An Interview with Sam Fischmann

2:58 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? I am Scoobert Doobert. Welcome back to Love Music More. I'm joined with a very special guest, Sam Fischmann. Welcome, Sam.

3:07 Sam Fischmann Hello.

3:07 Luke F. Walton How's it going?

3:09 Sam Fischmann It's going pretty good. I was saying just earlier, it's noon out over here, but I'm still waking up. It's like always a little bit of a struggle to get sunshine in.

3:17 Luke F. Walton Exactly. Soak it all in.

3:18 Sam Fischmann Yeah,

3:19 Luke F. Walton Well,

3:19 Sam Fischmann yeah.

3:19 Luke F. Walton I'm super excited to talk about mastering, talk about developing audio plugins and kind of your musical journey and how your story led you here. So let's just dive right in. For the people that don't produce audio.

3:34 Sam Fischmann Yeah.

3:35 Luke F. Walton what is mastering it's like kind of this spooky thing that it's like i have even people that mix sometimes don't even know what's going on they're like i finished the thing i sent it to the guy it comes back and it sounds good what's mastering you

3:46 Sam Fischmann I

3:46 Luke F. Walton know mean, in a that's nutshell

3:47 Sam Fischmann a really good question because like you see those albums for years, like remix and remaster.

3:51 Luke F. Walton yes

3:51 Sam Fischmann It's like, well, I guess I

3:52 Luke F. Walton exactly

3:52 Sam Fischmann get it.

3:52 Luke F. Walton right

3:53 Sam Fischmann When I'm describing to someone who's not like part of all these technical steps, I like to use an analogy. So for cooks, I like to say it's like getting.

4:01 Sam Fischmann and the salt level right you know all the creative decisions about how is this going to come together what's it going to taste like what are the textures what are the flavors you know all that stuff has been figured out by the creatives up to this point and you're not supposed to be totally leaning it another direction from there you just want to make sure that everything

4:19 Sam Fischmann pops and and you're you're making sure that everything shines the best way it can for the way it's supposed to be and if if you're more into cars to just think like you can detail a car as much as you want but until you put wax on it you know it's not ready to go up on a pedestal there's that extra shine that makes everything great but i would argue that these days it doesn't necessarily have to be separated from mixing as a separate thing and i think it's one of those things if you really made the best mix it's not good enough you know it's

4:46 Luke F. Walton Right.

4:46 Sam Fischmann kind of like it's kind of like okay well then if the master Mastering engineer, if they're necessary, then like, well. Couldn't there be a mastering mastering engineer?

4:53 Sam Fischmann I think there's a big conversation around demystifying mastering in order to kind of get rid of that mystique and say, yeah, there are things you need to know, but that could be part of the mixing process depending on how you're trying to do things, you know? Yeah.

5:05 Luke F. Walton And I like that. That's an important thing to look at it with that fresh lens. I was watching a video from a mastering engineer, old, old dude, like, you know, 80s.

5:13 Sam Fischmann Yeah,

5:14 Luke F. Walton And

5:14 Sam Fischmann yeah.

5:14 Luke F. Walton I feel

5:15 Sam Fischmann Right.

5:15 Luke F. Walton bad that I don't remember his name, but he was like talking about. but mastering what it really is is it's the art of putting audio onto a vinyl record you've

5:22 Sam Fischmann Yeah, yeah, I think I may have seen the same thing.

5:25 Luke F. Walton seen yeah

5:25 Sam Fischmann Yeah,

5:26 Luke F. Walton and

5:26 Sam Fischmann yeah, yeah.

5:26 Luke F. Walton and i found that really fascinating where it's like wow that is not at all how it's conceptualized now that is like a total different subset of skills and mastering has evolved obviously since then the even the word and the meaning of like what we're going for and then looking at a plug-in company like your own and a software company How are you rethinking that and trying to kind of open people's minds to saying,

5:49 Luke F. Walton hey, like, we've got new tools. Empower yourself.

5:51 Sam Fischmann Yeah, I think it's a really good question because it's like there's two aspects to the mastering thing, I think. One of them is the like, I need someone to give me a vibe check, give me a vibe check.

6:02 Luke F. Walton Right,

6:02 Sam Fischmann Like I

6:03 Luke F. Walton right.

6:03 Sam Fischmann did all this stuff, but I do want somebody to help just do a little bit of tweaking or whatever. I don't trust my own ear for this last whatever. And that I don't think you can ever separate from another person being involved. involved, right? Because that's what you're asking for is for another person to be involved.

6:16 Sam Fischmann And the other half of it is like this magic mystique, like you have to know some special technical whatever the heck. And that's the part that I think that technology is democratizing a bit. You don't need to know as many individual things about what you're doing to the audio to get it to do what it needs to do.

6:32 Sam Fischmann So for example, if you're just trying to increase loudness in the most transparent way possible, that's not a... particularly creative task that's a technical task and

6:42 Sam Fischmann Yes. it's there's a tool that can take care of the technical task for you you can focus instead on if there's any little creative slight differences that you want to make and those things I think are becoming

6:53 Sam Fischmann basically not necessary to trust someone else for anymore again vibe check yes technical check no so our philosophy is let's get rid of all the technical problems and make it more what do I want to hear do I want it more high end well I'll turn up the high knob do I want it louder well turn up the loud knob do I want it wider

7:09 Luke F. Walton Yes.

7:09 Sam Fischmann well turn up the wide knob and if we handle all the technical stuff then you can just be like well what do I want my track to sound like and focus your time instead on what do I want to hear out of my song and maybe comparing it to your reference references if you have some reference tracks it's a really great way to kind of know if you're edging your way towards it

7:26 Luke F. Walton yeah that's a great answer and that it speaks to something that i deal with a lot too where yes on certain songs on certain things i do i need that vibe check because it is so important this is like my life's work this is the stuff when i'm 80 i want to look back on and like listen to me like yes and there's other things that are like hey i'm trying to make a competitive mix and the artist is looking at a bunch of different mixing engineers

7:49 Luke F. Walton and we're all putting forth our work and then they're going to choose which one do they want to pursue those

7:53 Sam Fischmann Hmm

7:54 Luke F. Walton have always been the hard ones because then it makes me go okay do i spend the hundred dollars and hire the mastering engineer for this thing that i don't even know if i'm going to get paid on but i want to be competitive and i don't know the loudness stuff and that's where like master plan yeah it helped unlock that i have technical deficiencies in reaching competitive loudness just making stuff sound loud and still sound good

8:17 Luke F. Walton and uh that it made it a lot easier to hit those goals so i appreciate that cool

8:22 Sam Fischmann Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's what we made it for, right? Is

8:25 Luke F. Walton yeah

8:25 Sam Fischmann if you get what you want, you should be able to get it,

8:27 Luke F. Walton yeah

8:27 Sam Fischmann you know?

8:28 Luke F. Walton right right exactly exactly and i appreciate that too because i've talked a lot on this podcast about technology and ai and kind of like the competing goal set and how it feels like as an artist to be like oh my gosh there's people that are making

8:43 Luke F. Walton getting competitive music on ai that's like rainforest soundscapes or whatever and they're taking like royalties from other people and whatever they're still doing the work but anyway having the tool makers and the developers focusing more on how can i like solve the problems that are in your way from creating i really appreciate hearing that so yeah

9:01 Sam Fischmann Oh, that's great. Yeah. And that's what we're setting out to do. So if Master Plan is a success for anyone's workflow, it's because we will have succeeded at doing that. and that you

9:10 Luke F. Walton Cool.

9:10 Sam Fischmann know you can get in the flow with just like you would with an instrument you know

9:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah. So how did you get into kind of coding developing? What was the light bulb moment? It was like, I want to dig into that, pursue it.

9:21 Sam Fischmann Oh, man. Well, the light bulb moment for coding is separate from the light bulb moment for making points.

9:26 Luke F. Walton Okay.

9:26 Sam Fischmann And

9:26 Luke F. Walton Okay.

9:27 Sam Fischmann to be real, the light bulb moment for coding was, oh, God, how am I going to feed myself?

9:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

9:33 Sam Fischmann So like I went to school for music composition, you know, you're not going to come off of that and be like, boy, I know so much about Ludislowski, someone's going to. someone's going to pay me like no no never that's never going to happen like you've got to do a certain kind of work that i just wasn't i couldn't figure out how to do um

9:48 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

9:49 Sam Fischmann it can take a long time to figure out where your place is in in music because it's one of those disciplines where you sort of have got to be the best or it's hard to make a living and so i wasn't ready to figure that out at the point in my life when i all of a sudden had to support myself and for the musicians that do i mean like

10:05 Sam Fischmann like you're brave as hell like it's hard it's so hard and you're putting yourself out there and whatever

10:11 Luke F. Walton Some

10:11 Sam Fischmann um yeah

10:12 Luke F. Walton days are easier than others, you know?

10:13 Sam Fischmann exactly like i didn't have that in me in that way and i have friends that do and man like that's crazy so and i was like okay well i panicked i got a temp job you know like i was getting phones

10:27 Luke F. Walton Yes.

10:27 Sam Fischmann and stuff like that i was like well i don't want to do this either i happened to work at a spot that was full of very technical people an embedded systems company and embedded systems are like the little computers that run inside your car or

10:39 Luke F. Walton Okay, cool.

10:40 Sam Fischmann like on a medical device or things that are like really really really really low level level and robust and like they got to be good or people are going to get hurt so it

10:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

10:48 Sam Fischmann was a particular type of engineer that likes tackling those problems because so I was lucky enough to have a guy that I work next to at a certain point in this job who took me under his wing and taught me about programming because I wanted to know because I wanted to kind of like do more stuff and the light bulb went off just because talking with him made me realize I love this kind of thinking but it was a lot later in my life you know through working for several of these companies when I realized like I don't really want to be making these kinds of

11:11 Sam Fischmann of tools or products like they they're interesting on a purely intellectual level but then It doesn't really match what I love to do. It doesn't match like what makes me happy to be alive.

11:22 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

11:23 Sam Fischmann It tickles the brain. So I guess there's that part.

11:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:25 Sam Fischmann But like, I don't get the joy from coding that I do from like taking a bite of food that I love or listening to a piece of music that transports me back or,

11:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:33 Sam Fischmann you know, watching my dog make some goofy ass face. Like these, those are the things that I, you know, and so I think when the pandemic hit was when the second light bulb went off. I was like, all right, I'm done. I'm done. No more of that.

11:44 Sam Fischmann that uh and i'm going to take these two things i'm going to marry them together and i'm never looking back from that that's where i want to be uh and because i can like make tools that i would want to use and share them with other people it's great Yeah.

11:56 Luke F. Walton And that's the spirit that ends up being the lifeblood of artists and engineers and people like myself to help us keep going when you're taking a lump that day, but then you find a cool new tool, it inspires a new thing. It's like, okay, I can run the next leg of the race. That passion that you end up giving ends up giving to people like myself, so I really do appreciate it.

12:16 Sam Fischmann Yeah, for sure. And I had some stints when I was doing some production work and stuff in LA not too long ago, but I just you know I just felt like the way that I could fit in the best to give the most be part of the most was to make the tools rather

12:28 Luke F. Walton Yes.

12:29 Sam Fischmann than the actual music which I still enjoy making on my own but like that There's nothing like feeling like you find your place. I just yeah, Yeah. it's

12:36 Luke F. Walton Yes,

12:36 Sam Fischmann a thing.

12:37 Luke F. Walton it

12:37 Sam Fischmann Yeah.

12:37 Luke F. Walton is a thing. It is a thing. And it's crazy the scale that you can end up affecting the industry by making something like Masterplan and some of the other stuff that you have in development. I'd love to talk nitty gritty.

12:48 Sam Fischmann Okay.

12:49 Luke F. Walton Like,

12:49 Sam Fischmann Yeah, you

12:49 Luke F. Walton so because you were working on these smaller systems, I'm assuming that ends up training you really well for audio because I did a little bit of Juice Framework C++ stuff. rough

13:00 Sam Fischmann Yep,

13:00 Luke F. Walton um

13:00 Sam Fischmann yep. Bread and

13:00 Luke F. Walton yeah

13:01 Sam Fischmann butter for me, yeah.

13:01 Luke F. Walton for the people that maybe have like a little bit of programming awareness maybe they did like a little python or or on their myspace profile they did a little html you know like like that kind of level what kind of languages and goals do you have when you're designing something for audio that has to be like really low latency you know fast yeah

13:19 Sam Fischmann What audio developers work with the most in terms of what's hard for us, think about your sample rate, right? Your sample rate at the very lowest that you're going to work with. with probably is 44,100 samples per second, right? Multiplied by two because you have two channels. Multiplied by however many tracks you have in your sequencer, right?

13:37 Sam Fischmann So all the math that all of this stuff has to go through in order to make the sound the way that you want it to make has to process that many samples per second. And as you stack up the math, that becomes a lot.

13:49 Luke F. Walton And for people that don't know samples, it's kind of like frame rate, kind of like a frame rate on a video or something, if that helps.

13:56 Sam Fischmann Exactly. It's like a perfect analogy. When I say sample, I just mean a number, really.

14:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah, cool.

14:00 Sam Fischmann Yeah,

14:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right.

14:01 Sam Fischmann we got to get like 88,200 numbers. through a bunch of math.

14:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

14:07 Sam Fischmann in one second and that goes through all of your plugins per channel per track right so we're really concerned with efficiency on a level that most computer programmers don't have to think about if i'm making a website i don't have anything that's happening that fast but it's like even if i did have that amount of data there's there's not a big problem if it like you have to wait a second for it to finish right

14:31 Luke F. Walton Right.

14:31 Sam Fischmann all load a web page and it's like oh the font just changed suddenly or a graphic popped up or it takes a little bit of time And in audio, if that happens, you're going to blow out someone's speakers or hurt their ears or

14:41 Luke F. Walton Yep.

14:41 Sam Fischmann ruin the bounce and then, you know, a bunch of really annoying stuff. And so we have to break up the programming into two different parallel things happening at the same time, at least two, but I'm simplifying the problem. And the programmers like us, we think of one of them as the audio thread and the other one as sort of like the message thread or the GUI thread or all the stuff that's not.

15:03 Sam Fischmann at doing the audio and the reason that we do this is we have to make sure that everything that's in one of these halves has to be uninterruptedly fast so anything that you might be able to do as a programmer that kind of you take for granted so if you're doing scripting or whatever like for instance saying hey i need to i need a little bit of memory because i'm going to put something in memory we can't even ask for memory in this thread because

15:29 Sam Fischmann what happens is we have to ask Windows or macOS, hey, do you have a little bit of memory for me? And it says, hold on a sec, let me get back to you. But if I'm streaming 88,200 samples a second, do I have a sec to wait? No, I do not. No, I do not. And we don't know how long that might take. So that's one of the many things, and there are a lot of them, that we can't do when we're processing the audio.

15:50 Sam Fischmann So we have to separate these things out into two different areas and then pay very close attention to what we do when we're processing our audio.

15:58 Sam Fischmann audio because that's what causes clicks pops crashes all these things that you hate when you're using the plugins we've tried so hard to make sure that they run right and that causes one more problem which is that these two different lanes have to talk to one another right when you're on the interface for your plugin and

16:14 Sam Fischmann Yeah you're turning a knob you're just thinking like I turn the knob it changes the sound in some way just like if I were to bend a guitar string or something but what's going on in the computer

16:23 Sam Fischmann like I have to think about is okay they're turning a knob but that knob is part of the thing that's drawing to the screen and that thing is going to do stuff that's talking to the operating system and so that's going to be on this message thread or this interface thread or this when I say thread I really just mean kind of like a timeline of execution think of it as a track in your sequencer right and it's doing stuff separately from this other track that's doing the actual audio processing and

16:49 Sam Fischmann And if they have to talk to one another, if they're sharing some space where they have messages that they're talking to one another, if they try to like write information to the same place at the same time.

16:59 Sam Fischmann that's what causes your crash window to come up so every time we have these communications between the two of them we can shoot ourselves in the foot as programmers and then you on the other hand as a user of the software would be like oh my plug it's crashing what did you do we're constantly fighting with making this audio thing really really really fast and really really really not doing anything that might

17:21 Sam Fischmann pause and

17:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:23 Sam Fischmann separating that all out and then developing really clean and clear lines of communication between the two tracks so that they don't step on each other's feet when they have to talk to one another for instance if scoobert and i said a word at the same time and zoom crashed it would be terrible to try to record this session you know and that's kind of that's kind of the deal that make sense i'm trying to like

17:42 Luke F. Walton No, it does. I really appreciate the granularity, but using the... You know, simple terms, I think that

17:49 Sam Fischmann Oh,

17:49 Luke F. Walton that's really helpful

17:50 Sam Fischmann yeah.

17:50 Luke F. Walton to kind of digest it all. I've got some big news, everybody. My vinyl record is out. We didn't make a ton of these, so these guys are going to sell out and I'd love for you to get your hands on one of them because they're so dope. They're so dope and it comes with a whole bunch of like liner notes and pictures and special stuff, the things that really went into making this record.

18:11 Luke F. Walton And I want you to get your hands on it. So go to scoobertdoobert.pizza or check out my Instagram for a link or click the link in the show notes or the bio or wherever you're watching this to pick up your copy. You know, they're going to sell out. We really did not make very many of these and I want you to have it. It's like a collector's item. So. Thank you.

18:31 Luke F. Walton Thank you for supporting my music, and I can't wait for you to hear it actually on physical vinyl. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Before this call, I was reflecting on my primarily Pro Tools user, my

18:43 Sam Fischmann Yeah.

18:43 Luke F. Walton journey with Pro Tools where it has just been so many crashes, so much issue over time. And it's actually cleaned up quite a bit. It's a much better program now than it was before. But recently I did have a crash and I remember being cursing Pro Tools like, why do I use a stupid thing? But I reflected for a second what I asked it to do. I was running a full mix where, you know.

19:04 Luke F. Walton easily 60 plus plugins all going on with automation and I selected a whole bunch of individual clips so not like a full continuous rendered bounce audio file it's all these little things and I tried to copy it all down to like a different batch of tracks while it's playing

19:23 Sam Fischmann Okay.

19:24 Luke F. Walton and it's just like died and it's like this stupid program and then i took a second i was like no what i just asked it to do is absolutely absurd and so you know it should have worked it should have worked it should have worked it should you

19:37 Sam Fischmann If they let you do it, it should work.

19:40 Luke F. Walton know i agree i agree exactly yeah

19:42 Sam Fischmann But yes,

19:43 Luke F. Walton that yes

19:43 Sam Fischmann when you stretch something to its limits, you're more likely to uncover just the one mistake that someone like me just. it just didn't yeah

19:52 Luke F. Walton Totally.

19:52 Sam Fischmann like we're

19:53 Luke F. Walton And

19:53 Sam Fischmann none

19:53 Luke F. Walton that's

19:53 Sam Fischmann of us

19:54 Luke F. Walton what I are do.

19:54 Sam Fischmann yeah

19:54 Luke F. Walton That's my theory of production is pushing it to those unforeseen boundaries. Surely no one would do this.

20:02 Sam Fischmann yeah but it gets it's crazy because we do a lot but it gets even crazier you know I'm lucky that I don't have to deal with what those engineers were doing in the job I had they did what was called real-time programming now when we talk about having to be really fast inside of processing your audio

20:18 Sam Fischmann you know some audio devs use the word real time it's not really you if an embedded guy heard it they would they would have a whole set of things in their head

20:25 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

20:25 Sam Fischmann they'd be like no no no it's not not technically because when you think about for instance the analog brake system in your car it's not about necessarily processing all those samples a second but it's about when you hit that brake and it needs to do the thing literally there can be no reason for any like like everything has to be deterministic we have to know

20:46 Sam Fischmann that that break's going to go down and so there's a whole other layer you know whenever with technology everything can just get bigger and bigger and crazier and crazier so i have tremendous respect for so many people across the spectrum of engineering and like anyway just a little side note for

20:59 Luke F. Walton that's

20:59 Sam Fischmann this super

20:59 Luke F. Walton cool it's

21:00 Sam Fischmann nerds out there yeah

21:01 Luke F. Walton a really interesting thing of just kind of thinking about like yeah where on this spectrum of like loading time it's like gta5 everyone every time i want to play it i gotta wait like 15 minutes for the damn thing to look audio just like you're saying it it has to give like the illusion of real of real time that

21:15 Sam Fischmann Right, right.

21:16 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah yeah

21:17 Sam Fischmann Yeah. And then there's the actual like, yeah, Mars Rover. You don't

21:23 Luke F. Walton right exactly your airplane yeah yeah

21:26 Sam Fischmann want that to miss a beat.

21:27 Luke F. Walton yes totally really fascinating and really curious about uh if somebody's listening to this which i'm sure people will be that'll be like i'm a musician i too would like to make money um how do you learn this stuff

21:44 Sam Fischmann Okay.

21:44 Luke F. Walton I'm not saying it's going to be easy.

21:48 Sam Fischmann I'm just saying it's not about easy or not easy. It's about, it's about, and we learned this, I think from a really, I'm using the word learn already, but we all learn in different ways. I can tell you what I do or what I, what worked best for me. I need to have a goal or a project and then I'm like. Okay, now I have something I can chew on and break it up into pieces.

22:06 Sam Fischmann And then with each piece, I can try to figure it out, right? And I think to a certain degree, that's always true. That'll always help you. But you also need to start with good resources. And there are a couple of really good communities online. And the one that I would most recommend for people that are just trying to start out is it's called the Audio Programmer. It's a discord.

22:24 Sam Fischmann They do have books and services they sell and stuff, but just jumping on the discord and joining the community is free.

22:28 Sam Fischmann it's a supportive place that's well moderated in terms of like no one's going to harass you there or make fun of you for asking a question that's new because like the majority of people are showing up there in order to do exactly what you're talking about they're musicians or engineers or mixers or whoever that is like this seems fascinating i want to do it and the enthusiasm alone is enough start small i want to make something that puts a delay on a voice or something like that you know something really small or i just want to make a low pass filter

22:55 Sam Fischmann filter

22:55 Luke F. Walton Even

22:55 Sam Fischmann even that thing that that seems like it's already ready only one thing your job starts to become how do I break that up into lots of little pieces because there's so complicated all this stuff and we're trying every year to make it easier and easier but humans have this propensity to make things that are complex you know we always end up at some kind of Tower of Babel so by breaking it up into little pieces and talking with other people that are trying to do the same thing that help you understand what those pieces are

23:21 Sam Fischmann For instance, for me to just get to the point where I understood the thing about those two lanes, this is for the interface and the messaging and this is for the audio and like how do I reason about them, that took me months to really kind of like feel comfortable with it as a thought, right?

23:38 Sam Fischmann I think finding a community is a good thing because you have people to ask questions to where you don't feel afraid and you feel like you have that support having a goal that you want to reach that's modest because it's very easy to think of a goal that's like really crazy like I want to make a multi effects plug-in it's like well yeah now you got a lot of effects to learn and DSP to understand and all this other stuff and you're not even getting a chance to do that until you learn some really annoying language stuff that just kind of got to get it out of the way right because

24:08 Sam Fischmann we like i don't speak for everybody some people love the language language stuff but i think if you want to get into this from the musicians standpoint i think the majority of us start having fun when we feel more like we're plugging a cable from one thing into another thing to hear what it sounds like going through those things and and the challenge is to get your brain to accept that you no longer get to just plug the cable in you got to do literally

24:34 Sam Fischmann everything from

24:35 Luke F. Walton Everything.

24:36 Sam Fischmann in between right and then you kind of still around and find your way that was a pretty abstract answer but a basic answer is just start with a modest goal that would still be interesting to you

24:45 Sam Fischmann join a community where you get support break it up into little pieces that don't feel overwhelming and try to understand each step one at a time that will end you up in a better place than just going at it from a book or just going at it by like asking chat gpt because it won't sink in and you won't be able to reuse your information maybe as much but i don't mean to disparage book learners i have met some people who just read a book have a thought then did this like pace around for two days and then they just

25:13 Sam Fischmann just barf it out and it works i'm not that kind of person i need to get dirty with it and Mm like try

25:18 Luke F. Walton hmm.

25:18 Sam Fischmann stuff so

25:19 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

25:19 Sam Fischmann could be that i just don't understand you and i mean no offense i'm just saying what works for me and some of the people that i've helped teach yeah

25:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah, that's great. And I like the perspective, too, because I think it's a perspective of, yeah, a musician, a creator of,

25:33 Sam Fischmann Yeah,

25:33 Luke F. Walton yeah, why are you getting into this? It is like, yeah, to have some sort of fundamental change on the output, you know, you want to make your mark.

25:46 Sam Fischmann yeah

25:46 Luke F. Walton I'm really curious, too. This is a question. It's OK if you don't exactly have an answer for this because this isn't 100% what you do. But like. analog modeling like what universal audio does where

25:59 Sam Fischmann Yeah, yeah.

26:00 Luke F. Walton they spend all this money they have this huge big team and i'm assuming my basic understanding of it is you take a bit of classic gear you run like a sine wave or something basic through it see what changes on the other end and then you can kind of like do the math to be able to reapply those changes like ir modeling kind of is that the basic concept like how are they doing this where like they have like a

26:22 Luke F. Walton a teletronix la2a and now it's in my computer and i it sounds pretty much the same like

26:28 Sam Fischmann Oh,

26:28 Luke F. Walton How do they pull that off?

26:29 Sam Fischmann there's

26:29 Luke F. Walton You know?

26:30 Sam Fischmann a lot of different techniques you can use to do

26:32 Luke F. Walton Okay,

26:32 Sam Fischmann that.

26:33 Luke F. Walton cool.

26:33 Sam Fischmann Yeah.

26:33 Luke F. Walton I didn't know that.

26:34 Sam Fischmann The most recent one is AI. And it's one of those things I don't, I'm not like a huge proponent of AI and like all of everything. But I do think it's one of the things that AI is well suited towards because you're kind of like there's some magical process that happens in this box. Could you figure it out for me is sort of what its thing is. Right.

26:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right.

26:53 Sam Fischmann It's really raw. math at the end of the day because well by the time it's in a computer it is it's it's raw electronics before but you know what i mean but like um we use math to understand how electronics work we use math to design electrical circuits right so there's a relationship there classically back in the day you might approach this from the perspective of i know that this circuit does certain things i know some digital signal

27:20 Sam Fischmann processing DSP code that does those similar things. I'm going to put those things in the same order and then just try to tweak all the little parameters on the digital signal processing until it sounds more or less like the original thing.

27:33 Sam Fischmann And then people started to get more sophisticated and they're like, okay, well, like I said earlier, we already can use math to model circuits.

27:40 Sam Fischmann Like if you're going to be an electrical engineer and you're going to build a circuit to do a certain thing, the way that you predict how it will behave and what its tolerances are and all that kind of stuff, how to get the cheapest part in there is by running analysis on the ideas of if I put these parts with these properties in them, what is going to happen to electricity? And so some smart guys were like.

28:00 Sam Fischmann Oh, wait a minute. Hmm. We can design math that is made to run in a audio rate, fake real time process that is good at doing these circuit approximations. And the game becomes different. Now the game becomes, let's make a mathematical model that fully describes the electronics in the piece of gear that I'm trying to emulate. As much as possible, right? Obviously, you have to make it run fast enough so we have different shortcuts.

28:27 Sam Fischmann And then this is what we call the more recent, like, let's say... 2010s, like,

28:33 Luke F. Walton Okay.

28:34 Sam Fischmann you know, 2000 to 2015, whatever analog modeling type stuff. We like, we are literally doing an emulation of an electric circuit, and we're just doing what the electronics would do if the electricity was passing through it. And we're going to get by doing algebraic kind of solving of these equations that we put together.

29:04 Sam Fischmann of electricity and da-da-da-da-da and

29:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

29:05 Sam Fischmann then you're kind of building a digital understanding of an analog electronic circuit there's all sorts of math that goes into that because electricity is continuous right you don't have little breaks in time right when we're dealing with signals we have what's called continuous versus discrete a continuous signal is like when you draw with a pencil discrete would be like you poke dots right and so when we're doing that kind of math we have to figure out like where would the value be if it's in between the

29:32 Sam Fischmann mean these two and so you have different approximation functions that do this and there's all sorts of math that's involved in that kind of stuff and there's multiple ways to do this modeling different philosophies of the approximations different ways of like nodal analysis versus i don't even know what they're called because i'm not an analog guy

29:47 Luke F. Walton So how

29:47 Sam Fischmann there's

29:48 Luke F. Walton is this knowledge kind of being generated and then how are the

29:51 Sam Fischmann a relationship

29:51 Luke F. Walton musicians?

29:51 Sam Fischmann yeah yeah there was this there's this like one of the most famous circuits i know that's like i don't remember how to pronounce this guy's name but i think he wrote the paper when he was working for native instruments events about zero delay.

30:01 Sam Fischmann I forgot what he was calling the filters because I don't have the paper in front of me, but we know them as state variable filters in the industry now, which is a big deal because you can modulate them in really clean ways and they're just very stable. They're great.

30:13 Sam Fischmann And he was explaining starting from very early scratch, like what if I just want to model a simple low pass filter with as few electrical components as possible? Like I'll find the circuit board that has the fewest number of things and I'll say, how does my mathematical theory map onto that and then he builds more and he builds more and he builds more until he has this book I

30:33 Luke F. Walton That's a sick.

30:34 Sam Fischmann feel so bad that I don't know his name I'll have to pull it up but I think he was working for Native Instruments at the time clearly an academic I think that that kind of opens a floodgates and then more and more stuff comes out and there's some sort of balance between the academy and private industry that also comes out in papers because the academy people that are students or grad students will do lots of research they'll publish papers things will come out in the DFX conference or AES or any number of

30:56 Sam Fischmann a number of things because you know as researchers want to get their name out there it's like i'm trying to find out how to do something we couldn't do before you know this is really interesting

31:03 Luke F. Walton One of them's audio engineering society,

31:05 Sam Fischmann yeah

31:05 Luke F. Walton which I'm familiar with. I've gone to that twice in New York City. audio What's the other one? DFX, is it called? I'm not familiar with.

31:11 Sam Fischmann audio effects conference um

31:14 Luke F. Walton Okay,

31:14 Sam Fischmann and

31:14 Luke F. Walton cool.

31:14 Sam Fischmann there's yeah and then and that's just another really great place where people get together i actually haven't been to either of these but boy have i read a lot of papers

31:22 Sam Fischmann because those papers become available and then if I'm a guy working on some kind of plug-in I just have some idea and there's some part of the process that's like this is subpar it's not working the way that I want I'm going to start digging through these papers and see like is there any new research that might tackle this thing and sometimes the whole problem that they solve might not be what you're trying to do but there might be one or two steps in the paper that's like oh I could use that

31:48 Luke F. Walton Mm.

31:48 Sam Fischmann um and

31:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah.

31:49 Sam Fischmann there's this dance between the two that happens because i feel like researchers are in it for the research they want to know and they're so curious about what the world has to offer and what they can discover in just that and then businesses and like what i call private industry which sounds really uh it sounds it sounds like you know you're in high school like are they robber barons or captains of industry you know private industry they want they want to be like okay well

32:14 Sam Fischmann Well, we need to make money doing something and we want Mm it to -hmm. be as good as it can be because we want to make people happy so they want to buy this thing. What are the applications for these technologies? So everyone's kind of on the lookout and it takes both to come up with something that ends up being super cool. But again, it's not always that way. Auto-tune I think wasn't a academic pursuit.

32:33 Sam Fischmann I think it was just an engineer who decided what it was. I can't remember the story, but like it doesn't always happen that way. It's a big mix. The world is everything. thing

32:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah, but it's so fascinating, like, and of course it would take the academy, the people that are really in it for understanding, like, I want to take nature and apply it to mathematics for something like LA2A, like the EMI console for Abbey Road, you know, like, I want it to sound like I'm singing into this different microphone,

33:00 Luke F. Walton like I've got this Universal Audio Sphere microphone, you know, it's like, that's crazy math. And of course that requires like scientists because is i'm trying to replicate something that exists in the analog physical world from like the 1950s or like a bit of gear from like the soviet union like in the early bit of the cold war it's like put that on my computer please yeah

33:22 Sam Fischmann Yeah, yeah, exactly. I want to carry that around in my pocket.

33:25 Luke F. Walton totally

33:27 Sam Fischmann no it does and and like i don't know it's just i'm grateful that we've managed this like as people to put together this kind of situation is it's it's wild the amount of information that we have making

33:37 Luke F. Walton totally yeah

33:38 Sam Fischmann sense of it though is another thing it's hard

33:39 Luke F. Walton no it's true that's true but that's where the that's the relationship right is like the academics are like okay i figured out how to do this thing and take this thing from the natural world or the analog world and apply it mathematically it's like what do we do with this i don't know you take it and you start developing

33:55 Luke F. Walton developing working on something you put it out in the marketplace and the marketplaces of people that are working on music like me that's like mixing and i go okay i really like this i don't like that as much and then maybe we meet up at a conference like an aes or nam show or whatever and i go hey like love this plug-in but what if it solved

34:10 Sam Fischmann Yep.

34:10 Luke F. Walton this problem too or you know yeah

34:14 Sam Fischmann Yeah, that's. It's great like

34:17 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

34:17 Sam Fischmann one

34:18 Luke F. Walton yeah.

34:18 Sam Fischmann person focusing on on just the minutiae of every little thing and then the other person is kind of like the bridge to the users of the tools and Then without those communication lines, we wouldn't have this great Ecosystem of just this stuff, you know, it's cool

34:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah. I'd love to talk on that topic about master plan and the decisions that were made to like, say, I want to put these parameters, this metering.

34:42 Luke F. Walton right these knobs how did you go about that because there's a lot going on but also not a lot going on it's a really nice beautiful blend of what i'm looking for it's like okay what are these what are these lefts like how loud am i getting enter sample like how loud am i getting overall what was the decision making what was the research like how did you like iterate on this i think this is version 1.5 is that right yeah yeah

35:03 Sam Fischmann yeah yeah and the basic shape of it stayed the same so the philosophy behind it was just

35:08 Sam Fischmann only show people what they really need to be doing because one of the major problems i think that can paralyze people in the mastering thing and it's very much related to this this feeling of like oh it's a it's a secret magical art is is that you start doing too much because you're like oh i could do all these things well i better do that because i need to make that the best and that the best and that the best and by the time you're done

35:32 Sam Fischmann maybe maybe a little bit too much plastic is in there and

35:34 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

35:34 Sam Fischmann so like if you can simplify and make things just only what you need like right up front you can sort of help people rein that that in you can still always do too much but um that was kind of the philosophy behind it okay how do we have what we have that's from Stan's mastering chain so when Stan was working on mastering type projects and working with a lot of engineers and he was back in Larrabee back in part of its heyday and all this stuff

35:59 Sam Fischmann You start to develop a workflow. Everyone has a workflow for the types of things they do over and over again because you learn that some things you have to do every single time and you want to make those things as ergonomic and easy as possible and then you want to have the details for later when you're like, okay, we got the basic shape. Now we're going to do our little fine sanding here.

36:18 Sam Fischmann And so everything was geared towards that and he just took that process and he's like, here are the controls I need to change right away and here are the things that are sort of optional.

36:26 Sam Fischmann optional we'll make the optional thing small with buttons to enable them we'll make the non-optional things big and it'll just sort of draw you to the most important things like get the loudness level right get the width right do a little tone shaping and you could be done for a lot of tracks and then at that point if there's something that starts to stand out you can now go down into like a little detail layer so we went through some iterations of it but we kind of knew pretty much up front with this one

36:52 Sam Fischmann what we wanted to do and so I just spent a lot of time rearranging things on the screen until it felt like that was sort of the natural way you might approach this but still we had people that that opened the plug-in up and they were like

37:05 Sam Fischmann who is this for because they saw it as something not complicated enough for an expert and i'm putting that in air quotes because if you know what your taste is i'm that's that's expert enough and

37:16 Luke F. Walton Mm

37:17 Sam Fischmann uh

37:17 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

37:17 Sam Fischmann and

37:17 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah.

37:18 Sam Fischmann and not and too complicated for a beginner i think that if you make those knobs do what they say they do it's not too complicated for a beginner just don't make too many knobs because if you like a beginner and as much as someone who's new to audio software They can still turn a knob and hear what it does. And I think that at the end of the day, that's what we're doing. We're turning knobs and hearing what it does.

37:39 Sam Fischmann And if your job becomes some sort of... otherworldly thing like where you stop listening no like

37:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

37:48 Sam Fischmann your

37:48 Luke F. Walton right.

37:48 Sam Fischmann chicken knobs and hearing what it does you taste your food as you cook it that's how you know that you're like you're moving in a direction you want as far as the metering we almost we didn't have any meters at all except for the last meters on the first one and i stand by that decision actually i know people want meters and it makes them feel more comfortable about what they're doing but honestly like if you can't hear a problem

38:08 Sam Fischmann The meter is not going to tell you if once you hear a problem, a meter might help you find the place where that problem is. But if you hear no problems.

38:16 Sam Fischmann mirrors might not be the greatest thing to be looking at all the time and I'm seeing as we get these more and more powerful computers and more technology like the metering is getting more complicated and visually busy I don't necessarily think that's serving music whatsoever it might be for some people maybe it's inspiring but it's not going to help you make something great all the time

38:36 Luke F. Walton sometimes it'll lie to you where like especially like imaging like width width is so perceptual that like the computer will be like it's so wide i'm like Like it doesn't sounds more narrow now even though there's all these fancy colors out by the side of my head, you know

38:51 Sam Fischmann Right. If you're not listening, it's. Yeah, it's hard. And again, I love to cook, so I'm going to keep going back to cooking analogies.

38:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah

38:58 Sam Fischmann But it's like the problem with following recipes is that invariably something about your ingredients is different than whoever wrote it. Not only that, but they wrote the recipe to be robust, right? So whatever you have, you could always make it a little better when you taste it because you know, oh, I need a little more salt because of.

39:14 Sam Fischmann what I have or I need to add a little sugar because the fruit wasn't as ripe as it could have been or my stove isn't as hot so I need to cook it for longer like and these are things that you develop as a sense simply by doing and tasting and they can't be replaced by following instructions just like they can't be replaced by some meter

39:32 Sam Fischmann um however there are times when it's necessary such as you can't stick your finger into a piece of cooking meat and tell what a temperature is you probably want a thermometer for that so like you know i'm not trying to like disparage at all i'm just saying be careful when you stop listening be careful when you stop tasting because that's when you're going to run into trouble

39:51 Luke F. Walton interrupt this very important broadcast but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast what i'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars share it with your friends this is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow so if you want to do this you go into the podcast screen right you click on the dot dot dot on spotify under there it says rate show and you go and you click it five stars if you could do that for me that's the best way for the algorithms all this stuff to share it out with the world

40:18 Luke F. Walton world i know that it's a lot to ask but if you could please please please just please just hit those three dots and a five star it'd really help us out and helps us you know get the get the word out and spread the love of music so thank you if you're listening on youtube you know what to do like subscribe all that good stuff thank you so much and here's the rest of the episode it does and it's good advice too especially in this weird world of dsps and luff

40:41 Luke F. Walton requirements and minimums and maximums more people i talk about that i really trust about that basically just tell me don't care about it just make the song sound good

40:50 Sam Fischmann that's exactly right they're right and in fact a louder song LUFS level is going to be more robust and future-proof no matter what anyone tells you that's the truth if it sounds bad when you push the LUFS high well then don't do it like you know but if it doesn't sound bad if it sounds the way you want when you push the LUFS high Hi.

41:07 Sam Fischmann That is actually going to make your track more robust in more listening situations and in more streaming formats as people keep changing their mind about what loss level they want because the worst possible scenario is that someone, well,

41:21 Sam Fischmann either it's so quiet that it's not competing anymore because the platforms raise it back up or the platforms decide to push your track up, in which case now they've got to put a limiter on it because your peaks are now overs. So it's always good. If you can get your track loud and it sounds right, to keep it loud. It's just bad if that loudness comes at the expense of other qualities in the track that you love.

41:43 Sam Fischmann And that's really the only message.

41:44 Luke F. Walton And that's a good message, especially competing against like the landers of the world, like the very AI. They're adding more parameters. I see they did like a plug in. I understand that they're trying to, but I feel like at their core, they're trying to take away choice and just be like, just hand it over to me. Treat me as though I'm your mastering engineer rather than. than empowering the mix. Yeah.

42:04 Sam Fischmann Yeah, I generally agree with that. I think that there are times when you need something done quick. Yes, I generally like tools that make someone feel more confident to express. And I think when you hand something over to an AI-based tool, it shows that the thing that you're asking the AI to do is what you're lacking your confidence of expression in. Now,

42:24 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

42:24 Sam Fischmann there are times when you just need to do it because that's not your thing. If I didn't know how to play any instruments and I wanted to make music for like some.

42:32 Sam Fischmann video I shot because as a videographer and I wanted it to be unique that that's a great solution because you know there you go maybe I don't have any friends that can like put that together for me or like that's a lot to ask there are other times when it's like well I made this music I mix this this track I know what I want out of it I should feel comfortable pushing it to the last you know that last little bit that I want out of it and in an AI you're abdicating responsibility and like your creativity to this thing that doesn't even have a soul

42:57 Sam Fischmann you

42:57 Luke F. Walton yeah

42:58 Sam Fischmann know and

42:58 Luke F. Walton right

42:58 Sam Fischmann has felt no pain it has felt no joy it doesn't know what it's like to eat too much you know it's just it's just like they go um

43:09 Luke F. Walton yeah

43:09 Sam Fischmann yeah it's trained off of a lot of people that have felt those things and whatever but at the end of the day yeah

43:15 Luke F. Walton true and it's not going to do the unexpected like um i really like this golfos plugin that does i think it's like based around pink noise and it kind of like yeah goal of like resident filtering to be able to make things It's more audible and they usually recommend doing it like 10 to 15 percent.

43:32 Luke F. Walton but they give you the option in the automation window to go up to 200 and best believe i go up to 200 on the weirdest music i make like the super weird stuff at least for like little bizarro moments where you want like comb filtering as as like an element of a transition instead of like a filter sweep you do like this weird thing with the plug-in the ai would never do that kind of stuff of just it is so out of the box it is off-label use

43:58 Sam Fischmann Right. Yeah, exactly. I totally agree. And I think that that's where the cool stuff for AI is going to come in later where people are going to use AI to make these little like sound object type things, but

44:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:10 Sam Fischmann then they can creatively mix them together kind of in a new version of sampling. You know what I mean?

44:14 Luke F. Walton Right.

44:14 Sam Fischmann I mean, I feel like as much as we are empowering people to express and create, it doesn't doesn't bother me so much, but it's where we give it up to the AI that I'm like, Oh,

44:24 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:25 Sam Fischmann I don't that doesn't make me feel wonderful anymore. More.

44:27 Luke F. Walton i

44:27 Sam Fischmann I don't

44:27 Luke F. Walton am

44:27 Sam Fischmann quite sound like too much of a curmudgeon.

44:28 Luke F. Walton no no no now it's i think that like it's like we were talking about autotune too it's like where where do you point the technology or do you just put it on everything you know it's like there's there's a time and a place and there's a genre situation and there's like an irony that you could use it for like autotune is a great spice like you're talking about but it's not for everything it's not for every moment in the same way that we're talking about this though creatively i do think there's an element

44:54 Luke F. Walton or opportunity for predictive DAWs like predictive digital audio workstations where you know like hey I see that you're doing this task over and over and over again cleaning up all of this audio it's like do you want me to finish that for you it's like yes

45:07 Sam Fischmann Oh yeah, I think, so Alex who works with us at Musik Hack, she sent me something, I think it was a quote from someone, I can't remember who it is or what it was, but it was like, I don't want AI to make my art for me while I wash the dishes. guy to wash the dishes for me when i pick art i'm

45:24 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

45:25 Sam Fischmann like yes there

45:26 Luke F. Walton Yep.

45:26 Sam Fischmann we go right like i don't want to dig like to the sound object example earlier maybe the problem is i don't want to have to dig through all of my like at this point probably 360 trillion samples like just generate generate for me a new palette and now i'll play with that palette that's cool right because it took an administrative thing or you know for somebody maybe who doesn't enjoy the picking process

45:50 Sam Fischmann and it turned it into a momentary thing so you can get right down to the part where you're doing the sort of expression that makes you happy, makes you... get it out there you know that's

46:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

46:01 Sam Fischmann the good right

46:02 Luke F. Walton It's like the same thing with like synth patches. You know, sometimes that takes me a long time. I'm not like a primarily a keyboardist. I'm a guitarist. And so it can take me a long time to find like a patch that I like and then adjust all the filters and stuff like that. I would love a text base.

46:15 Luke F. Walton Hey, like, I would like a Juno that's got kind of this vibe that's mixing a little bit of this artist and that artist, but is going to be in this lane and it's like, here's like a starter.

46:25 Sam Fischmann how about like a shazam one where you like you get a sample and you're like i want like i

46:31 Luke F. Walton that direction

46:31 Sam Fischmann really like

46:31 Luke F. Walton please yeah

46:32 Sam Fischmann i really like the way the guitar tone is in this in this thing you don't even it does the self-separation finds the guitar and it goes like this it's like all right cool here's your plug-in sick

46:41 Luke F. Walton yeah i mean i could see it work i could

46:43 Sam Fischmann all

46:43 Luke F. Walton see it work yeah

46:44 Sam Fischmann right i'll get back to you in 10 years

46:45 Luke F. Walton yeah there you go there you go speaking of which speaking of which what what other um stuff yeah sounds great

46:50 Sam Fischmann we've got a bunch of stuff that we have kind of in

46:52 Luke F. Walton awesome

46:52 Sam Fischmann the in the um pipeline

46:53 Luke F. Walton i'm excited

46:53 Sam Fischmann because we're always looking towards all sorts of new things to do do um and it's been a while since we released master plan because we wanted to make sure that it was really solid before we moved on to the next thing i mean we felt it was solid when we released it but like you

47:05 Luke F. Walton it's know a great sign of a pointing company from my perspective like put out one and make it rip and iterate on it for a little while and then extend

47:12 Sam Fischmann yeah

47:12 Luke F. Walton it's always just a yeah to me yeah

47:15 Sam Fischmann yeah so i don't know i don't know i don't think i've announced what this thing does so like i guess you're going to hear it first i'm not going to say the name or whatever or i'm just going to give it an overall

47:23 Sam Fischmann all overall look but master plan is about mastering it's about buses or the or the two track right and it's about like really clean transparent loudness and like letting what you've already done shine through really well and just getting it ready for for radio we want to make something that's like that's for the track that can do stuff live because master plan is latency that's about like gritty character based loudness in all sorts of ways that that might mean if that means growling if that means smashing if that means

47:50 Sam Fischmann pushing if that means clarity if that means making a buttery low end i don't care all

47:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:55 Sam Fischmann of those things in one place that can either be you know live or a little bit extra higher quality and we put those we put those all in one really great sounding tool and something i'm really excited about in that tool which we'll see how people use it i think it's a really cool creative tool is it has a very interesting tone blending section on the way out it allows you to take your changes and sort of it has a dry wet knob but it also has a knob that will allow you to blend in the low

48:19 Luke F. Walton Great.

48:19 Sam Fischmann wet or the high wets as opposed to you just dry or wet that'd

48:24 Luke F. Walton That sounds great.

48:25 Sam Fischmann be really really really fun it sounds awesome and uh yeah it's got a randomizer on it so you can just sort of hit unity and then just like smash random random random like you just get 100 inspirations for one thing be like oh that one and then tweak it you know lots of fun

48:39 Luke F. Walton that sounds like a lot of fun and i think i think this this is a good moment for it so the whole like clip to zero movement online i don't know if you're familiar with this is very interesting i can send you some stuff um

48:50 Sam Fischmann Okay, I

48:51 Luke F. Walton i don't know 100 it's

48:51 Sam Fischmann better catch up on it. I should know about clip to zero.

48:54 Luke F. Walton pretty cool basically the the concept is somewhat ascribed to i think it's like a genre dependent thing it's mostly coming from electronic music but like there's certain subsets of alternative and stuff that i do that i use it where basically the idea is in the same way that you would

49:08 Luke F. Walton kind of like go for harmonic distortion on like a bunch of individual tracks and then also like build up chains of compression over the course of your mix so like your your drums are all compressed together the drums and bass are a little bit compressed together and compressed with the rest of whatever but that kind of like browerizing kind of idea it's taking all that and instead of thinking it as a compression it thinks about it as clipping and limiting

49:31 Luke F. Walton Where you're spreading out tiny bits of square wave shaping

49:35 Sam Fischmann Mm-hmm.

49:35 Luke F. Walton across your entire mix, focusing on your kick and your snare or whatever. big thing that wants to be like the loudest possible thing in your mix and you set up your mix as a series of limiters so that you keep and like ducking like you know so that you keep these like primary loudest things as loud as they possibly can be the entire mixing stage the whole goal is to not turn at least the primary pushers of the mix down at any point you

50:06 Sam Fischmann Right. Okay. Now, okay. I just didn't know the name for it,

50:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

50:10 Sam Fischmann but I've heard of it.

50:11 Luke F. Walton no totally it's

50:11 Sam Fischmann One

50:12 Luke F. Walton cool

50:12 Sam Fischmann of the reasons we actually designed, I designed the loudness algorithm in Masterplan. It's a really unique thing. It's so that you don't necessarily have to do that as much because it's a mix of a clipper and limiter that is working on every peak uniquely it's

50:27 Luke F. Walton Mm

50:27 Sam Fischmann doing it

50:27 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

50:28 Sam Fischmann in order to try to get that thinking about the way the algorithm works because i can't tell what it does but

50:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right.

50:32 Sam Fischmann one of the things that you're doing clipped to zero like on each of these reasons is you're saying like look one of the problems that you have is that you have transients on all bunch of different stuff it's not just your kick your snare your hat it's also if you have like an ott synth the onset of that is going to have a big spike before the rest of it right it's going to have a stab and there's so many things like this right and there have

50:53 Sam Fischmann And they're happening all over your mix. And so when all of these things are happening, any one of them could cause a spike into clipping. And when you try to mix them all together, certain of them will happen at the same time. And then if you wait till the end stage of your limiting in order to limit, it's going to make your limiter more reactive. And so you're not going to be able to push it as hard, right?

51:12 Sam Fischmann I'm assuming that's what the reason is for attacking

51:14 Luke F. Walton 100% what it is.

51:15 Sam Fischmann you.

51:15 Luke F. Walton Yep. You try not to make that meter dance as much. Yep.

51:18 Sam Fischmann Exactly, because the more it's dancing, the more weird stuff it's doing to your signal. So I kind of designed Master Plan so you don't have to do that as much.

51:25 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

51:25 Sam Fischmann What that means is a

51:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

51:27 Sam Fischmann really good demo would be somebody who has done it and not done it on the same mix and we see how easy it is to, if Master Plan's on the two bus, to see if you can get the same thing or if it's still better to do clip to zero for that style of music. I'm not saying it can because I haven't run the experiment, but I really should. In fact, I should probably, if one of your listeners wants to reach out.

51:50 Sam Fischmann to reach out to us uh with like a mixed track where they've done this and they're

51:54 Luke F. Walton Cool,

51:54 Sam Fischmann like i have great success i want to actually i would love to go through that with them and see like how does

51:58 Luke F. Walton yeah,

51:58 Sam Fischmann that work out you know i mean let

52:00 Luke F. Walton yeah

52:00 Sam Fischmann me know about that that could be fun um

52:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

52:02 Sam Fischmann yeah

52:02 Luke F. Walton that sounds fun.

52:02 Sam Fischmann so i'm all for it i think that that it depends on the genre um and what that does to the feeling of the music and the dynamic range of the music it probably works in lots of genres and and they should all try it to see and it may even work with some genres on some things and not others where you might care a lot about certain types of um extreme dynamic range and not other types of extreme dynamic range so uh i have absolutely nothing against it i think it's a very clever way of thinking

52:30 Sam Fischmann Thinking about mixing because it helps you be much more expressive and creative in the levels of those tracks because they're not going to create a limiter dance

52:37 Luke F. Walton And it's an interesting way of thinking like, yeah, like you're saying of getting out of the old mindset of analog pushing and analog playing, like the dynamics of fingers on frets and thinking of it as the math that it is of like we're going to set a narrower band. and and our goal is loud at the end of the day

53:00 Sam Fischmann Yeah,

53:00 Luke F. Walton and it's like it also like that that mindset then as you're auditioning stuff and you already kind of have it set up to some extent in your arranging phase you'd be like kick's not going to be loud enough like that that thing just doesn't hit the transients aren't as so you like pick another one it's like it's just a very different set of ears to wear i guess yeah but i i like it and i'm excited to excited to play with master plan in that

53:23 Luke F. Walton In that same way.

53:24 Sam Fischmann Yeah, it should be fun and definitely tell me what you find like I always want to know What's

53:28 Sam Fischmann Certainly. like, what's one more thing I could do, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's great. No, it's super exciting. So I want to leave

53:34 Luke F. Walton you with one final question. This show is called Love Music More and the segment is called Love Music Why? It's just a moment to kind of opine and talk about why do you love music?

53:45 Luke F. Walton How does it interact like we've been talking about with your other passions like cooking and baking and coding and how does that all come together to experience the passion that you feel?

53:55 Sam Fischmann and continue to, you know, work in this world.

53:58 Sam Fischmann That's a really great question. And I think there's two kinds of ways I listen to music. And one of them is just in order to, you know, get my spirit in the right place when I'm doing literally anything from cooking to coding to just sitting around and doing whatever.

54:11 Sam Fischmann And it just, it's part of our environment the same way like I got plants in here. I like having bricks on my wall. I want a space that makes me feel comfortable in myself and happy and like music is just as much.

54:22 Sam Fischmann as much a part of that as any physical thing and it is physical it's moving the air all around me a same way that the plants filtering through oxygen not very much but it's still doing it and the second way i listen to music is like more of a a deep attentive listening way of listening to music and i did this a lot more maybe earlier in my life when i was studying it but that's the kind of listening where part of me is picking it apart and part of me it's like a meditative thing where i'm opening up to let the music make

54:48 Sam Fischmann make me feel something beyond and a lot of us maybe practice that most these days when we maybe go to see music but you can do that at home too when there's something that you've noticed that you really love and and it just it's moving that's why I love music because it moves me. It moves the air. It moves me. It gets me on the same page as people or it puts me in a space where I can be away if I need to.

55:12 Sam Fischmann It's like it's so many beautiful things. And as much as I can be a part of it and help it be a part of other people, like I'm going to do it. I hope that makes sense.

55:22 Sam Fischmann It does. Yeah. It does. And it's a beautiful thing to be doing it today and in the way that you are because you're helping to create music that's never been heard before in a way that's never been done before. before. How many humans can even say that, you know, like that's crazy.

55:37 Sam Fischmann Yeah, it's really amazing. I love the things that I've seen come up through the years from.

55:44 Sam Fischmann You know, starting by sequencing DOS and Boyetra all the way to like synthesized voices and like auto-tuned like crazy. And it's just like, oh my, it's so amazing. It's great. We can do things that we would have had to pay so much to even dream of doing back in the day. So it's amazing.

56:02 Sam Fischmann Totally agree. Well, Sam, anything you'd like to leave the listeners on and also where can they get in touch and download the plugin?

56:09 Sam Fischmann Oh, yeah. First of all, you can reach us at musikhack.com, M-U-S-I-K-H-A-C-K, or on Instagram at at musikhack underscore or tiktok at musikhack LLC. I wish we could get the same name for everything, but you know.

56:23 Sam Fischmann that's not how it works these days just check out Master Plan there there's a demo if you want to give it a shot and then as far as what I want to leave people with it's like listen to your music as you work with it trust that you know what you want out of it and if you're not hearing what you want to hear even if you're following all the best advice you think you've taken then maybe spend some more time playing around and listening and and a lot of that advice that's floating around there might not be so so

56:50 Sam Fischmann so important you'll find over time which advice is important and which isn't and who to listen to and uh and you'll feel much better believing that you can do it and hearing the sounds you get when you when you center yourself in that it's just a great it's a great thing that's that's my message cool

57:06 Sam Fischmann It's great. I couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more.

57:08 Luke F. Walton Well, thank you, Sam. And let's definitely keep in touch.

57:11 Sam Fischmann yeah it's great talking