Master & Commander: Q&A with Mike Kalajian

In an effort to learn more about the people who finish your favorite artists’ records, we got in touch with a few mastering heavyweights, the first being Mike Kalajian, chief engineer at Rogue Planet Mastering. Given his impressive portfolio featuring artists like Senses Fail, Circa Survive, Saosin, and Papa Roach, it’s safe to say that you’ve heard his work. We had the opportunity to chat with Mike via Zoom recently, where he answered some of our questions.

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On Mastering

“So my process is basically to put the song on and pretend I’m the listener. Then, I react to the song. Then, I try to make that reaction as positive as possible.”

What’s Rogue Planet Mastering all about?

I was engineering and producing for years. Doing that, I had worked with every mastering engineer under the sun. I didn’t really see a correlation between how much money you spent and what the quality was -- I mean, there are guys who are unbelievable who are really expensive and it’s justified, and then there are guys who are a great value. But there are also a lot of outliers. It’s not super correlated. So I was tired of paying a lot of money for people who I thought were going to be really excellent and getting something back that I didn’t feel was really excellent. 

I kind of wanted to be the shop that gave you the amenities of a big name studio without having to spend a million dollars or having to go through three people to get to your mastering engineer. I wanted to offer the same attention to detail as a big name studio -- not just in regard to mastering. I wanted to be able to get an email two years after a project was completed and still deliver the requested files, unlike a normal home studio. 

Different mastering engineers have different approaches and philosophies regarding the mastering process. What’s Mike’s mastering style?

The short answer from where I’m sitting, is that I don’t know. It’s so instinctual now. I sit down, I put on a song, and I listen to the key reference points of the song: the verse, the chorus, and maybe the weird harmonica solo or something. I get a feel for where the different coordinates are, sonically, in a song. and then I just kind of start twisting knobs. There’s certainly a thought process behind it, but it’s gotten to a point where it’s like, there are so many different routes you can go when a song comes in -- sometimes it needs nothing, sometimes it needs compression, sometimes it needs EQ, sometimes the immediate thing that stands out is the low-end, sometimes it’s the top -- you just hear it and decide “Okay, this is where this needs to go”. And it comes down to the fact that by doing the same things so many times with the same gear, I just know what changes I can make to take a song in the direction that it needs to go. So my process is basically to put the song on and pretend I’m the listener. Then, I react to the song. Then, I try to make that reaction as positive as possible. 

Mastering Engineers are responsible for delivering a listening experience to consumers. How do you want your listeners to feel when they hear your records?

It’s different from song to song, but I also think that there’s a general threshold of how loud people like to listen to music or how soft. And then there’s some sort of a guideline to what tends to sound bad, you know. I always look at it like there’s a range. And if you can get everything to kind of sit within that range from a dynamic perspective and from an EQ perspective and it serves the song, it’s pretty good. 

One of the guys I worked with said that you want to have the kind of song that makes you want to turn it up, not down. It’s a moving target, but you know it when you hear it. When I hear a record that has that sound, I make a note of it to use as a reference. 

As a certified member of the Knif crew, how have you been using your Vari Mu lately?

I’ve been using the Vari Mu for the same thing for close to 5 years now. So I demo’d the Soma from ProAudioToys first and I loved it so much that I ordered one for myself. Then I bought two more Knif pieces, sight unseen. The compressor, specifically, sits on one position in the chain and it’s a slow attack, super fast release with the bass rolled off in the side chain. It’s getting almost no compression at all. I feed it a little bit of gain to get that needle moving and to me, it does some really magical things to the mix. 

I think that it could do other things really well, too, but I think that all of the Knif stuff is great at giving me this big, huge, tone. So I’m kind of afraid to change anything in my chain because, well, I feel like I’ve solved this puzzle that does some of the work for me. 

Not your average home studio. Sporting Bowers & Wilkins 802 Nautilus Floorstanders and gear from the likes of Knif and Elysia, Rogue Planet Mastering is a home studio that is far from typical.

On Audiophilia

“I almost don’t want to tune in to anything else other than my studio because I don’t want to listen critically anywhere else.”

When you’re not in your mastering suite, what’s your leisure-listening system like?

So I have these JBL L100s that sound 50% cool, 50% terrible. Basically, some of the drivers are designed to be out of phase and it sounds weird. Like one of the drivers is literally playing out of phase with another one, it’s super weird. 

I had a set when I was 19 and I was mixing on them, which was totally inappropriate. But going back and listening to those mixes, I thought that there was something cool about them. Then, my father saw a set of them at a Salvation Army marked for $30 each. There wasn’t a chip, crack, or dent on these speakers. He knew exactly what they were and he asked the lady at the counter if they were priced as a set or each, arguing that when you buy a pair of shoes, they aren’t priced individually. So, she agreed and he bought the set for $30. Those were my listening speakers, but now my kids push in the tweeters so honestly I listen to music in my car, which has the best consumer stereo I’ve heard in a while, it’s surprisingly good. I almost don’t want to tune in to anything else other than my studio because I don’t want to listen critically anywhere else. 

We have one of those Bowers & Wilkins zeppelin things and it makes everything sound good, like a lot of modern Bluetooth speakers. And that’s totally fine by me. 

When you think about records as an audiophile, how far back into the recording process do you go in your assessment? Do you consider things like the signal path of specific elements of program content?

I don’t think I ever think about it from that far back. The more I got into just mastering and the less production I did, the less I was interested in the specific ingredients in a track. Like people will say “Oh I used this specific converter” and I’m like, “Okay!”. It’s not that I don’t care, but even with my best clients, I don’t know what kind of gear they’re using. I used to be the guy that would nerd out over 500k versus 750k potentiometers in guitars and stuff like that, like I would destroy guitars by replacing the pickups over and over. Now, as a mastering engineer, I play the song and react to the whole thing. I try not to get caught up in the minutia if it means losing sight of the overall experience.

If you google “Audiophile music”, you get a wide variety of results. What’s a record that you’d call audiophile-grade?

One of my favorite-sounding records is Peter Gabriel’s “Up”. I think that is one of the best sounding records. Like if you told me that I was going to go listen to a set of $250,000 speakers and asked me what record I was going to listen to, that’s the one. I just think it was recorded so insanely well. It’s super dynamic and it’s quieter than I probably have the guts to make a record, but if you’re Peter Gabriel, you can get away with it. Of course, there are standout records in every genre that sound fantastic, like Deadmau5 or something where the entire frequency spectrum is represented, but “Up”, to me, is a recording masterpiece that represents acoustic elements better than anything else. 

Is there a record that you’ve worked on that you would define as a standard for audiophiles?

Okay, I want to preface this by saying that I get a lot of great-sounding stuff, I could really give you dozens. But one producer that immediately stands to me when you use the term “audiophile” is Cale Hawkins. The dynamic range that he works with is so intentional and so good. When I get really dynamic stuff, I feel I need to reign it in, but with his stuff, I get the loud sections loud enough and then I let everything trickle down under it and let it get super, super quiet. My idea of “audiophile” is kinda using all the range you’ve got. Both Spectrally and dynamically.

Thrift store treasure. “So I have these JBL L100s that sound 50% cool, 50% terrible.”

Choice Records

“They were one of my favorite bands since high school and they hit me up to master their last record and I just couldn’t believe it.”

It’s date night. What record do you use to set the mood?

Oh man, my wife and I were just laughing about this. We both listen to stuff that is the opposite of a lot of the stuff that I master. Like I’m really into Radiohead, so Kid A would probably be one. I like Tycho and shoegazey indie-rock like Turnover’s Peripheral Vision if we’re hanging out, having a couple drinks. 

Recently, I got into this artist Sleepy Fish and they’re so cool. It’s like this trip hop instrumental stuff with guitar and piano. I’ve been into a lot of that instrumental stuff lately, like Nils Frahm piano stuff. It’s weird because I do a lot of hard rock and pop that’s vocal-driven. I’m trying to make these really energetic tracks most of the time, so if I’m driving or just trying to hang out, I listen to something that makes me feel like I’m driving through a movie montage. 

What’s your sadboi record? 

I grew up a late 90s/early 2000s emo kid, so I listened to all of the sadboi records. Jimmy Eat World, Get Up Kids, Promise Ring, all that stuff. I love them all, so it’s hard to just name one. But, if I got dumped tomorrow, I’d put on Saves the Day’s Stay What You Are. That would be my crying record. 

They were one of my favorite bands since high school and they hit me up to master their last record and I just couldn't believe it. 

Like us, you’re a big fan of Polyenso’s One Big Particular Loop. Can we talk about that?

So I was somehow given demos for One Big Particular Loop because I was a huge fan of Oceana’s Clean Head record. Oceana was like a Rise Records band doing that brand of heavy music Rise kinda put on the map. As far as I know, Oceana was made up of the same guys that are in Polyenso. Anyway, a buddy of mine knew that I was a big fan of them and gave me some demos of One Big Particular Loop and I remember hearing Danger Signs in my car and thinking “this is amazing”. Like there were parallels between Radiohead and this rock and roll thing with odd time signatures. I think Matt Goldman was involved with that record and I’ve always been a fan of his work. The first song in my mastering reference playlist is Falling in Rain. It’s a fantastic record and I could listen to it a million times in a row. 

On Mixing

“The silver lining is that if it’s a good song, it’s a good song, regardless of how loud or quiet it is.”

Some mix issues are more common than others. What are you seeing right now that engineers could do better?

The thing I see the most is a lot of buildup in the upper midrange where 2-way speakers crossover around 2k or 3k. And that’s because they can’t hear it. But with the 802’s, all that stuff is pushed right in your face. That’s usually not a problem because you don’t get a lot of pushback when you clean that up. 

The thing that kills me is when I get records where the reference master is just slammed to death. It’s so easy to think that master is better than what I give them because it’s just so loud. So when that happens, I have to call them and tell them that what I give them is not going to be as loud as what they’re used to hearing. But then I tell them that it’s going to be just as loud, if not louder, than everything else in their genre. I have to ask them to trust me. I’ve always been about what the client wants, but I have to humbly and respectfully intervene when they’ve been habituated to a reference master that’s probably not what they actually want. 

I couldn’t imagine telling Mike Kalajian that his record isn’t loud enough. 

It happens. And when it does happen, I give them a master that’s louder than their reference master along with a “quieter” master that’s still really loud -- like -5 RMS instead of -3. The silver lining is that if it’s a good song, it’s a good song, regardless of how loud or quiet it is. 

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It was an absolute pleasure speaking with Mike — he’s a cool guy. Learn more about how cool Mike and Rogue Planet Mastering are by heading to their website.

Too Much Bass. Not Enough Space.

Equal Loudness Curves from 20dB - 90dB

It’s amazing how far mix engineers have come in the past few years. Mix engineers have learned advanced techniques because of our great friend “the Internet”. From audio-engineering forums to YouTube tutorials, virtually every concept of music production has been made a part of the information superhighway. 

However, I’ve noticed that it’s often easy to direct the majority of one’s attention to the cool concepts within the realm of audio engineering. For example, I would argue that the average mix engineer has virtually no interest in phase relationships beyond that of an inverted snare bottom microphone. That’s just fine -- for that is the reason that people like me even exist. 

That being said, there are some concepts that I believe would benefit the average mix engineer. I’ve worked with quite a few mix engineers through my career so far and there are a couple of extremely common problems approaches that I hear in their work. 

I’ll focus on one mixing approach in this piece. The approach used typically involves placing the kick drum and bass guitar/synth more than a few decibels too loud when compared to the levels of the rest of the instrumentation within a mix. Scott Craggs of Old Colony Mastering wrote in his 2016 piece for SonicScoop about avoiding this “Crime Against Speakers”:

I get a fair number of mixes where the low end is dramatically out of proportion to everything else. It sounds like a 40-foot tall bass drum surrounded by a team of midgets playing microscopic instruments.

This is almost always the result of mixing on small speakers that don’t reproduce the bottom octaves well, if at all. And this is nothing new – people have been mixing on NS10’s forever.

He goes on to say that the key here is to know your speakers. I would go further to say that you need to know your room. Air moves differently in different rooms. Reflection points, low-frequency pileup, and phase coherence can be real nuisances in certain most spaces. It’s imperative that mix engineers consume commercially-released projects in their critical listening environment. If one doesn’t know what low-end should sound like in their space, the result is almost always bass overcompensation within a mix. 

So why exactly is this a problem? Consumers have responded to marketing that emphasizes bass response for years, so why would a mix that’s weighted heavily towards low frequencies be of any concern? The answer is headroom, put simply. 

Bass eats up headroom, causing the other elements of a track to be stifled under the weight of low-frequency waves. This means that a track that has an overcompensation in the bass is going to sound quieter than a track with a well-balanced bass response. In addition, in regard to bass eating up valuable headroom, there are issues created that go beyond perceived loudness. 

As Joe Lambert stated in his Music Mastering Masterclass in 2017, when program content contains too much low-end in comparison to midrange and high-end, the mix will likely sound more compressed (or less dynamic) than it really is. This can lead to poor handling of microdynamics. 

Because the song had too much bottom end, it probably felt more compressed than it really was, especially to them. Because when you have too much bottom it gives this sense of glue. So now that there’s 3dB less bottom end, that stuff just needs a little bit more glue. 

Of course, as described by Lambert, this is a problem that can be fairly easily mitigated at the mastering stage, considering that spectral balancing is most of what happens during the mastering process. However, at times, a 4 to 5 dB cut needs to be made in order to rebalance the mix. This is a considerably larger cut than what would be considered typical -- usually, we work in 0.5dB increments at a maximum of +/- 2.5dB. 

In addition, if the mix engineer was working with too much bass in their track, it is likely that they handled microdynamics fairly poorly. This means that a small amount of short time-constant compression likely needs to be applied in order to compensate for larger peaks.

Low-Ratio Compression

I’ve always been of the opinion that a mastering engineer should do what is necessary to deliver an immersive, dynamic, and larger-than-life experience. But many mastering engineers would be avidly against making “drastic” changes to a mix like a 5dB low-end cut and applying microdynamic control, as the current standards set by vocal mastering engineers dictate that a mastering engineer should barely touch the mix -- a concept that I’ll touch on at a later time. 

Choose your speakers wisely. Choose your room wisely. Choose your mastering engineer wisely. 

Craggs, S. (2018, August 18). Avoiding Crimes Against Speakers: 3 Tips from a Mastering Engineer. Retrieved from https://sonicscoop.com/2016/08/18/avoiding-crimes-against-speakers-3-tips-from-a-mastering-engineer/

Lambert, J. (Director). (2017, September 28). Music Mastering Masterclass with Joe Lambert [Video
file]. Retrieved 2020, from youtube.com/watch?v=eQF8ORNJYbk

Let’s Discuss the D.A.V. Broadhurst Gardens No.3 (BG-3) Mastering Equalizer

To Judge a Book By Its Cover
The BG-3 may look unimpressive, but it is everything that claims to be, which is more than can be said for countless “mastering” grade equalizers.

Founded by Mick Hinton in 1997, D.A.V. Electronics has cemented themselves as a monolith in British audio. Sporting an acronym representing Digital Audio Visual, Hinton’s no-nonsense approach to product design and development is clear from the start. Since its inception, D.A.V. has designed and manufactured quite a few high performance microphone preamps and audio processors. The overwhelming majority of the company’s products are from their Broadhurst Gardens series, named for Hinton’s 29-year tenure as a technical operator for Decca Studios at Broadhurst Gardens in West Hampstead, London. 

Decca Studios, a recording facility controlled by Decca Records, saw the beginnings and peaks of many artists’ careers, from art rock icons like David Bowie to big band jazz legends like Ted Heath. In fact, the Beatles actually failed their audition for Decca Records there in 1962, hence their subsequent signing to Parlophone. Throughout the 1960s, Decca Studios was an establishment with a reputation similar to facilities like Abbey Road Studios. In fact, the production standard set by Abbey Road Studios was the primary factor in erecting the Broadhurst Gardens studio; Decca Records had to produce commercially competitive audio. 

One might wonder why such history is relevant to a discussion about a mastering equalizer. Put simply, the time that Hinton spent at Decca Studios is apparent in his products’ design and sonic footprint. For example, Hinton worked for Decca during the inception of stereo audio. Most of his coworkers at the time were ex-Royal Air Force Radio Operators. This was the beginning of audio production becoming an art form as opposed to the science as which it was then regarded. Hinton’s designs fall into a strange place in that regard -- they’re scientifically musical. Or are they musically scientific?

The Broadhurst Gardens No.3, or BG-3, is a low-distortion, electronically balanced parametric mastering equalizer. Physically, the unit is 2U high and fairly lightweight. On the faceplate, the unit sports 18 Grayhill rotary switches for frequency selection, band gain, and output gain. In addition, one will find switches for a high pass filter at -3dB at 28Hz with a slope of 18dB per octave. Frequency band gain is +/- 2.5dB in 0.5 dB steps while output gain is -5dB/+6dB in 1dB steps. 

There are 4 LEDs on the faceplate indicating the engagement of the aforementioned high pass filters and the bypass state of the equalizer. On the rear panel, one will find well-labeled balanced connections and a standard IEC power socket. 

On a mildly Interesting note, the Grayhill switches are the only components in Hinton’s entire product catalogue that are not made in the U.K. 

Function Over Form
Hinton has stated that if he were to make his units look more attractive, the price would likely skyrocket. 

Visually, the BG-3 is profoundly boring and industrial. It looks like a broadcast-specific unit that isn’t intended to be client-facing. This is no coincidence, as the metalwork for all the company’s products is done by Bryant Broadcast in the U.K. On the subject, Hinton has stated that if he were to make his units look more attractive, the price would likely skyrocket. 

On to particulars, here. The unit features 2 shelving curves and 2 resonance (bell) curves. The bandwidths are fairly broad and, based on initial intuition, well-suited for mastering applications focused on general shaping. 

The low shelves offered are 12.5, 25, 50, 100, 200, and 400Hz while the high shelves are 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 32kHz. Low resonances are marked at 30, 60, 120, 240, 500, and 750Hz while high resonances are marked at 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10kHz. 

One might assume that these selections are rather general and therefore poorly suited for surgical spectral tasks. That assumption would be correct. The frequencies were selected by mastering heavyweights that Mick worked with for decades and were likely chosen for general shaping only. 

In use, the BG-3 sounds wonderfully transparent. One can add air, brightness, and body to program content without much of a sonic footprint. The high pass filter is minimally invasive in terms of phase shift while managing to do away with undesirable subharmonic energy. Specifically, the high shelves are incredible. 

Here at Rose Quartz, I’ve found that implementing the unit’s 2kHz shelf can lift a track right out of our speakers. Whether it be a vocal that isn’t quite upfront enough, a snare that’s just under the surface, or guitars that need some edge, I’ve found that my first instinct (after subtractive equalization of colluding frequencies) is to use the “lift” that the BG-3 offers in the form of a 2kHz shelf. Typically, 1 to 1.5dB is all that is required. 

In terms of presence and air, the BG-3’s 32kHz shelf is widely regarded as an excellent method to add or remove spectral energy in the upper register of program material. In that region, a 0.5dB boost or cut can go a long way, removing nasty high-end pileups or breathing life into a rather dull mix. 

On the other end of the spectrum, the unit handles low-end fairly well with cuts. Cleaning up program material’s bass response is quick work with the high pass filter and low shelf. In use, I’ve found that a 12.5Hz or 25 Hz cut with the rotary switches “slammed” to their maximum range of -2.5dB is sufficient to tighten up tracks that sport excessive bass. 

However, in regard to adding low-end with the BG-3, something is left to be desired. In my experience, this unit simply adds flabbiness when tasked with beefing up program content. Even when adding 0.5dB at 100Hz, some kind of woolyness or looseness is introduced. I can imagine situations where this could be useful, but for modern masters, I shy away from boosting low-end with the unit. 

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the BG-3 is the low resonance band’s ability to purge a track of woolyness. Picture a vocalist singing with a hand over their mouth. A 1.5 to 2dB cut at 120 or 240Hz can take that hand away, pulling a lead vocal out of bass drivers to enhance clarity and emphasize speaker separation. It may not be the only tool used to accomplish this task, but combined with a surgical cut somewhere in the low mids, one can shape that wooly region without excessive difficulty. 

In addition, one can shape midrange fairly well with the low resonance band using 500 or 750Hz boosts or cuts. I’ve worked on quite a few records that lacked midrange prominence. Initially skeptical of the unit’s ability to add midrange energy, I thought that a 1kHz boost was necessary to fill out my speakers’ midrange drivers. I could not understand why there wasn’t a 1kHz bell offered on the BG-3. However, in use, the 750Hz region proved to be a better area for the boost that I had in mind as it didn’t introduce harsh spectral pileup between 1 and 2kHz. 

Finally, the high resonance band is great for shaping problem areas within a track. For example, harshness in guitars and vocals can be tamed with a cut at 3 or 4kHz, often with the rotary switches slammed to -2.5db. Harsh sibilance can be mitigated, to some extent, with a similar slammed cut at 8 or 10kHz. Of course, this task would be combined with the implementation of a high frequency limiter or de-esser. 

The BG-3 has been a staple on 90% of records that come through Rose Quartz since we acquired it in early 2020. For some time, it was the only analog equalizer that I was using. Combined with an excellent mastering compressor like the Knif Vari Mu II, it worked wonderfully as an EQ to shape the overall characteristics of program content. In conclusion, the unit is sticking around. Oh, and as a closing note here, price typically wouldn’t be a factor in a review like this, but at under $2000 USD, this unit is likely the most affordable mastering equalizer around. It sounds like 4 to 5 times its sale price of $1620. 

Davelectronics.com

$1620 USD

P.S. There aren’t too many mastering houses that use the BG-3 these days, that I’m aware of. However, one notable user is J. LaPointe at Archive Mastering. It’s one of 2 analog equalizers in his signal chain.

Let's Discuss the Knif Vari Mu II Mastering Compressor

A Gentle Reaper. The Knif Vari Mu II in its industrious glory boasting unparalleled analog transparency combined with the promise of righteous saturation.

Knif Audio was founded in 2005 in Helsinki, Finland. Over the past fifteen years, Jonte Knif has designed and hand-built audio equipment that is held in the highest regard within the audio community. For example, the Soma and Eksa are revered as two of the most transparent, accurate, and musical equalizers ever conceived. The Soma excels at enhancing program content with careful consideration for “the beauty of sound”, while the Eksa (“exact”) grants unrelenting precision and an even smaller sonic footprint.

In the realm of compressors, Jonte has crafted a Vari Mu series that boasts the same transparency offered by the Soma and Eksa. The Vari Mu II is the flagship unit, whereas the Pure Mu is its “little brother”. The unit we have here at Rose Quartz is the flagship Vari Mu II model, without the optional Lundahl amorphous core output transformers. 

Total transparency: In the time following the release of this article, we have since replaced the mu metal transformers with Lundahl amorphous core transformers — a simple (and somewhat expensive) modification.

Upon racking the unit, which is no easy task as the box is 4 units high and quite heavy, it is evident that Knif Audio gives the structure surrounding their monstrous electronics the care and attention that it deserves. The metalwork in particular stands out; NASA may be interested in the companyʼs manufacturing methods, as the Vari Mu II most likely could survive re-entry into Earthʼs atmosphere.

Inside the box, the Knif Vari Mu II sports 10 tubes: 4 ECC189 compression tubes, 2 ECC88 and 2 6H30Pi output amplifier tubes, and 2 6AL5 sidechain rectifier tubes. Furthering the Vari Mu II’s quest to reach critical mass are Lundahl’s oversized transformers. Together, they provide transparent, musical saturation to program content when the unit is suitably driven.

Playing God. With twenty-one switches onboard, the Vari Mu II allows for an immense amount of control over a source signal’s dynamics profile.

On the faceplate, one will find what appears to be many knobs. However, these arenʼt knobs at all — theyʼre a total of 15 Elma rotary switches. One might wonder, why so many switches? The simple answer is that the compressor sports more than enough features to justify the cluster of controls.

The left side of the unit is the gain section. Here, one can find input and output controls, a bypass switch, and dedicated switches for both input and output mid/side encoding. This means that the unit can function independently in mid/side mode, and can effectively grant subsequent stereo units in the analog chain mid/side capabilities as well. Countless possibilities immediately come to mind without any mention of a mastering controller or transfer console; turning an off-the-shelf stereo equalizer into a mid/side equalizer, for example. 

Moving on to the central section of the faceplate, one will find the usual compression control suspects — threshold, attack, release, and ratio. The ratio switches are marked from 1 to 6, which correspond to compression ratios ranging from 1.5:1 at position 1 to about 10:1 at position 6. The ratio control also has an “off” position. Using the 1.5:1 position in conjunction with an appropriate time constant allows for the most gentle, transparent compression imaginable both for macrodynamic and microdynamic applications. For the time-based controls, release times range from 33ms at position 1 all the way to 1500ms at position 11. Attack however is proportional to primary release, varying from 50% of release time at the slowest to “breakneck” at the fastest. This is because each position on the attack switch is 2x faster than the previous setting. Therefore, with a release time of 33 milliseconds, one could achieve an attack time of 16.11 microseconds, or just under ⅕ of a millisecond, which encroaches upon FET circuit territory. Whether youʼre looking for big-picture macrodynamic nudges in the right direction or near physics-defying microdynamic control, the Vari Mu is up to the task.

In addition to the standard compression controls, the unit has dedicated dual release switches for both the L/M and R/S channels. Each switch has three positions: off, 1, and 2. The two different dual release modes are based on optical-style memory effects and various release modes from the legendary Fairchild 660/670. Jonte calls the dual release feature something like a primitive volume automation. The way I would best describe it in use is by saying that by using dual release modes, an engineer can have the gluey qualities of a vintage Fairchild at quite literally the flip of a switch.

In technical terms, the dual release allows for a secondary slope to be applied to a faster primary release time, nominally 1 or 2 seconds. The secondary release is engaged more aggressively when relatively more gain reduction has been applied prior to primary release.

In addition to the compression controls, the central section houses a sidechain high-pass filter with 3 frequency selections: 20, 70, and 150. Worry not, though — even set to 20 Hz, the Vari Mu has plenty of headroom for bass and protects the low-end from distortion. Moving along, we see a switch for R/S trim that ranges from -2.5 to +2.5 in 0.5dB increments, allowing for precise stereo image control and mid/side balance. 

Perhaps the most curious control on the faceplate is the 5-position channel Link control. Positions include “Off”, 2, 3, 4, and “On”. Positions 2, 3, and 4 allow for partial channel linkage based on time-dependent performances on each channel. For example, a jazz recording, or perhaps an ultra-modern future bass track, may have far-panned transients or large-scale lateral dynamic shifts that could yield unfavorable results in terms of stereo transient response while applying compression in full linkage. However, utilizing one of the partial linkage modes will allow for some dominion over lateral transient-response without compromising linked makeup gain. I would imagine that this function would be immensely useful for the two real-world examples previously mentioned. Admittedly though, I haven’t found many everyday uses for this feature in practical applications. 

According to Jonte, attack periods will be linked less than release periods while operating in partial linkage modes. One can achieve interesting results with partial linkage modes if the program material allows it. 

Dual, illuminated Sifam meters jump up to -3 a few seconds after powering on, slowly creeping up over the next few minutes to rest at 0. If the needles are unsure about where theyʼd like to settle, calibration is made incredibly easy with front-panel access to tube balance and meter zeroing controls. This unit does have a considerable warm-up period, after which time it is truly warm — the faceplate can be quite hot to the touch. According to the manual, the unit’s sound stabilizes after it has been powered on for about 15 minutes, after which time the sound quality will not change noticeably. The key there is the word noticeably. There is very little that is noticeable about the unit, unless a noticeable effect is desired. In standard operation, this unit is as transparent as a freshly cleaned corporate glass-walled conference room. But given the right input levels and compression settings, the Vari Mu II can provide an enhancing drive to program material. 

It is exceedingly difficult to describe the way that this compressor has made its way into my everyday workflow. This unit excels at solving problems in the often controversial world of dynamics. Every time I engage the compressor, I find myself using it in a solution-oriented, purpose-driven fashion that is specific to the program material. Some tracks that need “oomph” or “glue” get classic Fairchild or optical-style compression using a 1.5:1 ratio and the dual release switches engaged to a preferred setting, yielding .5 to 1.5dB of gain reduction. Other tracks get no gain reduction at all and are simply fed into the compressor at a high level to receive the subtle enhancing qualities of the Input and Output sections. Sometimes the mid/side encoding can be especially useful for mono transient control or stereo imaging. The unit also functions very well as a clean transparent mastering compressor, remaining transparent with the right settings up until 4 to 5 dB of reduction. That kind of transparency with a tube compression unit is profoundly remarkable.

Overall, it’s quite a challenge to make this unit sound bad. I wish I could say that I have a starting point in terms of my preferred settings with this unit, but this compressorʼs strengths are so heavily dependent upon program content. This is largely a positive point as it keeps me as a mastering engineer song-oriented. Oh, and it makes my job just that much more fun; I end up turning knobs like Iʼm 15 again, tweaking the settings on my Twin Reverb.

Knifaudio.com

€5200 (about $6200 given current exchange rates)

P.S. This unit has something of a cult following. Notable users include Chartmakers, CPS Mastering, and Rogue Planet Mastering. Mike Kalajian from Rogue Planet is actually the person who suggested that we purchase the unit.