaged. It was in bypass. And I’m a little bit embarrassed by that. But I try to move forward and accept the fact that my mind was playing tricks.?
2. When mixing — emotions govern your mix. And they should. If it sounds good, it is good. Say you’re mixing a bass instrument, even if it’s louder than you’ve ever mixed a bass instrument before, but you like the way it grooves — that’s good. So do what sounds good.
3. Get yourselves as accurate a monitoring system as you can. That includes preamplifiers, monitor controllers, amplifiers … because the response curve of your inaccurate monitors will be reflected inversely in the recording you make!

Bob Katz’s three tips for pro audio engineers