Frank Filipetti is one of the most respected names in the music business. As a producer, mixer and engineer he has been at the forefront of digital music and production for decades – working with artists such as Elton John, KISS, Billy Joel and Carly Simon. He won a Grammy for Best Engineered Album for James Taylor’s landmark Hourglass, which also won that year’s Best Pop Album. Filipetti continues to work in music and film production and remains a major proponent of the surround sound experience for engineers and consumers alike.
PART II
You’ve been a major proponent of surround sound mixing and listening for music, not just movies. Do you see a future for it?
Unfortunately, not at the moment. Record companies have shown an amazing lack of interest, which is a shame because I think surround is the most exciting way to mix. There’s a remarkable increase in listener participation that simply isn’t there in stereo. A great surround record is truly an all-encompassing experience. It allows you to lose yourself in the sound. It changes the paradigm of the passive listener.
Music today has become a kind of background to one’s life. People no longer put on an album simply to listen. They still love music, but listening has become an activity that accompanies their lives whether it’s doing homework, answering emails, or driving. And because of this they lose an important emotional component of the music.
Surround sound encourages listening as an activity in and of itself. But that’s a problem in a multitasking society, given how the pace of life has quickened and how impatient we have become. Music for its own sake can be like meditation, a way to really focus on an experience that can’t be obtained any other way.
Surround sound provides an amazing set of tools to the mixer. It allows us to do things we were previously able to only hint at. With stereo we’re always trying to fool the listener into hearing three dimensions from two speakers. Good mixers can do that: they can place things in such a way that the illusion of depth is there. But there’s no illusion of depth with surround sound. It’s there by definition.
Surround sound contributes a new palate for our senses, just as going to see “Avatar” in 3D contributes a new dimension and sense of adventure to the film. You experience a heightened sense of realism in “Avatar” 3D you simply can’t get from watching it in 2D. That doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable in 2D. It just means there’s an added sense of wonder in the third dimension.
What do you think has kept surround sound recordings from taking off?
First, there was bad timing and confusing marketing from the hardware and software companies. Second, the music marketers — from Best Buy to record stores (which hardly exist anymore) are unschooled in the proper techniques of surround. Their setups just aren’t very good. So people are not hearing the full, immersive potential of surround sound.
One only hopes that with the interest in Blu-Ray, some high definition, surround sound music format will take hold. There’s also the possibility that as bandwidth gets higher, we will be able to deliver 5.1 music over the internet through online sources. A truly fine 5.1 system, especially one accompanied by Audyssey processing, provides an experience that stuns most people who hear it. The problem is getting people to hear it properly.
What about DVD-Audio and SACD?
Three things killed those surround formats.
First, the public was obviously tired of format wars.
Second, just when DVD-A was about to launch, a hacker in Norway broke the copy protection scheme, and the record companies wouldn’t release any media until a revised copy protection scheme was implemented, All the Region 1 DVD-A players for sale had no product to play. This was back when record companies still believed that copy protection was going to save their business! In their blindness they delayed the release a year and half, and those who had purchased the hardware were left high and dry. (I was one of them).
By the time they released product for DVD-A, SACD multi-channel became available as well, and it created an enormous confusion in the marketplace and, as they say, people stayed away in droves.
Third, and most important, was the complexity of these formats and systems. I am a professional in the business, but I found the complexity of setting up these systems very intimidating. You had a multi-channel receiver, a DVD player, five speakers and a subwoofer, along with all that cabling that looks so good in the living room. The record companies wouldn’t allow digital outs, again because they were worried about copyright issues, so the digital DVD-A player provided only analog outputs. But before converting to analog, the digital signal went through the bass management/room delay software of the DVD player, which was then converted to the analog outs. At the other end, the analog input of the digital receiver converted the signal back to digital. Now, as the digital receiver didn’t receive any metadata along with the audio (it was analog after all), the already bass managed digital signal was passed to the receiver’s own bass management/delay software! You had two systems that didn’t know what the other was doing because of the senseless (and degrading) analog conversions. Consequently, most systems that I heard were totally out of whack.
Given the record companies’ insistence on analog outs in DVD players, and the complexity of getting all your ducks in a row, it was highly unlikely anyone would get the optimal sound experience. Of course all of this could have been solved if they had just allowed digital outs on the DVD player!
You’ve recorded and mixed all sorts of artists, from Elton John to Billy Joel to KISS. What are some of your favorite experiences?
One of my favorite experiences was working on James Taylor’s Hourglass, which was recorded in a cottage on Martha’s Vineyard — it was the first “studio” album I recorded outside of a studio.
We traveled there with a Yamaha 02R and three Tascam DA88 digital recorders. With 3 units you could get 24 tracks, in 9 rack spaces, which was pretty amazing at the time. James hadn’t recorded for a few years, so the idea was to record the band rehearsing and see if there was anything we could use. What we got was so amazing it became the album.
It’s ironic: I was a studio owner and one of the reasons studios aren’t doing so well is because people are recording albums in their homes. Hourglass, may have hastened the demise of the recording studio and I’m at least partially to blame!
This year I returned to Martha’s Vineyard, this time to mix Carly Simon’s Never Been Gone in her guest apartment. The setting was amazing: her space overlooked the pool and her incredible property, and an ocean breeze wafted through the room. Thank you, thank you, Audyssey.
I mixed Barbra Streisand in New York while she was monitoring my mixes at her home in Malibu. That was a kick. The technology today is so amazing.
My most fascinating moment was recording the Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. That was priceless.
You seem to record out of the studio often, and that’s become increasingly popular. What do you think that’s done for the music business?
People tried working in the home even in the analog days, but that involved so many compromises, it wasn’t for the faint of heart. When digital came along, people started doing vocal and instrumental overdubs at home, but mixing was still an iffy proposition: the mixing environment demands sonic accuracy and that used to mean wall treatments, diffusers, traps and months of construction. Audyssey has changed all that. Almost anyone can now turn a room (like my living room) into a mixing room in twenty minutes!
The democratization of recording is reaching the point where the expertise needed to put together and specify a room is becoming less and less important. All you need now is a good set of ears, a good set of speakers, Audyssey and a computer. It’s amazing how this process has come together in the last ten years. Now for a modest investment, you can have sound and mix quality that a decade ago would have cost $1.5 million. New technologies have opened up a whole new generation of people and new ways of working. I just hope that the music will be better for it.
As always there’s a lot of chaff along with the wheat. As gun advocates like to say, “Guns don’t kill people. People do.” Well, technology doesn’t make the music bad…people do.
What music and sound impresses you these days?
I’m impressed by the sound in films. I think it gets better and better every year. Shawn Murphy, Dan Wallin, Alan Myerson — they’re just doing incredible work. In terms of music, my favorite album at the moment is the soundtrack to “500 Days of Summer.” What a wonderful collection of old and new tracks! I’m also listening to a new artist named Adriana. She’s Brazilian and her music is so infectious and gorgeous.
Carly’s new album is wonderful. It’s a reworking of some of her greatest hits in new and exciting ways. Produced by her son Ben, it almost feels like some of them were written today.
Lastly, a surround recording by my good friend George Massenburg of Canadian artist Dawn Langstroth. It’s pretty much as good as the art of recording gets.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently producing an album for a group of four soldiers recently back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are called 4Troops and they’re not only amazing people with amazing stories, but they’re terrific singers as well. After that I’ll be mixing a new Survivor album. I just finished working on the Deluxe Edition of Billy Joel’s The Piano Man, which will be a DVD with lots of extra goodies, coming out in the spring. All three projects will have been mixed here at my home studio (called the Living Room because that’s where it is: in my living room).
I’m also working on several projects involving Frank Zappa’s recordings. Gail Zappa and Joe Travers have given me the incredible experience of reworking some of Frank’s unbelievable catalog of recordings. This summer we’ve got a show with the L.A. Philharmonic featuring Frank’s The 200 Motels. That’s really going to be something. They’re also working on a stage version of Joe’s Garage.
Whatever I’m working on and wherever I go these days, you can be sure my Audyssey Sound Equalizer Pro will be there with me.
