Episode 402 – Mastering Engineer Michael Romanowski Talks Immersive Mastering

My guest this week is Grammy-nominated mastering engineer Michael Romanowski, who’s the owner and chief mastering engineer at Coast Mastering in Berkley, CA. Michael has over 30 years of experience mastering in stereo, but he’s been a pioneer in mastering for immersive audio, complete with a new purpose-built 9.1.6 room. Michael’s immersive credits include the original motion picture soundtrack for Dune, Hans Zimmer, three albums by Alicia Keys, Eagles “Live From The Form”, and quite a few others. During the interview we spoke about what people expect from immersive mastering, how the loudness wars are creeping in again, the tools he uses and the tools he'd still like to have, what makes a great immersive mix, and much more. I spoke with Michael via Zoom from his studio just in the Bay area. On the intro I’ll take a look at Apple Music finally converting its full catalog to lossless, and the top 20 computer audio interfaces.