TSRB 137 - Automatic Episode Transcript — Please excuse any errors, not reviewed for accuracy

Benedikt: these tools enable more musicians put out more great music and it's, it removes one of the barriers. It removes one of the most complex and abstract things in way and the result will be more great art more frequently. And I'm all for that, Hello, and welcome to the self recording band podcast. I am your host Benedictine, and I am here today with Jay Mo. If you don't know, Jay he's a producer engineer, musician, entrepreneur. He really does it all in the music world. The mainly the independent punk rock hardcore sort of guitar in the, I don't know what do call it music world. And um, He's been a major influence for me over the years, because I really think that his stuff, the stuff that he's worked on always sounded phenomenal. I grew up listening to a lot of the bands that he's worked with and I gotta read this list real quick because, uh, it's just so, so long I have to read this, he spoke with bands like half heart ban counterparts, state champs, the story so far, verse propaganda, no trigger polar back club, title, fight, Tian strike, anywhere drug church make doing man, the list goes on and on and on. This is not all. it's insane. And I always thought that his records. Impact and punch, but also like an authentic sort of vibe to it that I just liked. And it was, I don't know what fascinated me about it, but I I've been following him in his production career for a while. just because I wanted to learn more about how he approaches things, major influence. so a couple of years ago, two years ago, I got to talk to him on my other podcast, the Outback recordings podcast. So if you go to your podcast app and look for the Outback recordings podcast, there is an interview, a conversation between me and Jay on. I'll put that in the show notes of this episode two, where we talked a lot about his career, the bands he worked with his approach to producing mixing music. And we've also talked a little bit about something that was just in the works back then, or he had just started it back then. And that is master.io. It's an automated. Mastering tool, an online mastering tool where you can upload your unmastered, mixes, the AI, masters it for you. You can then download it and you can make revisions. You can change things. You can collaborate with your band mates. Uh, you can collaborate with your clients if you're mixing for other people. So it's a collaboration platform and an amazing online AI based mastering tool as well. And I know that there are a couple of these tools out there and I was skeptical about it because most of them, at least the ones I've tried, I don't think are really good. So I was very skeptical, but I tried master and I gotta say, I love it, honestly. Uh, I won't say much more now in this intro because we talk about it on the episode, but this was really the first time I felt like, yep, that works. That's awesome. And even better that he came from someone like Jay. So I was interested in learning more about it. I wanted to know what happens under the hood. How does it ex exactly work? Where's the benefit for people like you, self recording artists, DIY musicians, DIY producers, uh, because I think it's a phenomenal tool for you, but I wanted to ask Jay about this and I wanted, I wanted him on the show to explain all of this, because he can do a much better job at this than I could I could ever do. And my bottom line is just, I think it's. Something, it's a tool that enables more creatives to put out more work at a higher quality. More often it removes the barrier. It removes a bottleneck. It removes the sort of black art of mastering. And, I think for that reason alone, it's super awesome. And yeah. So today I wanna talk all about that with the amazing Jay MOS. So hello, Jay. I'm gonna shut up now. Thank you for taking the time to do this today. And, uh, thank you for coming on to the show. 

Jay: Thanks man. Yeah, no, no, no problem. Thanks for having me. 

Benedikt: Very very cool. So I, I was looking forward to this because we had a talk already on my other podcast a while ago. It's been like what it's been like two years almost. I think that we did

Jay: Yeah. It's been a minute. 

Benedikt: Yep. And, uh, master was a thing back then. Uh, so we're gonna talk about what master actually is, but like, it was a thing back then, but you just started, I think when we did that and we talked about it for a while, but I, I assume things have changed. So maybe you can give our people a quick introduction of, of you and like what, what you do right now and what master is specifically.

Jay: Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah. Uh, as you did with your great intro, uh, I'm Jay and I've been a producer for almost 20 years now. Full time for probably like 17, 18 years. And yeah, as a record producer, I've learned a lot of things and, uh, you can kind of call it my pandemic project, but, I have had this idea for making, AI based AI and cloud based mastering, actually good. I thought I could do it. So we started with, I started with like a local prototype and I think when I talked to you last time we were in our early phases. I think I would even call it kind of like a late beta and the, you know, what you could do with the platform essentially is like you could upload something, you could hit our AI and it would spit out a great sounding master. What we realized though, through like talking to our users is the platforms evolved. Now. Now it's a full collaboration, mixed note sharing platform. And we've actually gone from one mastering algorithm to nine because we heard back from people you know, some we've had some great users, Dan Cornif the you know, produce like paramore and stuff. And then uh, Heime from Pierce. The veil specifically asked me if we could do like a darker, louder one because while our original algorithm was great for rock, he was like, I'm working on some different stuff. And that kind of opened our eyes to the fact that we were like, you know what. Yes. The, the the first one we made was like my dream algorithm, but then, uh, we're like, yeah, like people are gonna want some different flavors and that can really empower people to experiment and work, you know, with that, with their mixes. So, yeah, it's really been a fun journey. I've learned a lot about software development

Benedikt: Yep.

Jay: you can imagine. Yeah. And the platform's just grown and we've got a ton of like really happy stable users.

Benedikt: Awesome. So cool to hear. Like the one thing that I kept thinking about was Like this is not just something that you created and you sort of in the background, but you literally have your name on it Like it's called master with a double a like your name. So, and you obviously have a big list of like credits and people know you've and love the work you've done. So you you really can't afford to put out like a shitty product. when it comes to that, like, it has to sound great, you know, it's, it's literally your, name on it So I was wondering like, why do you think, what is it that makes master different from like, let's say typical ones, like, you know, lender, all the 

Jay: competition. Sure. You know, I would have to know how they approached their, uh, engines and I don't, and I don't know, you know, I, I think part of me is I, I can't help, but, but curious if , cuz there's a lot of like open source limiters out there and you could just totally take an open source limit, apply it, give some output. And I don't really know that's not what we do at all. So when I approach this as a master and engineer myself, one thing that I was realizing is that the, the input, the mix is really the variable, right? So like you never know what you're gonna get. Like it could be, I don't know, it could be hip hop, it could be rock, but even inside of both of those genres, sonically speaking and dynamically speaking, it could be like totally different. But what I found is that through mastering records for a long time, not that there Aren. Some tasteful differences and, and that's where like the different algorithms come into play, but that the, the output was far more static than how dynamic the input is. So like while I'll get, God knows what to master, what I'm trying to do is I'm I'm essentially trying to appease human biology. And that is to say like human hearing and knowing things about human hearing. Like the first thing everyone always talks about is like the Fletcher months and curves, right. Where we hear three K first and then as the amplitudes go up, the three K starts to compress, which makes us feel like our low end and our high end are getting louder. Um, When it's actually just our ears, natural response, but how that translates to limited music and how there's like sort of a correlation with that. And just really understanding like how we here, you know, and I think when you sort of start to crack the code on like what the ear prefers, you now have something that you can kind of do some reductive math against to take a variable input signal and solve for it.

Benedikt: Okay. So that's interesting. For various reasons, for, for one, I love the, the approach that you're like, you think it through, like what, what, do I actually have to do here? Like what, what, because at the end of the day, it's all about how it. How it, feels to the end listener and like, they don't really care how it. how It's been done. It's like, but it has to be, it has to come across the right way. So it has to serve the song, has to keep that original vision and all of that intact. And then it has to work for the, for the end listener. and you kind of thought about how you could achieve that. the difficult part is though the part about what you said, where you have different inputs, they are always different. Every song, every artist, every project, but you wanna get sort of a consistent result. Not that all, everything should sound the same, but it all, it all has to work regardless of what you put into it, basically. So that's, that's the that's 

to me 

Jay: is the difficult part.

Benedikt: yeah, the difficult part. Exactly. So, so if I'm wondering, when you say things like my favorite algorithm, what you said before, or like your favorite processing or whatever you, you called it like the, the, the first one that you started with. That is not a static thing, right. That also has to adapt to whatever you put into it. So how do you define like your, your favorite thing? Is it a certain, Like, what are you looking for? Like, what is it that you want at the end? Like, if you can 

Jay: I mean, I can go pretty far. Yeah. I can go pretty far down the wormhole here, but yeah, so, so you're right. Uh, when I was saying, what I was describing is when I'm as a master engineer, myself, there's certain dynamic conditions I'm typically looking for. And so we take like and this is why we, you couldn't do what we do with a plugin it's because you can't just, you have to know what the entire picture looks like. Right. So the first thing we wanna. As we analyze the whole song. Right. And then, so then we start to map the entire dynamic and the entire Sonic and into some degree, like, uh, stereo separation structure of what we're looking at, we need to understand like, what is this, before we begin processing it. Right? And then once we know what it is, we can start making then from the, from those macro decisions, we start making more like micro decisions and to the point where we actually like, not in a big way, but we do literally like make minor EQ changes, like down to the sample. That is obviously something a human could not do. One might say is completely unnecessary, but I think technology has unearthed like all kinds of new stuff, especially in our space where we're like, oh, well, no, we never thought to do that before. Cause you could just never do that with an analog chain. But like with digital processing, like you can do it and like, let's get better at this and let's try that. So that's sort of like the macro approach when we talk about like, you know, what was my favorite thing. You know, as someone who's very experienced in this field I based it on what my Sonic preferences are. Now we could do an entire other podcast on exactly what I look for. Like when it comes to a really great master, you know what I mean? And I think that might be slightly higher level than what we're doing here, but it's yeah, but it's, you can basically think of it as like, as a mastering engineer. I, if people aren't familiar, most of you probably are, if you're listening to none, this but like, you're not, you're not like, oh, should I put reverb on the vocal or should like, we should distort the drums here or something like that. It's not that it's, it's like, how do I make this exciting and translatable across all playback devices? So we're looking at things from more of like a scientific sonic standpoint rather than, uh, should we add back harmonies here standpoint? You know?

Benedikt: Yeah. totally. I'm so glad you mentioned that by the way, because I think before we go further down that like that, rabbit hole or that warm hole as you called it, like of what exactly happens under the hood, we, we might, we should probably explain first. Why someone would want to use something like master, because people would a lot of DIY musicians, especially in like home home studio, producers, they write a song, they record it, they mix it. It's sort of this, some of them like separate the process, but in, in a lot of cases, it's just, you start a project and at some point it ends and you, it's not really clear where one thing ends and the next thing starts. And at some point they just will make it loud and that's, that will be their quote unquote mastering, and then they ready to release it. And so people might wonder, like, why do I have to send this off to someone when I think I'm actually done? And why, and why should I do it, like automatically? Or should I get, get, go to a mastering engineer? Like, what's the difference. so maybe we should explain what that, that last step is You did already did it in a way. Uh it's it's to make sure that it it's, it translates to all different um, sort of listening systems, but like, why can't you Just in the dog, put a limiter on the output and make it. loud and maybe do a bit of a queue adjustments. Like why would anyone need this extra treatment at the end?

Jay: yeah, well I'm so you can just put a limit on the end if You want to. I don't recommend it, but you can. And I think a lot of people do. But I, I would say mastering is really strange because it's like, some of my favorite records I've ever made and it's this really a strange, phenomenal work. I am a engineer. I'm also a mixing and producer, you know, all of that stuff, but. I'll take my records a lot of times, and I'll send them either to master which we've used for real releases or to outside master engineers. And sometimes your objectivity by the end of a project, I would say actually, a lot of times your objectivity at the end of a project is, kind of skewed. You're like so close to this project that, and you know, like what you boosted and what you cut and you know, all of that stuff. And then you just sort of like get to a point where like, you're kind of creatively exhausted and it is so nice to have something or someone entirely objective to just take it. And they get to have that like fresh eyes first, look at it again where they say they. They have no idea that you're nervous because you boosted 5k in the guitars, you might still be deficient in 5k in general. These, you just might be. And so like you send it to someone or something in my case. Right. And like, it just goes, oh, well, there's, it needs more 5k. Right. And it does not care about anything you did or anything like that. So that's a reason why you might start to trust that stuff and use that stuff. And why historically, a lot of mixed engineers don't master their own stuff is for that exact reason. And I would say the other part of that is mastering. Isn't really very fun. So therefore, a lot of people don't spend a lot of time super learning it. I mean, for those of us who, where it is kind of fun, like it takes a special kind of psycho to like to really think that's cool. Yeah. But I would say that like, mastering is really hard and I think what you find is that people who specifically operate as strictly mastering engineers. Most of the time they're veterans in the industry, it takes a long, long time and a lot of experience to develop really good psychoacoustics so, you know, what decisions to make and why, and it takes kind of doing like thousands of records to be able to say like, oh yeah, that whole thing is a learning process. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to take the pain out of that and create something that actually sounds amazing where it's like, yo, like, I'm gonna worry about like making this song awesome. I'm gonna make the chorus great. You know what I mean? Like I'm gonna get the best snare sound. I'm gonna do all of this stuff. And then just to have like an AI buddy that you can throw this at, and then it just does that. Not very exciting part, but is super integral to just the overall Polish and output of what you put so much work into.

Benedikt: Yeah, totally, totally. And that, that whole peace of mind aspect at the end, just knowing that something or someone is gonna take care of that, that, final step, and you're not gonna miss something like, uh, fuck it up. Like so close to the finish line, basically, which could happen. Um, Then, I mean, so that, that alone is worth so much to me. And I've always enjoyed for that reason alone. I've always enjoyed working with mastering people and mastering engineers. Just even if, even if, sometimes I got a master back where it was like almost identical, just louder. And I was still glad I did it because then I knew, at least I knew there was nothing wrong with it. Like, nothing 

Jay: It's a it's affirming, right?

Benedikt: yes, and, and it's done and you know, it's done. Right. And you, if, if you've worked with great people, you just know that now you can definitely put it, out there. It's done. Somebody said it's done, it's approved. You know, and, and like that piece of mind aspect is alone was always really cool for me. And then, yeah, and just, just knowing that the fatigue or flying too close to it is not gonna cause problems. 

Jay: What we've heard back from our users is something that like I personally experienced because I use the platform every day as well. Like, is that what's great is, you know, we talk about using an outside mastering engineer and that feels really good. Even if what you get back, isn't that different, it's very affirming. And you're like, oh, cool. All right. So I was on track and like that's really great. Something a really great benefit of using master is that you can do that in three minutes. Anytime you want 24 7. Instead of like, cuz you know how it is like, okay, you get the master back, like from someone, you know that you're paying probably a whole bunch of money to who's like, here you go. And then there's that like, I like it. But like, and then you have to like do that, like, is it worth it? I would like to hear a darker one. Oh, I would like it a little louder. Oh I would like it a little brighter. I'm not sure. And you're like, this is good, but I kind of wish that. And then it's like, how much do I want to bug this guy? What's his schedule look like, when am I actually gonna get this back? If it's gonna take two weeks, it's not worth it. You know what I mean? So it's like all of these like sort of like workflow and like, oh, like the band's hungry for it. Oh the label wants it, whatever it is. So that's how do I put this? Like that's very limiting. The other thing that's really cool is that as you're getting sort of close to final mix. And you're using the platform for your mixed note revisions every day. And you're uploading stuff every night. Like you get to like bounce things off this as much as you want. And like, and you get like, you get that same either affirmation. Well, you do get an affirmation either way, cuz I know what I get a master back and I was worried, like I think the high hats might have been a little bright, but I don't know. And then you send it off And you come back and you're like, damn it, the hi hats were definitely a little bright. Right. yeah. Like, so now it's like, you know, that like right away. So now it's like, Something I do is I upload it. Right. And then I'll be like, all right, I'm going on my coffee drive. So by the time I like go up and get my keys, get in the car. It's probably finished processing or very close. Then I grab my phone. It, we made the mobile experience like way better now. Right. So it's just like, cool. Open up my phone and I just jam it in the car. I jam it in a totally different environment. I'll do things like my wife and I, my kid be in the car and I'd be like, can I just put this on and just see what you think? And it's just like, cuz this is potential. Yeah. This is like potentially final. But you dude, you it's like, I don't know a fraction of the price and you just have it on tap.

Benedikt: yeah. That, that's so awesome. Like, I, I do that all the time actually with go with the family in the car and just annoying them with the stuff that I've worked on. Just because I wanna hear an objective opinion, like ideally of like 

Jay: Yeah. 

Benedikt: or engineers, you know? And, and then stuff like something what's interesting is sometimes things happen that like, like my seven year old daughter will say things like What did he say? It sounds softer or something, you know, or it's like, this sounds, can you turn this down? Like, this is, this is annoying. Or like, you know, and, and, and sometimes, you know, when I play an AB, she just, she don't know, she doesn't really know what to, say or how to describe it, but she'll feel if something's more aggressive or darker or brighter or something like that. And that's so super helpful. Uh, and especially in mastering and, and like even kids, or Like non-musicians, they, they can, uh, make out these differences in how things feel. And these are sometimes tiny differences between two masters and it's a great way to do that. And so, yeah. And you can do that with that app in a really, really cool way, because as you said, you can just pick two different options or you can like upload two different mixed versions that you made and then compare them quickly, you know, stuff like that. So did that really makes that easy? I wanna say one thing though, and that was a question that I have for you, Jake. I've played around with it a lot now. And I've mastered a couple of songs with it. now, and I love it I really, really do. I compare it to my masters the time and it's like, it's up there. I can totally use it. It's it's always a little different in a way, but not, not worse. So it it's, It works. It absolutely works. And I love it. I love the results. There's just one thing. And that is, might be totally like personal preference. And I just wanted to wanted to know what you're saying. Yep. There's one thing. There's one thing. And that is you said the thing about the bright high hats. I always feel like when I have the neutral. Mode, like there is a dark neutral and neutral and bright thing, and then there's a loud, gentle, and quiet or something or loud. Uh, I dunno what you call it, normal, loud and gentle or something. Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. And the, the loudness thing. Perfect. Sometimes I use the loud, sometimes normal, sometimes gentle everything. The other stuff also. Perfect. I just lean towards the dark side in this case because I always feel like if I said it to dark, it's like closer to what I put in in a way. And I might be, I don't know what that is, but the normal mode sounds great, but it's always, or a lot of the times quite a bit brighter than my mixes. And I now I wanted to hear from you what you think, why that is, And maybe, maybe I'm just not judging you correctly. Maybe it should be brighter, but I, always, no matter what the mix is, I, always have a feeling that it's slightly brighter and even in the normal mode. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because it's not bad, but it's brighter.

Jay: uh, yeah. Oh, good ears. I think that you're probably right. I think typically, I don't know, that might be coming down to like what my preferences were, but, uh, yes, I have also had that experience and it doesn't surprise me that you like the dark mode either. That's, uh, one of our newest ones. And we've learned a lot since um, and that, that's a cool thing about this too. Like I can take user. We can retool this stuff. You're not the first person to tell me that they felt like neutral. Wasn't exactly neutral. But, yeah. And, and so the dark mode has, some really cool new, advanced stuff going on that does like what I call like, uh, the de bridling sort of like softening up things that could be edgy, like and harsh, whatever. So I think it comes down to mixing style. So speaking out like, uh, my friend be who plays in sales and he is a great engineer. Right. Like he actually likes, like, we made loud, bright kind of for him, cuz he was like, sounds good dude, but I need it louder and I need it brighter. And I was like, really, you know and so

Benedikt: Yeah. 

Jay: you know, and I was like, okay. Yeah. And so, and like I said, like, hi me for Pierce. He was like, I need a darker, you know? And so I was like, okay. And so getting these feedback from like these like really like real world. Pros has been really good, but some people live on normal neutral, which you're talking about, but you aren't the first person who said that they felt like normal neutral is a little bit bright. It also depends on the genre. So if you, if you're producing music that doesn't have stuff like open high hats in it, that can be kind of bright, just in general, like open eye outs are always like the brightest thing in your mix. Especially if you're a rocker punk producer, for sure. But like, here's a weird thing, if you're using, uh, tight, high hats, or if you have, if you have a darker mix or if you're using electronic high hats or just electronic music in general, my gut tells me that you probably wouldn't find that setting to be too bright. I think it's the harmonic complexity that comes along with two pieces of metal sloshing together into some sort of condenser microphone, plus the overheads and stuff and, and the bleed and all that. So like, I think it's, I think it's the harmonic complexity there that does that. And, I'm working on a band that I just produce in Europe right now, we're using a ton of room mics, right. just like real Rocky. But as we know, like when we use a lot of room mics, one thing that happens with the symbols is they are very harmonically complex and they can get kind of bright at times. So like I'm using, uh, normal dark for that. But when I use something that's like, I I'm producing something that's like tighter, less like jangly for lack of a better term, then like I'll probably be a normal neutral, or maybe even go to bright. 

Benedikt: totally. And it's interesting you say that about the electronic music, because I've, I've tried it on, on some different genres too. And that, was exactly what I found. Like anything that, as you said, didn't have the hi hats or anything that. Where it doesn't get like brittle or harsh when it, when it, when you just add more air to it basically it like, it totally works with the, with the normal, uh, or even the bright setting. And even, and then I, I'm not saying it sounds harsh when you do that with band music, it works. I it's just personal preference that I don't like to change the acute too much in mastering sometimes when, when I like the top end of it. But. on the other hand, what I also found interesting, that's also something I wanted to say is I, when I got things to master that people did themselves at home where they recorded it and mixed it and just sent it over for mastering. I compared my masters with the master masters and I, I was, yeah, I wanted to double check and like, see what what's better. And I was just interested in testing it and I found when it was. Pros who used it, but musicians and they um, did it themselves in their jam spaces and stuff. Then I mean, some of them send in really harsh stuff, but a lot of them don't have enough like air and like, it's just not bright enough oftentimes. And it's like, it's just sounding a little dull and you know, all of that. So I would actually boosted a lot of top into those things anyways, if I mastered it and then the neutral thing or the normal thing worked perfectly well, if not the bright setting, it was just my own mixes that I felt were already really balanced where I found like, yeah, it's brighter and it it's cool, but I like it kind of a little darker, but it's totally, it's totally dependent on what you send into it, you know? and I can see you tell me the thing about Bo and I I totally see that and it, and you know what I think if I sent out more of the brighter stuff, it might just be me who who's bothered by that because most people would be like, yep. Louder and brighter is better most of the time. So it's, you know, so it's just a preference. 

Jay: Yeah. I mean, and we've got, we've got guys who use it that reach out. It's so cool to like, just hear back from the community, you know? So it's like, we've got guys that who reach out and they'll email me or hit me up and, and just be like, yo, like I only use gentle, you know, the guys who are like singer songwriter stuff, more delicate stuff, but they're like, but they're like, I only use, I only use gentle, but by the way, like I'm getting the annual subscription because I only use gentle on everything, you know? So it's like, yeah. Cool. So that's the beauty of having like nine different options is because it was like, they're all, you know, these aren't static presets, right? So these are all like considering everything making decisions and they're all like, dynamic, I guess is the word I'm looking for. They're all dynamic all the time. But what , those nine presets are really just like, what kind of human are you? Right. It's like, what do you like, it's like, you, you kind of figure out like, I'm yeah, I'm this kind of human. And I like this, you know,

Benedikt: Abso. Absolutely. And I have to say the one thing that I also really enjoyed about it was that even every time it got brighter or too bright from my taste, it was not like harsh. it was not the nasty, I don't know, 4k or upper midrange stuff. It's like really air up there. And I even felt like at the same time, while making it brighter, it sort of tame the harsh stuff. That's below that, like the stuff that that's, that's like annoying in symbols, the stuff that's annoying in guitars, that stuff didn't get any brighter. It's like, you know, I'm really talking about the way up there things, and, and so that is really cool because that doesn't mean by all means that, that the nasty stuff gets louder, not at all. So yeah, my, my impression was like, there's a dip in the upper midrange and then it gets brighter sort of sometimes depending on the material. But like that, that's how I perceived it often.

Jay: I'm willing to bet that it Sort of like, we're taking your mixing style and we're combining it with something we made. I made no really we with Joe and like my CTOs fucking genius, but, but like, like we made and so it's, but it's like, it, it, is based on like my experience and my preferences and, and this type of stuff. So it's like, me, plus you probably equals dark normal. You know what I mean? But like me plus Bo equals loud, bright, and it's, it's kind of like when your band picks an engineer, like the, the outcome of that product is gonna be the marriage between the two individuals. It's just, you're using cyber cyborg, J brain, not normal. J Brainin

Benedikt: yeah. yeah. Yeah. AB absolutely. And what's also fascinating is that it's super consistent in the outcome, which I really liked, which means if you run the same thing through it twice, it's not that you get random results. And if you do, like, if you send a, if you upload a revision, you want the master to be the same, Right? You don't, it has to be consistent. So it does that. And even what I do, I deliver, I mean, we all do probably, but. Or often at least that. I deliver not only the final mix to my, to my clients, to the artists I'm working with, but they get an instrumental and sometimes they get stems and stuff like that. And if I run and every single time they get the instrumental, for example, and If I upload the normal mix and then the instrumental with the same settings, it just sounds the same. Like there's no vocals, so things are different and it analyzes it from scratch. It's a new thing, but it sounds the same and it's consistent. So it's not a random thing. And even if I wanna put five different mixes onto an EP and I master them all individually with MAASTR, it sounds like a record and not drastically different. So that's something I also really enjoyed because it's not that one song is crazy bright and the other one is like, needs a different mode. So most of the time, it's either everything's perfect or everything's a little bright and then I switch to another mode, but it's like consistent and predictable, which is awesome. And I don't know how you do it but I, that was one of the, one of the, the fears that I had, where I was like, what happens. Like if I have five songs on an EP and they all come out completely different, or like, if, if I do a revision and it's different, but it it's not. So

Jay: I have a, I have a funny anecdotal story about exactly what you're describing and that's like, so before I went looking for a developer before I found Joe our CTO and, and started building the team out and all that stuff. I was trying to get this to work just on a local prototype level. And I was Okay, so this is such a funny story. It sounds like a name drop, I guess it, his name drop. I we were just talking about this before we started the podcast. I flew to Portland, Oregon to help Chino from Def tones set up his home studio. I got there and lake Oswego, or I dunno if I should tell him, I guess it's not, not gonna, he doesn't lake Oswego. And so lake Oswego, Oregon ended up being like the epicenter of like the us COVID outbreak, like that particular week. Right. And so I landed in Portland and my buddy texted me. He's like, are you going to lake oswego right now? And I was like, yeah. And he is like dude, that's like ground zero for COVID. This is, and this is like February 20, 20 or something. And so I was like, oh, oh, I, I, I don't know. You know, I mean, I'm just going over here and doing this thing. So I go to the hotel, I wake up and Chino texts me and he is like yo. I don't think we can have people overdue, like the whole world's like, especially, and like, we're literally in like the hot spot. It was like, you know, so I was like, okay. so I, you know, I flew across the country and I was just like, okay. And then, so um, the, my manager for know, my production career. He lives in Portland as well. So I was like, well, let's grab lunch. We'll rebook my flight for tonight. You know, whatever, I'll go home, but let's grab lunch since I'm here. And so we did, and we were talking about COVID we were talking like, what are we gonna do, man? Like, if this is well, at the time, we were like, what if this last four months, you know. like 

Benedikt: Oh yeah.

Jay: and, uh, yeah. And so, and so we were like, what are we gonna do? Yeah. And I was like, you know, this might be a good opportunity. I was like, I've been kicking around this prototype. And do you ever have this, this, I don't know, phenomenal where your. Finally talking about something out loud and in doing so you sort of accidentally solve a problem in your brain just because you externalized like, and so like, I, I'm talking through what this thing is and James, my manager's looking at me like, what the hell are you talking about? I'm like, but the issue I'm having is da da, we're where this tie place trying to eat noodles and stuff. And I'm nerding out super hard. He doesn't know what I'm talking about, but as I'm talking about it, I had this like epiphany and I'm like, wait, what if I, you know what I mean? And like, it's too techy to totally dissect. But I, I was just like, oh, that might do the thing. And it actually solves the exact problem that you were talking about, which was like in terms of dynamic consistency stuff. And so I was like, oh my God. So then I got on the plane. I come home, fly back to Boston. And like, the first thing I do is I go to that prototype and I make these changes. And then my wife's, you know, in the house. And I, I remember I just did it and I was like, holy shit. And then I like ran some more stuff. And I was like, and I was like, I think I did. I stood up outta my chair, you know, and I was like pacing around the room. And I was like, oh my God. I think I just, I think I just crafted the code on like the one, like major obstacle that I was having, like for this thing. And um, yeah. So it's just funny that you bring that specifically up because that specifically was a major challenge that almost stopped me from pursuing this project at all.

Benedikt: Oh, wow. That's crazy. Yeah. I thought I, I imagined that it would be, it would be hard to do that, but like you pull it off. So and yeah, that, that phenomenon. Yeah, totally. And like that phenomenon is, is really something like, I don't know what it is, but it happens when you just talk to somebody about it and then it just comes to you. Same thing when you like, do you, did you ever have that when you play back a mix or, Yeah. let's say a mix. And you wanna, you say like, sit down, listen to this. What do you think of it? And before they even say something, just the fact that they're sitting there listening to it and you standing next to them, you immediately hear what's wrong. Like as if you were hearing through their ears or something. Like, I sometimes I'm like, you don't even have to say it. I know now that the vocal is too loud or something, you know, 

Jay: Yeah, no, same. Uh, do you remember, do you remember a band called polar bear club? I don't know. They're 

Benedikt: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jay: Like, Yeah. yeah, Yeah. So, uh, yeah. I love polar bear club. So Chris brown, like one of the primary songwriters from polar bear club was over. And when I was doing defeater empty days and sleepless nights, I was like doing the mixes and like I had Chris over and it was exactly that I made so many changes. Chris didn't say anything, you know, he was just like, oh, but he was just like there. And I was like, you know, as a trusted dude and I want his opinion and all that stuff, but just, I don't know what it was just like having him there. I'd played it back and I'm like, oh, that pause doesn't need to be there. And I've got a that, you know, like I just, all of this stuff and I'm like, oh no, thank you for sitting here. I now know what I need to do.

Benedikt: exactly, exactly. it's it's crazy how that works. Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. Uh, Yeah. Yeah. But you, you, as I said, you, pull it off and it works. It's consistent and, I don't know why it took me. It took me, I gotta be honest. It took me a really long time. I've been playing around with it for a while now. It took me, a really long time. To be able to accept that like an AI master. Like that is just as good. Not, not every time. I gotta be honest, but like, it's just as good as the masters I do. And um, sometimes it's better and it's just different sometimes, but like, it's really good. And it took me a while to just accept that because I felt really uncomfortable trusting a computer with that. Or like, I felt like, this is art. Like I can't, isn't the human supposed to do this. Like, you know? how can a computer react to this in a way that I want it, but it's like it does. And so I'm wondering, I really, really think that this is a really awesome tool, especially for self recording artists, especially for DIY producers, but like basically for everybody. But, and I really believe that, but I'm wondering. How can, is there something we can do to, or you can do to make people trusted, things like that? A little more, because part of it is probably that? some of these tools just got a really bad rep for other reasons. Like it's not your fault. And part of it is that it's a, it's not a human, it's a robot and we're talking about art. So I know that a lot of people are, are hesitant to use something like that. And I, I think they absolutely should try it and should be open to it because at a two and it's, I find it really amazing, but I sometimes don't know how to explain that to people or how to, to convince them that they should give it a go and be open and that it really works. So I don't know, maybe, maybe you have something there, maybe you have thought about what, you know, what it is to, to make that easier for people. Because I really want them to 

Jay: listen, 

Benedikt: you know,

Jay: me too.

Benedikt: so 

Jay: obviously me too, but listen, some people are never going to accept it and that's something I, I just know, listen, dude, there's there's people who still. Won't record with a computer, right? there's still. people who only use tape, you know, still they love having a console, whatever it is. There's people who think that using plugins is soulless. You know, like that happens. And I I've made this metaphor before And, I think it's like, Ugh, it's a little sketchy, but it's just that, like, There's still people that ride horses. And there's probably even some people that ride horses to work, but most of us drive a car. Right. And like and so like, it used to be that like horse was the new tech dude. Did you see this saddle? This saddle is sick and I'm going to work now on my horse. And that's awesome. That's fine. But things do evolve and things change. Right. And so I came in right at the very beginning of like digital recording and so like recording to a hard drive, like using plugins and all that stuff. When, I mean, it was probably 2004, 2005, and I was catching shit from my older, like engineer buddies, who I was learning from. And they'd be like, you gotta get a console, you know? And I was like, I don't wanna get a console that things breaks all the time. And like, it's expensive. And like, I, I don't wanna work that way. And I've always, I, you know, I'm come from a computer science background. I've always been like a really like bleeding edge tech forward type person. So it's no surprise whatsoever. I'm behind this, but I think, for the haters. And I know you're out there. Like I think if you try it, you might still hate it, but you'll probably say, yeah, it sounds good, but I just don't like it emotionally. I don't like the concept of it and that's okay. You don't have to, but I think for, I think that´s probably a fringe amount of people who are so staunched that they wouldn't accept something new. Cause I'll tell you what, one day, like you're gonna put your grandma in a self-driving car to go to the grocery store and you're gonna be completely fine with that. You know what I mean? So if you put your grandma in a self-driving car, you can put your mix into MAASTR, you know.

Benedikt: Yeah, that's a great analogy actually. Yep. yeah. yeah. A Absolut. Absolutely. Uh, I was tell that's also funny. You mentioned that analogy because I was, we were driving yesterday too. Uh, and now on Saturday, a friend of mine had his 40th birthday, birthday, and um, another friend of mine picked me up to go there. He got a Tesla from that he got from work. Like it is a, it's a car that they have there. And um, yeah. we were talking about the whole autopilot thing. And while we were riding in this Tesla and another one was in the car too, like another one of our friends and he was like, how can you, like, would you guys ever trust this? Like never, ever would I trust the car to, to drive for me? Like, that's crazy. And you know, we had this conversation about that and it's exactly like you said, I'm. I was like, yeah, I would probably trust it. Definitely. I would trust it. I'm excited that I, and you know, so, and, and you could definitely do that with the music too, as far less dangerous. but I think one thing. But I think there's the other thing where a lot of people who say they will never trust, they would never trust like an AI to do their mastering. The reality is that a lot of these people and throwing myself included are not really good, like the top level mastering engineers, because we are producers, mixers, musicians, you know, not specialized mastering engineers. If someone like, I don't know, Michael Asian or somebody like that, who does nothing but mastering all the time. And who's crazy good at that. If he says I can do a better job, I don't really wanna trust a thing like that. You know, then that's the, to me is a different thing than someone who's mixing five songs, you're a mastering five songs. And you're saying that I I'd rather do it myself because I really think you're gonna have a super hard time beating something like master, if you're not super experienced. And, and even the pros probably have a hard time. I think that most people are better off using it, honestly, not, not, not only that it doesn't cause harm, but they're better off using it.

Jay: I think you're probably right. And I'm, I'm in a position to think that, so it's really nice to hear you say that and ready for more anecdotal stories. when I first started this, we didn't have a platform yet. You couldn't log in. There was no users, it was just proof of concepts because you know, if I'm gonna put all of this energy. This right. It's like it, like you said, my name's on it. Like it has to be good. So what would happen is I'd get jobs for mastering I would do the mastering job and then I would also run the songs through my local prototype and I would say, Hey guys I made too, let me know which one you, like. What I found is about 50, 50. I didn't always win. I didn't always beat it. And that still happens. I, I manage an artist called aria. Right. And I just mastered two songs for aria. Right. And, he goes, yo, bro, I love the master on this one. It's just what it needed. But this other one, we're just gonna use the master. Okay. And I was like, sure, you like, yeah. You know, I guess I did it technically, you know, but like 

Benedikt: yeah. 

Jay: Um, Yeah. Yeah. So it just happens. And, and I would also argue like Yes. If you're being romantic about it, I can see your point. But like, I dare you to just like. Be able to pick it out of a crowd. Like here's two songs, right? Which one had a, which one went through master, which one was mastered by. So and so do you really know? And furthermore, even if you, even if you know, which I bet you can't guess, why do you care? Because the people who are listening to the song don't care, right? You might care because you feel threatened or be, I'm not sure why there's probably a myriad of reasons you could care, but what, whatever those reasons are, they do not translate to your audience. Your audience just wants something for them, an awesome song that gives them an emotional response that makes them feel a certain way when they listen to it.

Benedikt: Yes, absolutely. And I don't think anybody needs to feel threatened because I don't think that a thing like master is gonna be the end of all, mastering engineers. It's like different. It's completely different. Because if I, for example, if I want feedback on my mix from someone I'm gonna go to a mastering engineer, that's something master can't do right now. but if I just want, if I love my mix, I love the balance. I love everything about it. And I want it to be done quickly finished, you know, and like hassle free and all of that. And then of course I, I can use something like master and I can trust that it's great. It's different things. And sometimes there's other things involved in with mastering where you need a mastering studio for. So I, I don't think it's the same thing actually. and honestly, I, I oftentimes, as you said, I oftentimes do both. I master it. I run it through master and I compare the two. sometimes I just do it, even if I know I'm gonna master it myself. If somebody hires me to do it, I will master it myself. But even Then sometimes I just use master as a reference tool. Like I sometimes just do it still because I'm curious to hear what master does and if I like. What master does more than what I did. I know that I'm not. done yet. I have to go back to the drawing board and improve until I like mine more. You know? So that's a challenge. Like, you know, I'm not, I can't accept that my, that there's something out that, that I like better than my own. So I have to improve my own until I like it more. Or I have to tell the artist, look like, use this tool. It's better than what I did, you know? But like 

Jay: that's really neat. 

Benedikt: so I don't think it's the end of mastering. It's gonna be used as a reference tool. It's a different use case. And the reality today is also that so many people are releasing a lot of songs consistently because that's what you do. You wanna be on playlist. You wanna have consistent output. You don't have the classic album cycle, you release the song every month or something. And you have to do it fast. As you said, there's no time for like, you know, two weeks or three weeks of revisions and stuff. and then for those people, I think it's an absolute, no brainer, uh, because of the reasons that you already mention. yeah, it's like, you know, when you're done mixing, you're also done with the whole thing and you can just upload it. And that combined with the lack of experience and mastering of a lot of DIY people, you know, it's, there, it's hard to argument against to argue against it, uh, in a way. So , it really works now. Can we talk about how it works for like, from the, from the artist's perspective? Like if you're an artist now And you want to use that how does that work? Do I pay master? Like I pay a mastering engineer, like, how, how does it work? and is there any benefit aside from it sounding great.

Jay: if you're, so if you're an artist you just make an account and you actually don't even have to subscribe or pay right away. It's free. And you can start throwing songs at it. I think one thing that you touched upon was like, you know, these types of products previously speaking, don't have a great reputation. We're trying to change that. In, in trying to change that we realized that people are gonna have to like taste test. People are gonna have to kick the tires and we have to earn their trust by way of them like having this great experience. Log in, works great on mobile. Okay. Drag my song, my EP, my album, whatever in you can drag. 'em all in at once. Oh, cool. There's these different Sonic settings. Oh, cool. Like this is very organized. Oh, cool. I can actually, resequence my record right here. Oh, there's a global player. Like all of this stuff, like, oh, whoa. Commenting. Oh, that's really gonna be good for like, when I'm collaborating with my guitar player, like oh, cool. Right. You can, but at least for free, you can at least upload everything and listen to it on the site. And then if you want to, download your master, it's five bucks per download. So it's like, it's nothing. Right. And then you could, and it's not like every time you upload it, it's like, ah, it's five bucks. Right? It's that. And then if you want to. You can, uh, go with some of our different tiered plans. We've got 10, 20, $50 plan, $50 plans for someone who's gonna do, you know, like who want to download a bunch of revisions. And you get unlimited access to all of the Sonic settings. You get unlimited downloads, unlimited comment, unlimited everything, right. And then we've got, and you can go to the plan pricing page. It's just for it's master.io, four slash pricing. And, and it'll show you like what it's gonna be. So if you don't have an unlimited plan you get different levels of feature sets, but every time you wanna download something, it's five bucks. Right. So it's super cheap. But before you spend a dime, you get to sort of hear the magic of the algorithm and that's dope. I think you do have to, if you wanna try out all nine, I think you do have to have like the middle plan at least, but I would say it's $20 a month. Well invested just to, I it's crazy. Right? Cause like, realistically speaking for a single song, I mean, I know what I charge as a master engineer, but even on the lower end, I feel like. For a single song that for any mastering engineer, I think that's rep reputable. You're probably in like the $70 range, something like that. You, you know what I mean? You, know so that's a song, right. And it's slow. And like you, you, know, like you got email it's coordination, it's like, you can make your mixture vision at 3:30 AM, cuz you had an epiphany in bed and you jumped outta bed. You, you printed the revision and then by three 30, 6:00 AM if you can hear, you know what I mean? You know? So like you just get it back just like that. And it's just like so much more affordable. It's like not even remotely comparable on a time and cost scale.

Benedikt: absolutely. So let's, let's just say someone does a song a month and they have the middle tier, so they have all the dynamic and color settings and all of that. They would pay $20 a month and then $5 per download per wave download. And you only have to download once. You know, that this is the one that I'm gonna use before that you can just stream And check until you're happy. And then you're like, okay, that's the one I'm gonna download it. So if you do that it's like 25. It's like 25 bucks, let's say, do an instrumental or something. Let's say it's 30 bucks because you need two downloads or something, but then you would have a fully mastered thing for 30 bucks instead of 70, at least at least like what you said just said. so even, so even if you would do a song every two months, it would still be cheaper. you know, so I think, yeah. And it's 

Jay: Well, and that, 

Benedikt: only the money, 

Jay: Yeah. And you, can't not talk about the fact that you just have this like AI buddy to throw things at like one it's not only is it like way cheaper. It's like, you get to throw the one that you're like, okay. I think this is good, but there's not that anxiety of like, this has to be the one cuz I emailed the guy and okay. Is it perfect? And then you go through all this anxiety of being like, ah, because once I give it to him, I don't wanna have to give him a bunch more. No, no, nah, you can literally go. Like I feel pretty good about this one. Let's check it out. Boom, send it. And then you go like, okay, I was right about a lot of things, but there is some stuff that I would change or let me sleep on that, dude. It just removes all of the stress and anxiety and logistics and cost it's. I mean, that sounds good to me.

Benedikt: it absolutely sounds good to me And I feel like, I feel like. I still, I always wanna say that in a way, because I, I, I know so many really great mastering engineers that I love and that who do great work. And I, I still, even though we just said all that, they are not like you still need people like that. Uh, and there's a place for, for that type of work. But I still think that in some cases, this is, this is not an option anyways. So people would, would just do it themselves. They wouldn't go to someone, they would just do it themselves. And then it would, it would suck compared to what master does. So for those people, master finally enables this high quality mastering and enables people to put up more great more great art and, and faster and all of that. So I'm, I'm all for that. and I know before people, I know that people are gonna email me because I know there's more to mastering than just upload, like doing a single song and there's metadata, and there is like different versions and there is all these things and sequencing it. I know all of that. And you do too, Jay, but still for some people, this is exactly. What they need, and this is all they ever gonna need, basically what you're offering here. So Yeah. we are aware of, of the fact that there's no things, but like this does it and, cool. So one thing we fi we haven't talked about yet was that it's not only a mastering platform, but it's a collaboration platform too. So you get to, you can, you can like add comments to, to the mixes. If you're a band, like a lot, like, I, I guess every band member can sort of be part of the project and you can comment on like, when you are the one doing the mixes and you upload it and then you, you run it through master. Then the out of this can chime in and tell you if they like the mix or not. If you're a producer, you can collaborate with your clients. So it's, it's not only mastering, it's a collaboration platform that you can use to deliver and, and, uh, to deliver your files and to do mixed revisions and mastering Revis. 

Jay: Yeah. And I think you're bringing up a really interesting point that we haven't exactly touched upon yet. Typically people who love the platform, use the platform, they start uploading things to it much earlier than they would. Cause typically you don't hear anything mastered until the very end, but once we've got like a rough drum mix, uh, some guitars based in vocals in there and stuff, or if provided, we're doing a rock record, right? Like, like we start, we upload every night, right? So it's like, we work hard all day. We upload every night, then everybody. And then you've got like the, everyone in the band is a collaborator. They get notified that, Hey, there's new revisions. Right. And so you can, you can get in there and you, and not. So once you're in a revision and you're actually like in the comment section where you can hear the track, you can tag each other. So you can say like, Jim can tag, I don't know, Jerry. And, and, and say like, dude, like, do you think your base fill is a little loud here? And then when you hit the at sign that brings up these brackets and you can actually time code. Exactly. Like, and I'm talking about this base fill like from exactly here to exactly there. Right? So it's like really organized and then you can even say, Hey, cuz I kind of liked it in. And if you hit the hashtag button or hit the other little button and it'll bring up your revision list, I kind of liked it in revision four. Like, can we bring it back to that one? What do you think about that? And what's so cool. Is everybody, all the mixes, all the comments, all the, all the stuff is just in one place you can be in the Palm of your hand, you could be taking a bathroom break at work, put your AirPods in. Right. And you could like be commenting right there or you can, you know, you're jamming it on the way home in the car. And so yeah, the collaboration aspect is actually really the, initially the brainchild of my CTO because I was at first it was just a list. You just upload a song. And then you download it and you're like, ah, that sounds better. Right. And then Joe was like, well, like what about this? And he sent me a prototype of like, sort of what, and I'm like, oh my God, that's brilliant. Of course, like we could totally solve that problem too. And so, you know, we spent really like a year with like, uh, some really pro designers that we hired from out here in Boston. And we put together a whole new UI, a whole new commenting system made it mobile friendly, like did all that stuff. So like, yeah, the commenting is really good. So because like, uh, I wake up in the morning, I check my email and it'll say like new comments from blah, blah, blah. And let me sort of just quickly describe like what a typical cycle is. So you're working with an artist or a band and you hit export at the end of the night, plop, drag it in everything, uploads and processes. The band gets notified, whatever. So sometimes the artists let's say they're not in the studio anymore. You're just mixing something. The artist says, okay, I got those. You don't have to keep checking to see if you got mixed notes or whatever. It's just, you just wait until they put all the mixed notes in, and there's a button that says finalized comments. And when you click that button, it'll say, it'll say, okay, so this is it. These are all the comments, cuz we're gonna let the mixing engineer know that these are all the comments and you're like, those are all the comments for this revision. Cool. That locks The comment. The engineer gets notified and it really streamlines the efficiency. So you're not getting side texts from, you know, the drummer being like, Hey, dude, just wanted to make sure, you know, like whatever, you're just like, it's, it's a, it's a very efficient process where it's like, here's the newer revision. Then the band can take, as long as they, like, it can take a week going back and forth, making sure they have all their comments in there, time coded, tagged the whole thing and be like, yeah, that's how we feel about this revision. They hit the finalized comments button that then sends an email to the engineer and he wakes up the next morning and goes like, oh cool. Such and such artist finish commenting on this track. I'll make those revisions today. Or, or whenever you make 'em, hopefully soon and, and then then you, you, you make the revisions and then you toss it back in monster. And then the band gets notified like, oh, cool. He did all that. Like let's, uh, let's check this out. And then that refinement process continues until the only comment that you see is, dude, this rules. Thank you so much. This is perfect. And then you're like, all right, that one's done. 

Benedikt: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that, that's, that's a, I haven't even thought about that. Uh, with the notifications stuff. I haven't even thought about that so much because the, the one thing that I like, I love everything about what you just said. The one thing that I didn't like about it was that's the only effect really is that as far as I know, everybody has to make an account, right. To be able to do that. like there are the products out there where you just share a link and you can open the link and then comment on the file, which I kind of prefer. If you have someone who's like, you, you know, you, they don't have to permanently permanently be in there. And like, we all have way too much account any accounts anyway. So I kind of get when people are hesitant to sign up for another thing, but what you just set makes total sense because the, the whole getting notified part just only works if you have an account. Right. So.

Jay: That's right. Yeah. So we do have, we do have plans. If you wanna know who's on the roadmap, we have plans to make a link style preview page where you can get a link. We can generate a link for your project and you can spam it around to whomever you want, and they'll be able to listen to it and they can side text you or whatever. But because we do want to keep the whole chain like really tight, you know, in an efficient yeah. It, it, I understand it takes 45 seconds, but yeah, you gotta make an account. 

Benedikt: Yes. And it's, it's, it's a free account by the way, that, so that that's people don't get this wrong. It's couple like no, no one only one person has to pay for it. The other ones have free accounts and they keep comment. Right? Yeah.

Jay: yeah. That's a great thing to notice because like, Oh, and the, the engineer has a, a loud download button. So if you're an engineer and you're like, okay, but I don't want the band to just download the mixes before they pay me or whatever it is. There's a little button that you can click and it's like, you can enable or disable downloads for the band. So if the band, you know, is all paid up and everything is all good and you want them to have access to downloads, you can just click it. They don't have to pay to downloads. Like it only has to be paid once and then everybody can grab it 

Benedikt: Yes. Awesome. Yeah. That's, that's good. You, you clarified that. Yeah. I mean, it's a free thing. And then the whole notification thing and keeping that yeah. That communication and all of that streamlined that way makes, makes perfect sense. I never thought about it like, uh, from that perspective. But yeah, maybe some people will appreciate the link when you add that feature. That's not a deep breaker anyways. I just, uh, yeah, that just explained it very well. Cool. So 

Jay: Thanks.

Benedikt: I actually didn't expect this, this to be all about master, but I had, so like I was so interested in, in a couple of things. It almost sounds like a commercial. So, uh, but I but, but I think it's still interesting for people to hear this because I really wanted to people under to, to understand what this actually is and what AI mastering actually is and why they don't need to be afraid of it. So, and I really encourage people to just try it out for free, but I also wanna say something where, especially the ones who are not familiar with your work or who are, maybe are from a different genre or something. You are a musician at heart yourself, and you are an artist. You understand their perspective. You are like, the work you've done is a lot of like independent DIY sort of stuff. It's a lot of punk rock. It's a lot of that type of thing, which means that you. That might or might not be different from other companies who are doing something like that, but you definitely care about the art and about the emotion coming across in the end and about how the artist feels about how close they are to their music and that you don't wanna mess this up in mastering and mixing and whatnot. So you are aware of all that. And I think that is also something makes a difference to me. Like, and that was immediately the thing that made me try it actually be because I knew of your background and I kind of immediately had more trust in you in that product than I had in like other products. And it turned out that I was right and it, it, it is as good as I hope it would be. And um, so maybe you can, you can talk a little bit about, about that whole background too, because I, I feel like you didn't just wanna make a product, but you really care and you have always cared about the art and about the integrity of it and the authenticity and about what the artists feel like and how they are close to their art and all of that. .

Jay: so I started playing guitar around 12 and I started my first band when I was 14. And my favorite band is Fugazi and I was just into like punk and I was straight edge, like for most of my life. And I was just like part of these communities. I just really loved like punk skateboarding got into hardcore a little bit later. And then I still like a huge emo kid and all of that stuff. So like, yeah, I I come from I don't know these genres where the expectation is just to be authentic. we know that we're not gonna become rich and famous playing this type of music, you know, like it, that's never the point, the point is just that, like, it's a, it's expressive. It's what we like. Uh, and we wanted to be a part of that. I felt the exact same way about skateboarding too. And um, yeah, those are sort of my ethics and, and sort of where I come from with that stuff. and how that relates to the inception of like creating something like monster is, is that like, a perfect example is back to that story where it's like, I wasn't going to put this out until I knew it was good, especially if we're going to put my name in it. Right. Like, yeah, it just has to be good. I feel about it the same way. I feel about every single record I do. Every relationship I have where it's like, I really have to stand behind this, or I just. Wouldn't be able to put it out, you know, and it's like, I think the artists that I work with, hopefully I think they experience like an attention to detail and a thoroughness in my process. And in my records that I hopefully beats their expectations because I very, very much care about, uh, the records that I make and the relationships that I've gained through the records that I make. And so I think that's sort of intrinsic to just how I like to operate through in life in general. And Ooh, life in general, a great MXP X record by the way. Um, but yeah,

Benedikt: True. 

Jay: but yeah, that's really dating myself, but another aside, my Carra from MXP X and I were born in the same hospital in Bremerton, Washington, but um, yeah, yeah. Anyway, um, getting back on track. Um, yeah, so That's really nice to hear you say that you, we only know each other so well, but that you perceived something like that from me and that made you want to try it. And that's good. Cause I can totally understand how When it's just like a, a company, it feels way more just like a product, you know what I mean? And you're like, ah, and we're like probably rightfully distrustful of a lot of companies anyway, you know? And so like here it's like I have skin in the game. you know what 

Benedikt: Yeah, totally, totally, and and we've been talking about, about that whole topic on the other conversation that we had on the Outback recordings podcast that we did two years ago, where we kind of were. It's funny how a lot of people from our scene, from the punk scene, from the DIY scene, uh, from like those types of people who just had to figure things out or who had to create something from nothing or learn something themselves, you know, how some of these people end up doing cool shit and like building cool things and building these small little companies and like, and a lot of them are actually really good at that really successful at that. Or you'll find people like that also in like major label, major labels sometimes, or like in like other companies like consulting people, or like, it's like funny where, where, where those people sometimes come from. And I think it's just because you've learned how to solve problems really well. You had to do a lot of shit yourself. You have to learn it yourself the hard way in a way. And it's like, there's, there's a lot of, there are a lot of examples like that. And, And master is just one of those companies where I, feel like I, I don't know. I it's, it's, it's even fun to just know that you can. Support a company like that compared to some other company without naming any names, but like that's also part of it That's some part of it that makes it even more enjoyable for me. I mean this week, by the time this episode is out, it will, the other one that I'm gonna talk be talking about will already be out. But this week we have an episode with day from room sound. We talked to him last week recorded thing. Yeah. And it's a similar thing. Like, you know, not only is the product really, really, really great, but like if you know the people behind it and if you know their story and how much they care and how like how ridiculous the, the effort is that they put into this and

all of that it's even better. And like that dude, that interview with Dave was like crazy. Once he explained to us what went into this, like he explained the whole process and everything, and like, it. I thought it would be crazy, but it's like way crazier than I thought it was. And, uh, that whole process of making those samples. And when you hear how much people put into something like this and where they come from and why it matters to them and all of that makes it even better to me. And, uh, so, so I'm, I'm excited for all those products. Way more than I am excited for like some, some big things that, you know, where I dunno, it's like,

Jay: Uh, dude, it's a, it's a labor, it's a labor of love. It comes from a punk ethic. Uh, I know Dave really well. I've done two drum sample libraries with Dave. And I've gotten to look behind the curtain a little bit on how much work he puts in it is crazy. And he's also, he wanna talk about ethics and stuff. Like he's one of the best dudes period and what, you know, what's funny, man, is a guy like Dave, he's creating something kind of like I did that, like is gonna piss some people off, right? Like, like it's a, drum sample library. Now those are like pretty like commonly used. Now I'd say like, we're kind of over the hump with that. But drum sample libraries in just sampling in general started like I was there like people. The older generation was like just get a drummer dude, you know, like whatever. And you're like, ah, that's a different thing kind of though. And like, you know, you listen to every modern record now that has samples on it, basically, you know, like, 

Benedikt: yeah, 

Jay: yeah, 

Benedikt: It doesn't have to sound like samples though. And that that's similar to what you did there. Like you take a concept that has been there, but like people don't not, everybody really likes it because it has flaws. And because it's not sometimes not really authentic and stuff, but you still believe that there's the potential. And then you make, you still wanna use it, but you just make it better and you make you get it to a point where you can actually use it. And it doesn't sound like samples anymore, but you get all the benefits and it's same thing. Similar thing with like something like master where AI mastering was a thing, but it was not something that was like, what, like the people accepted really. And a lot of it didn't really sound great, so somebody needs to make it so that people can finally enjoy it.

and, and can finally use it, you know? So yeah, you didn't invent it but you made it, you made your version of it. And I hope that. people enjoy it as much as I do. 

Jay: Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah. I think we, you find that like iteration with products all the time, right? Like you, you saw it with like, MySpace, like kind of janky, but like, you know, it was like, it was the predecessor to what was basically going to take over the world. You know what I mean? It's like, we see it with like product iterations all the time. We think about cell phones or computers and everything, you know? And it's like, uh, there there's like a good concept that has not yet maturely been executed. And then, so usually the mature execution of that concept comes a little later 

Benedikt: Yeah, for sure. When it comes to your mixes, that's also something that I find interesting, but that we often Don think about. We're hesitant to use like AI mastering and stuff, but we use other tools that do a lot of things automatically all the time in our mixes without really questioning it. And we embrace it a lot because it's faster and it's great. And like, so so, so how about, what about your current workflow? Are you still doing a lot of things like outside the box analog stuff when you mix, do you do are you mostly in the box and if you're like in the stuff you do in the box, do you yourself like trust. Intelligent tools to do part of the work for you Like, is that something you do yourself because that's similar, right? You trust somebody's tool to do the job And it does it automatically. So, so what what's that. like for

Jay: great. Great, great questions. So I've, I've migrated. I've got, if you look down here, we've got our compressors and whatnot and um, you know, we've got a whole studio here full of Mike PR and. Cues and whatever. And so that stuff used to be used in a hybrid fashion these days. I just use it on the way in and I think that's a Testament to the tools that just good. And so I think the last few years that I was hybrid mixing was sort of out of this, like guilt that like, I felt kind of like a loser for just mixing in the box or whatever, 

Benedikt: especially if you have the gear and you're not using it, that 

Jay: I buy this for. Yeah. 

Benedikt: Yeah. Same year I stopped recording two years ago, but I was still too Rex full of stuff in front of me. And I feel like I have to use it. So, you know, 

Jay: Yeah. I know. 

Benedikt: you know, so yeah. 

Jay: And it, you know, that stuff is fun to use, but you know, like I'm still a very active producer here. and, so I'm tracking through that stuff constantly, you know, and I, I think everything still gets used, but it just gets used in the way in I'm deep enough into. My career as a producer where I trust my gut and I trust my ears when I grab a signal on the way in, you know, I know what it takes to over bake something. And I know about how far I can push things in and how to derive the benefits from like the nicer kind of warmer analog harmonics, if that's what you're going for And stuff. So I bring my stuff in in a way that I feel like already sounds really good. And, but then dude, not only do I mix in the box, I mix strictly on headphones now. So I don't, I don't even like these monitors back here, like we track with them, but like you won't see me delivering a funnel mix with them anymore. that was sort of born out of necessity when, my son was born And I had to be able to make him anywhere. So I've. I own far too many computers, many of them have an identical, uh, laptops and computers. They have an identical folder structure, plugins. Everything's like Dropbox, all synced and all that stuff. And all my projects get recorded into Dropbox as we're recording. So we're gaining redundant. Like every time I record, uh, vocal, whatever it's being uploaded, it's being redundantly stored. And so what's cool is that let's say I'm working down here, whatever it is, but I need to make a mixed revision. I'm on the road, uh, whatever, I'm at my grandma's house for Thanksgiving. This literally happens over here and uh and someone goes, Hey, dude, I know it's Thanksgiving, but you know, whatever. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, hold on. I got you. And I can go, boo. Right. And I just like download that project if you know, whatever, if I don't have enough, like internal storage, I can grab that one. Pop it open. And I just always keep like a D with me, like some little interface and just to make sure that my headphones have enough juice so that I can hear them in the way that I'm used to being able to hear them. I'll make the revision. I'll upload it to monster. Right. And they'll get their notification. I'll thank you, dude, to a lifesaver. And here's the thing, like when we talk about like trusting tools, all that's required to trust a tool is liking the output. Right. So it's like, that's it? So if you like the output, like that's the whole thing. So like, yeah. Like, no, I don't EQ my overhead's nearly as much anymore. Now that sooth exists because it's, it's just better, you 

Benedikt: Yes. Yes. And I wouldn't and I would, and I would never make 36 tiny notches dynamic, like dynamic notches anyways, with a Ry hue, but like if so can do it and it sounds great, then I will, I'm happy to let it do the thing, you know? 

Jay: Oh, yeah. I mean, talk about like a great new company with not that many products, but the products they have, like truly solve problems. And soothe. Like, I don't know, man. I've heard a couple people talk shit on soothe and I'm just like, why? Like, it's just like, it's so good. 

Benedikt: too. Yeah. 

Jay: I use it everywhere. I use it. I use it if I'm doing it like a master personally, and I find that they like have too much, this is common. Like the bass guitar, like 90 to one 20, something like that. But the base, I know I check it. It's primarily living in the center of the mix. I can bring Sue all the way down there. I can put it into mid mode. Right. And, and I can dynamically cuz usually on bass guitar, it's just, it's attributed to like us string, not all the strings, it's usually they've got a fucking dead floppy, low string. Right. And they go up the the fretboard and something about like shortening the length of the string causes this like thing to happen. And then when that happens, I'm like, God damn it. There goes my headroom and I have to get in there and I'll use soothe in mid mode and I'll just like tuck it down, just, you know, for that. And, and the cool thing is if it is just being a problem in those moments and I dial in my settings, right. I can kind of set it and forget it. And any time the base so happens to go, woo. Right. It'll go. 

Benedikt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. exactly. exactly. Exactly. Especially like, yeah, you can do since, since, uh, Soth two, uh, came out, I think, uh, you can do, you can do it on the low end. End. Yeah. That's that's yeah. And same. I love it. I can totally see when people like abuse these tools because they don't really understand them. Or like I've heard a bunch of mixes where the guitars and symbols were just turned into white noise, basically because no, you know, no, no character anymore. And like, people go crazy with those resonance, but I mean, you can learn that stuff and it takes a while and then you get it and then it's awesome. And it's yeah. I I love it. 

Jay: what you're talking about is just, 

Benedikt: like talk, talk about like, 

Jay: oh, Goho for rules 

Benedikt: Like, 

Jay: is another one that rules, but like, you're just talking about people who just made a bad mix and made bad choices. It sooth didn't make them make that bad choice. Right. They just got a little trigger, happy with their new plugin and hopefully they'll come back to Jesus here soon enough. But you know, like , that's, that's all that happened. It's like, and that's what I'm saying. Like, if the output is good, then, then that validates everything. So if the output sucks, it's just cuz you made a bad choice, you know? I mean I'm sure maybe there's some plugins that exist that all they do is make stuff bad. But I personally, I can't think of any at the moment.

Benedikt: yeah, totally. So, so long story short, you are totally trust tools like that and use 'em all the time and you're happy that they make you a faster, better mixer and you don't feel like it's like your work is worth less because of that or something. Like, I think quite the opposite is true because the less time you spend listening to a song, while you mix the more like objective you, you, you stay and the better are the decisions you're gonna make. So I think, I think a mix is not worth more just because someone spent twice the amount of time on it. I think the opposite is oftentimes the case. And if you have tools that just allow you to work intuitively and quickly and keep your use fresh and make it fun and all of that, then I think the outcome will not be worse because of that. Quite the

Jay: Well, I mean, look at, look at a guy like Chris Lordie right. I know he has his like assistant set, everything up for him and stuff. He, he walks in the studio and he hits play. Right. And his, his thing, from what I understand, like most of his mixes per song are about three hours per song. And he does, he, I think his assistant sets it all up. He comes in and then he does one. Cool. They have to print all the stuff. He goes to lunch probably in his Lamborghini or something. Right. And then like 

Benedikt: yep. 

Jay: he comes, he comes back from lunch and he does another one. That's another three hours. Now I won't say that. I know exact, I have friends that have done mixes with CLA and that's, he's getting a real nice hourly rate if that's the case, 

Benedikt: yes, absolutely. I, I know I have that too. I had those conversations too. And then there's the other thing if you're in Australia and he, I don't know, I haven't experienced myself, but I've talked to someone in Australia who has, where it was like, You get a call at like 3:00 AM that the mix that crystal energy has done is done and you have like two hours to make revision requests. And if you don't do it, like the next mix is on the desk. And it's like, I know it's just done. So things like that too, not to talk shit about crystal energy, but 

Jay: no 

Benedikt: um, 

Jay: mixer. 

Benedikt: yeah, exactly. But, so that means the overall mixing takes him. I don't know, five hours including revisions stuff. And then he's onto the next one, but his mixes don't suck because of that. It's he, he just knows what he's doing. He's very fast and he does it intuitively, 

Jay: yeah. And there's something to be said there too, for like, when people are, are paying for like my craft or your craft as a mixing engineer, they're not paying for how long we spent on their mix. They're, they're mostly paying for the last 18 years of my life. Right. Where I've like spent like almost two decades now, like learning how to do this and getting good at this. and so it's like, yes, I'm going like to take less time. I will charge you more money to take less time now than I would've 10 years ago. But you will be happier end.

Benedikt: And that's all that matters. Yeah, absolutely. That's all that matters. Uh, like there there's Andrew SEPs says this all the time. Whenever I'll listen to a podcast, there's something with he on he's always like, all that matters is what comes out of the speakers. and, uh, then yeah,

Jay: Well, dude, shes is like, yeah, shes. Like why I was like, I really took a leap into just going fully digital and headphones and stuff. Cuz I was listening to him and he's got a million awards. He's got so many amazing mixes. He's got like two Neve consoles and a whole room full of gear. And he is like, oh yeah, I use this. And he is like pointing to his MacBook and I was like, okay, well 

Benedikt: headphones. Yep.

Jay: yeah, exactly. And I was like, all right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

Benedikt: Yeah, totally, crazy. Like, yeah. Yeah. And then, then even guys, like, I just heard a podcast of him with, with Michael Brower, also one of the best mixers ever on this planet. And like apparently Michael Brower called Andrew Sheps and he was all like nervous and, and, uh, he was basically panicking because he planned to to go to a hybrid setup and then, eventually in the box. and he just didn't know if he was good enough to do that And if if all these clients would go away and all that. So he called Andrew HES to get advice from him, Like how he pulled it off. And that just shows how insecure even the best mixers are when he comes to that sort of stuff. And then, but when they do it, nothing bad happens and they're just as good as they always were. because they always made their decisions with their ears anyways. And not with the tools. So, so, uh, there's one thing though that I think, and that's something, I wanted to ask you real quick. There's something I love to do when I mix and that might completely be nonsense, but maybe you've done something, something similar when I get files that haven't been tracked really well. Like not, not the stuff that you track in your studio where you use the stuff the good stuff on the way in. I do that too. But when I get files that have been tracked into some focus, Right. Interface with nothing on it and like, they just, something's just missing. And again, I, I said focus, right. Just because that's a cliche, but like into the interface.

Jay: there goes your focus, right? Sponsorship

Benedikt: exactly. but you know exactly what I mean any of, of any normal interface. And then. you listen back and it's, it's good, but you know, it's, something's missing and yes, you can do all kinds of things in the mix. Boring. Yeah. Boring is mainly the thing. What I love to do is I take an hour or So or half an hour or some 15 minutes before I mix, depending on the thing. And I will run, I will basically reamp stuff like before I start mixing, I will run a vocal out, out of the computer, into whatever I have and back into the computer and I will replace, or like rerecord these, these tracks and just give them what I think, they're lacking. And then I, I start mixing and that might be totally like, not necessary, but to me it always feels more exciting and there is a level of randomness and like, and like a level of excitement to it that I just enjoy. And then I'm all in the box for the most part. Yeah. I'm all in the box, but I just like, to do that. and is that something you've ever done? Is that something that makes sense to you or 

Jay: I do I do it all the time. when I say I'm in the box, I just mean like once we've gathered, what's going to be the final tracks that I'm mixing then. Yes. primarily with vocals. I'll be honest. It's like, usually i, I can stay in the box with almost anything, but sometimes a vocal. just feels boring. And usually what it needs for me is some distressors style like, or, or I've got these like 1176 blues, it needs some sort of like grit character that I wish happened on the way in where I can actually sort of understand why maybe the tracking engineer was like, well, I'm not mixing this. I want to give Jay the maximum amount of options here. So he was really conservative maybe with like, okay. I was just like, whatever, or, you know, maybe they're on a budget and they just didn't have the gear. So yeah, they just went direct into like an interface and just didn't have like a lot of character to it. So yeah, I, I do that. All the time. And I'll usually do it in a batch. Usually what I'll find is I can find a setting that I'm like, yep. See, one thing I really like is like, when I'm pushing into like analog stuff is I like it when the loudest stuff kind of causes that a little bit of that like nice distortion, you know what I mean? So that's sort of how I like gain stage my outboard compression. And I'll usually use a disc too, or depending on the genre three mode, if I'm using a stressor and like, I give it that little bit, like I find the loudest, what's like the loudest moment gonna be. And like how much like crunch on that. Do I want, I'll set it for that. And then usually, and then I'll check the software passages as well, too, but usually like, that's a good place to go then I can just, I, we get two into it, but I can set up how I do my, like my routing for my tracks through a group bus. And they all just go, I do like this weird render and place trick, and then they all just go through. I get, I have the originals and write under 'em. I get like the new baked ones. And then I can look at like, Cubase will be like, all right, Sometimes, if there's a lot of backing vocals and it's a full-length record, it's like, these will be done in six hours, you know, whatever it is. And I just go like, boo

Benedikt: yes. 

Jay: I go about, yeah, I go about my day. And like this just turns into like a, a stressor machine.

Benedikt: Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's super interesting to hear that, that you do that too. And Yeah. there's something about this that that's just exciting and it's very similar to, to, to what I do. Yeah. It's like revamping in a way. Okay, cool. That's that's a, and, and you don't have to do whole recall thing because these are things that I don't have to change ever, like this, not something that's gonna ever be part of a vision request, because it's just about the character and I can always still make things louder, brighter, or whatever. And like, so I don't have to worry about that. Okay. Awesome. Cool. Well, that has been amazing. And, uh, I yeah, totally. And I hope that people. Uh, we'll give a master a shot. And I don't know the final thing that I wanted to to ask, ask, but I I'm sure you probably can't answer this or won't answer it, but like, is there, is there some sort of chain or something under the hood that we can like, sort of understand or is there, are there tools that we may, we might even know? What do, is this plugins that you use? There is this, of course you don't, you can't tell us what exactly you do, but is this, is this like a, is this something you created from scratch or is this a mastering chain in a way? Because I've always wondered what, how, how I can like, think of what is actually going on.

Jay: Yeah. So I, when I started prototyping, it definitely started with in, in a course manner like that, where it's just like, yeah, let's stack this type of stuff, like whatever. And, but at some point you're just, you need more intelligence than that. Right? So like, like that was sort of part of the proof of concept, but, you know, we need to be able to. Look at a whole, like there's no plugin that is gonna be able to like analyze an entire song, figure out what the loudest dynamic passage is like, you know what I mean? So like that can map the entire shape and, and all that stuff. So like you're smart to think of, yes. Like a great way to get started, but I think I'm mature iteration of this product really needs to be very nimble um, and be able to like really look at everything that's going on. So for sure some of the processes, like we've been inspired by the cool thing is like, we don't have to like write goos and stuff. Right. Because like, yeah, like we just we, we get to process in the back end. And based on like, our process is very, very fast, but you know, the front end of our process, Is under a minute for sure. On a normal length song. It's actually the rendering of the high res uh, file with all of our computation. That's the part that takes the most amount of time, because it's all like really high end stuff. And because we not too, too nerdy here, but like, we run all this stuff, uh, in, you know, on VMs and we have to be able to like scale those up, like in parallelization and all of that stuff. And we have to manage all that stuff and things spooling up and spinning down and all of that, like um, from a cost basis, you know, the benefit to our users, for us to increase our CPU output by like 25%, doesn't really make like, they don't really care. They're still getting a master in three or four minutes and that's great for them. And then it lets us be a little bit more cost efficient on our end as well. So but you know, finding that balance, like our VM costs have absolutely gone up, like, as we've like created new algorithms and we've sped up database things and like our user base grows and we have more to manage like, yeah. Like our, our just residual cost of existing has increased, but but yeah, we've got, I mean, still, like we do, company's very solvent. Like we're fine.

but, but Yeah. um, Even if I were to try to describe, I don't know that at this point, I even could describe to you exactly because it's a collaboration between myself and Joe, our CTO, and like, like he does all at this point, he does all like the heavy lifting with the code and we've had other people work on the project too. And like had other devs in here and stuff like that. But you know, like how the sausage is made at this point, like he's, we've worked together in like the outcomes that I desire worked along with him. And there's code written that like, I don't even know what it is, you know,

Benedikt: Yeah. To, to totally, yeah. That I, I thought that would be the answer. I was just thinking, because that would've led me to the next thing then, uh, in the future. And when you look to what's, what's coming next, I, thought that maybe if you have like if there's some tools that you have developed underneath the happening on underneath the hood or something I felt like, well, maybe, maybe you could turn some of it into a plugin or, you know, do other things with it and stuff like that. Yeah. Uh, but then you had the whole, you would have the whole gooey part. And then I think you, at this point you probably don't need another business.

Jay: Yeah. There's there's that? And yeah, I agree. So one, some things, you know, and nobody take this as gospel as it's definitely happening, but it's things that we've talked about. We've talked about creating a desktop application for Mac and P C that creates a mirrored folder structure of your master account on your hard drive, so that you could just kind of ALA Dropbox, you could just drag things into certain folders and then they would upload and process, but see then you, it's still not super elegant though, because then you get into things where it's Like, well, what mastering setting did you want to use? What, what revision is this? like do you know what I'm saying? So it's like, it's much easier for us to just keep it very simple and elegant through like every we can control everything. Like you're sort of opening up Pandora's box. If you're starting to create a desktop app and all of this stuff, you know, if It's something that we've talked about a lot. And again, I like to think of the company, like, like apple a little bit in the sense it's like, I feel like they're not first, but they're often very refined and I like don't want to put stuff out. That's like kind of half works and whatever. It's like, anything we put out, I want it to be like, oh, this is slick.

Benedikt: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cool, awesome. Awesome, dude. I wonder how you even have the time to do all the things that you already do. So I, don't I think, I think anything. Yeah. Even if nothing, you comes after that, you've done plenty at this point and you have and you have plenty, plenty to do at the moment. So I, I always wonder like how people, like I do a lot of shit, but like running these, a company like that, a software company, plus producing, mixing, plus mentoring, plus having a family, plus, you know, all the things you do is, is pretty mind boggling to me. Um, When I look at the, the volume and the output that you have, yeah, it's pretty crazy. And I'm sure that you probably won't, uh, stop anytime soon.

Jay: Yeah, it is weird to think that like three years, maybe I had thought of doing something like master three years ago, but definitely three and a half years ago. I probably hadn't had the thought yet. You know? And then like, I'm hoping that we, you know, we hold onto this company for ever for decades, whatever it is. And we finally, we get better. So it's cool to feel like we're at a very mature phase of it now. Definitely the most mature ever, but it is weird to think like, oh, that really only was a few years ago. Huh? Like what's like what's what's 20, 27 look like, you know

Benedikt: Yeah. Yeah. for sure. For sure. Yeah. I think again, these tools enable more musicians to make, to put out more great music and it's, it removes one of the barriers. It removes one of the most complex and abstract things in way that people never really understood. Anyways, a lot of them, at least, I mean, myself included, it took me forever to, to be able to, to say confidently, like I can mix and I can master for other people. I was mixing and producing all of that, but it took me way longer to be able to, to say like, yeah, I, I think I know what I'm doing when I'm mastering So this just removes that barrier, that bottleneck and makes it accessible to a lot of people and the result will be more great art more frequently. And I'm all for that, like, 

yes. Cool. So if people wanna try this, they go to master.io and then you can sign up for, I think, a free trial that you mentioned, right. 

Jay: Yeah, it's not even trial. You just make an account and start, start uploading stuff. And then if you want to download or, or whatever, or if you want more features unlocked, then you can just pick one of the plans. And like, you know, we've got three plans. It's very comparatively speaking. It's, it's fractions, you know, of, of the cost of the traditional method. And again, infinitely more convenient. So yeah, just get in there, kick the tires, upload some stuff. I think you really like it. And then if you wanna pick up a plan, pick up whichever one you want.

Benedikt: Awesome. And I would encourage you to do a blind test, like a real blind test, like try to do to, if you, if you don't trust the thing, if you think other masters or your masters are better, do a blind test or double blind test or whatever you wanna do, but just make sure you really don't know what you're listening to. And I, I think most people will be surprised. I definitely was 

Jay: well, that's great to hear. I wa I wa sometimes I still am.

Benedikt: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally. Totally. All right, Jay, thank you so much for your time. I was a little late because my microphone was acting up, so I, I took up more of Jay's time than I wanted to today. Uh, thank you so much for, for sticking and sticking around doing this with me. And Yeah if, if I get questions from the community or if like people are still confused about something, can I just ask you or can I, you know, can they 

get in touch? Do you have something like. 

Jay: Yeah, Oh, just email me J monster.io. The, the name of the name of the website is funny. So it's my name. It's M a a S and then T R think of Tumblr, but with my name and, uh, yeah, so it's J it's j@monster.io and, uh, monster IO. Think of Tumblr. Uh that's our, that's our new slogan. Yeah. Um, And yeah, they, they can totally hit me up there. If they have questions, I'm happy to walk people through things. I can, I can direct people to, to videos that we have that explain everything as well, too. So, 

Benedikt: awesome. Really cool of you. Great. Then, uh, enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much again for doing this. And, uh, we're looking forward to the future of master and to more great records that you are working on. I know you've just been to Europe, doing exciting stuff there with people. So you're still active looking forward to that too. And if people you're not familiar with Jay's work just Google him, Jay Mo you'll find where the record he's worked on. You find his credits and, uh, it's, it's impressive. So, all 

right. 

Jay: Awesome. you too.

Benedikt: Bye. But.