Master by Mail?

[Massive Master]

Gee, this sure took off since this morning...

My whole point was simply that those clips are phony. That tells me something. If he (or the army of "Certified Mastering Engineers" that work there) can crank out good sounding stuff for $15, more power to 'em.

Once they start trying to B.S. people by blatantly "falsifying" their samples on the other hand...

And I've said it over and over - I'm all about doing what you can with what you have. Back when I split from JEM and was starting over from scratch, I made no bones about what I was using and dropped my rates to "ridiculously low" until I built up a base and could get back into "real" gear (for lack of a better term) again.

Now you've got sites putting up photos of gear that isn't theirs, photos of rooms that aren't theirs (I've found MY place more than a few times so far), ripping info from other sites (that too...), bizarre gear claims (Like a Fairchild 670 Tube Compressor - Yeah, I've got a UAD card too) and of course, samples that have been tampered with.

All this, hoping that "noobs" will be caught in the web. It's just irritating.

Then that letter - That was hillarious. I noticed how he didn't mention anything about the phony samples...

 

[nwsoundman]

I know a few very lousy lawyers and more than a few lousy accountants. Their self-governing model is flawed.


I can't think of any way to self-govern our industry.

 

[chessrock]

Again, you're talking about something that's mostly an artistic / creative profession, by nature.

No one has to go through an accreditation process to become a graphic designer. If their work looks like crap, then don't hire them to design your logo or CD cover.

If you can't discern the difference between good and bad work, then : a) You won't know whether it was a shit job anyway, and b) You should probably have someone else make the decision for you in the first place. Would you trust a blind man to design your album cover? Then don't trust a deaf person to select your mastering engineer.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Out of curiosity - and a desire for more hard facts - I ran some checks on this guy.

The website domain name is registered to "Signature Recording Studio" out of St. Clair Shores, Michigan (a northern suburb of Detroit.) I have so far been able to find no other web references to a studio by that name in Michigan.

There is no Yellow Page listing for Signature Recording Studio in any permutation of that name anywhere in Michigan.

Aerial photography of the address attributed to the studio shows a residential area with the address of the studio indeed being someone's house.

The phone number shown for the Administrative Contact for masterbymail.com does come back to the name of the administrative contact at the same address as the house, not to a company name. The 800 number on the masterbymail website comes back unlisted.

This guy (who is 54 years old, BTW, and calling us "old guys") is running his own project studio in his house just like most of us here do. He calls it Signature Recording Studios, but does not seem to advertise it as such in the Yellow Pages or on the Internet. But he does use it as his base for the "Master By Mail" website. You can make your own further judgements from there.

G.

 

[treymonfauntre]

oh yea, i replied once and it didn't work, when i typed it again i did it real quick without making any sense.

i was mostly replying to the e-mail the guy sent saying you guys were all old farts.

 

[HangDawg]

Out of curiosity - and a desire for more hard facts - I ran some checks on this guy.

The website domain name is registered to "Signature Recording Studio" out of St. Clair Shores, Michigan (a northern suburb of Detroit.) I have so far been able to find no other web references to a studio by that name in Michigan.

There is no Yellow Page listing for Signature Recording Studio in any permutation of that name anywhere in Michigan.

Aerial photography of the address attributed to the studio shows a residential area with the address of the studio indeed being someone's house.

The phone number shown for the Administrative Contact for masterbymail.com does come back to the name of the administrative contact at the same address as the house, not to a company name. The 800 number on the masterbymail website comes back unlisted.

This guy (who is 54 years old, BTW, and calling us "old guys") is running his own project studio in his house just like most of us here do. He calls it Signature Recording Studios, but does not seem to advertise it as such in the Yellow Pages or on the Internet. But he does use it as his base for the "Master By Mail" website. You can make your own further judgements from there.

G.

Nice work G!

 

[chessrock]

Yea. Pretty creepy. But nice work, nonetheless.

 

[easychair]

Yea. Pretty creepy. But nice work, nonetheless.

LOL.

54 is a good age to have a kid who is trying to run a mastering house out of your house. Or have a younger girlfriend who has a kid who is trying to run one.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

LOL.

54 is a good age to have a kid who is trying to run a mastering house out of your house. Or have a younger girlfriend who has a kid who is trying to run one.

Hahaha, I love that 2nd idea. Nice out-of-the-box thinking!

It is possible that it could be this guy's son, but that would only work if the son had the same first name as the owner of the phone number with no "Jr." on the end of the listing. I suppose it is possible that dad bought the kid a second landline. But then again, if the kid could afford a project studio and can pay for hosting a (admittedly pretty decent-looking) website, he can probably pay for his own phone.

G.

 

[LRosario]

Aerial photography of the address attributed to the studio shows a residential area with the address of the studio indeed being someone's house.
.

jesus christ glen...The CIA needs people like you!

 

[SonicAlbert]

Incidently - I still don't understand why it wouldn't work to have a group of professional engineers be the accrediting body.

Mastering by Mail believe they are professional engineers. It's your opinion against theirs.

See why it won't work?

 

[masteringhouse]

Out of curiosity - and a desire for more hard facts - I ran some checks on this guy.

The website domain name is registered to "Signature Recording Studio" out of St. Clair Shores, Michigan (a northern suburb of Detroit.) ...

F*cking "A" G!

Remind me later never to piss you off!

 

[leddy]

This guy (who is 54 years old, BTW, and calling us "old guys")

The 54 year old could be the guy's dad.

 

[CoolCat]

In those places you'll most likely get a pass through a TC Finalizer.
.

interesting thread, i think Sonic's right, makes logical sense.imo.

like someone else said, if thats the quality you want, go buy your own software...at least you might learn something,
that'd at least be worthy of your money.

i got ripped off back when i was stupid and younger.
$80, Rolling Stone Ad..Nashville Cassette Duplications!!! not.
Scumbag Studios...Sam the Weasel / Eng....

hell it might be the same dude?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

jesus christ glen...The CIA needs people like you!

Unfortunately I don't read or speak Arabic. Otherwise I'd know what the hell mshilarious' sig actually says!

And, Tom at MasteringHouse: Not to worry, babe. At the worst I'll send Moose and Rocco over to help you find your UAD1 for you.

Seriously, though, the "creepy" part, as Chess put it, is it it took me all of about 20 minutes to compile that information from free and public sources on the Internet. And I left stuff off the forum post like his name, address and home phone number.

Another 10 minutes and a couple of $15 charges on my credit card and I could have legally had his social security number, how much he has left to pay on his mortgage, his medical history and his FBI criminal record. But that's just tooooo creepy - and totally unnecessary for this thread.

G.

 

[7string]

Get screwed twice.

I already did that when the mail order bride deliverd my mail order mastering!!!!!!

Oh, well, that won't happen next time, that's for sure. I got a mail order transvestite bringing me a mail order bridge that I bought from New York!!!

 

[7string]

At least he would be getting more than I do after getting married

I didn't TRUELY get screwed until the divorce. A full PA system, a bunch of guitars, amps, CD collection from my radio years - all autographed, a Marshall Half-Stack and a whole bunch of other stuff that just "disappeared."

 

[wil]

Out of curiosity - and a desire for more hard facts - I ran some checks on this guy.

The website domain name is registered to "Signature Recording Studio" out of St. Clair Shores, Michigan (a northern suburb of Detroit.) I have so far been able to find no other web references to a studio by that name in Michigan.

There is no Yellow Page listing for Signature Recording Studio in any permutation of that name anywhere in Michigan.

Aerial photography of the address attributed to the studio shows a residential area with the address of the studio indeed being someone's house.

The phone number shown for the Administrative Contact for masterbymail.com does come back to the name of the administrative contact at the same address as the house, not to a company name. The 800 number on the masterbymail website comes back unlisted.

This guy (who is 54 years old, BTW, and calling us "old guys") is running his own project studio in his house just like most of us here do. He calls it Signature Recording Studios, but does not seem to advertise it as such in the Yellow Pages or on the Internet. But he does use it as his base for the "Master By Mail" website. You can make your own further judgements from there.

G.

Jeez, how the hell did you find all that out, please im curious.

 

[punkin]

On a tangent..........

...I'm still a strong advocate for the licensing of audio engineers. Why isn't this already happening? Accountants are self-governed by a chartering body, why can't we initiate something similar for AEs/MEs?

Technology is so accessible that any hack can buy (or steal) a whack of s/w and called themselves a studio or mastering house..... throw up a website and sucker-in those not knowledgable enough to discern the differences in quality!

I suppose it's no different than any other internet scam, but it seems to becoming more and more prevalent. There have been several cases of "mastering house" trickery that I've seen now just in the last few months.

Exactly what does it take to create a regulatory commission for a particular industry?

I agree Bear...or even if there was BBB of Mastering Houses. You know, kind of a guild or registry for authenticated or certified sound masters?

 

[7string]

You would think that if the guy was 'for real' he would have at least signed his name to that email along with a title instead of hiding under a 'team' signature. Hell, even Ted isn't afraid of that.