Perspective
There’s a short zen story that I told my dad once…and he never seems to have forgotten it. It’s a parable about someone in a valley, to whom everything looks big. And someone on a mountain top, to whom everything looks small. In reality, there is no difference between what they see…just their perspective. A [...]
The Brand vs. the Dollar
I’m mulling over something in my brain, which I’ve been co-mulling with a good friend: what’s more important, the price of something or its “brand value”? To clarify, is it more important that a product/service is priced very competitively (to compete in the global economy of widgets) or that it has brand value? I will [...]
New Cans for ’08
I was piddlin’ around the Web today and found out that there’s a new headphone out there, co-collaboration of Monster (cable, not the employment service) and Dr. Dre. They’re being marked under the moniker Beats by Dre. They look intriguing, and they seem to be targeted at the Bose market: good sound, active noise canceling, [...]
Music Worth Hearing
People often ask me what I listen to. The short answer is “everything”. But the more detailed answer is that the stuff that really gets me excited is a rare combination of elements. Great music is important. Without it, there’s nothing really worth listening to. But it has to be performed well. Great performances of [...]
Sound Absurd? Smelling Is Believing.
I was walking past someone cutting grass today and got a whiff of that grass-gasoline fragrance that I inhaled copiously in my youth. It’s that mixture of organic and apocalyptic that creates something unexplainably appealing. Then it hit me…a truth so obvious I wondered how no one has yet acted upon it… Grassoline Surely, in [...]
At What Cost Profit?
One of the things that differentiates ZenMastering from most other mastering studios is that we don’t offer “grades” of mastering. A lot of people/studios these days will offer everything from “premium” service all the way down to “one-pass” mastering. In my opinion this is bascially saying, “we’ll do anything to to get your money…regardless of [...]
ZM Quarterly Report
ZenMastering upgrades infrastructure, lends a hand, and wins key mastering account Wednesday July 23, 5:00 pm PT POWAY — ZenMastering said its second-quarter mastering surpassed industry expectations. Sound quality remained the key focus, and customer satisfaction was high. The San Diego-based mastering facility upgraded its monitoring system to Lipinski L-707s, improving upon its already excellent [...]
Things I Hear and Things I Don’t
Things I often hear… “Can you make it as loud as [xyz]?” “Smash it.” “Is that as loud as it can get?” Things I don’t often hear… “Make it warmer sounding.” “Make it clearer.” “Make it sound fatter.”
Appetite for Destruction
Sometimes I can tell – almost immediately – if a client (or, potential client) is going to turn out to crash and burn. But, as a business owner offering a service, all I can do is be of assistance and try to facilitate their product to the best of my ability. Last week I got [...]
What’s Below the Floor and Above the Ceiling?
In the ongoing discussion/debate about why (or if) digital audio sounds different (worse, better…) than analog, one of the explanations that’s really made sense to me exists in an article by the late David Blackmer (of founder dbx and Earthworks) called The World Beyond 20kHz. In a nutshell, David explains that there’s a lot of [...]
keep looking »About This Blog
From Ohm to Om reflects the opinions of mastering engineer Paul Abbott, owner of San Diego's ZenMastering.
We welcome comments from readers...pro or con!
