The Quick Mix: Paul Dieter

Interview:/ Neil Gray

AT: How long have you been working as an audio engineer/producer, and how, when and where did it all begin?

Paul Dieter: “There were performances in the student union every Wednesday by a folk band led by my creative writing professor, and I fell on the grenade to mix them, with little to no knowledge of what I was doing. I learned on the job with minimal resources to inform me. Two of the other guys at the station back then were Dennis Drew and Steve Gustafson, later to become well known as the keyboardist and bassist in the band 10,000 Maniacs.

They had made their first record in 1985 in London with producer Joe Boyd, during which they had contacted me and asked me to help get them around the US to tour that first record. I was initially just taking care of their stage setup, and monitors when necessary, but by the end of that two year touring cycle I was mixing FOH for them.

In January 1987 I travelled across to Los Angeles with a Ford Econoline van full of gear so that they could begin recording their second record for the Elektra label. I turned up with the gear to a studio in West Los Angeles called The Complex. It was originally built by Maurice White from the band Earth, Wind & Fire in an old banking computer building with one-metre thick explosion-proof concrete walls. By the time I arrived Maurice was no longer in the picture and the studio was owned by engineers George Massenburg and Greg Ladanyi. Originally I was only meant to stay for a couple weeks of pre-production rehearsals and mix a couple of live gigs in California that fell in that window, but as that time came to a close and I prepared to leave for home back in New York, both Peter and George approached me and said “You can’t leave. You’ve become too valuable to this production. Plus, you make great coffee and roll perfect joints”.

That record, ‘In My Tribe’ was produced by Peter Asher and engineered by George Massenburg, both legendary in the industry.

By the end of the 3 months of recording and mixing I had a job offer to stay at The Complex as an assistant engineer on staff, so I waved goodbye to The Maniacs and took up residence in Los Angeles. I spent two years at The Complex assisting Greg and George, and a host of other top-flight recording engineers and producers who came through the door, including Ed Cherney who I ended up working with on many projects over the next decade. It was the most intense two years of my life and I learned a ton in that time.

I left The Complex in spring of ’89 and returned briefly to The Maniacs to mix a tour of the UK and Ireland in support of their third record ‘Blind Man Zoo’, which was also produced by Peter Asher, but not in Los Angeles. When I returned to LA that summer I found myself jobless and struggling to make ends meet. I did whatever I could, including a stint doing club sound at the China Club in LA. The Monday night jam sessions often found serious luminaries onstage, such as John Entwistle, Skunk Baxter, Joe Walsh, and many more. The house band featured Tony Braunagel and George Marinelli from Bonnie Raitt’s band, among others.

Sometime in early 1990 I got a call from singer Jennifer Warnes, whom I knew from my time at The Complex. She had been hired to do some French television commercials and asked me to engineer them at Jackson Browne’s personal studio in Santa Monica, called Groovemasters. It was only a two-day session but was the lifeline I needed. On a break during the session I walked into the studio manager/head tech’s office to chat and found him at his desk with head in hands looking very worried. I asked what was wrong and he said “I have multiple sessions booked to come in here soon and I have no staff engineer…”.  I raised my hand and said “uh…how ‘bout me?” Hired on the spot, and not a moment too soon. I was really struggling.

Over the next few years I assisted many sessions there and eventually wound up working with the boss himself, Jackson Browne. In the ensuing two decades I made quite a few records with Jackson and other artists there. I love that studio and have done much of my best work there.

In early 2003 Jackson was preparing for a tour. He knew that I had a live sound background and asked me then if I would consider mixing FOH for him. Of course I said yes, and that began a 20-year run of doing both his recordings, his live sound, and recording his live shows that I was mixing. That’s when the line between studio and live really blurred for me.

AT: What are some of the other artists or projects that you have worked on?

PD: There are so many it’s difficult for me to remember them all, but I will cite a few highlights.

Not long after I began working at Jackson Browne’s studio Groovemasters I was approached by David Crosby to record some things for him. I’d met David some years before while he was working on a Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young record called ‘American Dream’. He came to Jackson’s studio to record some tracks for his first post-sobriety solo record called ‘1000 Roads’. I recorded and mixed a couple of tracks with just him producing, including ‘Old Soldier’ penned by Marc Cohn, a Joni Mitchell song called ‘Yvette in English’, and a track called ‘Natalie’, written by Stephen Bishop and produced by Phil Ramone. It was a thrill and an education to work with Phil. But it turned out that wasn’t to be the biggest thrill on that project.

There were many producers on that record including Stephen Barncard, Phil Ramone, Phil Collins, and Glyn Johns, whom I idolised. When we all assembled at Doug Sax’s The Mastering Lab to master all of these disparate tracks into a cohesive record, Doug asked David if there was one track that he wanted to build the record around sonically. He said “Yeah, ‘Yvette in English’”. Glyn looked across the room and fixed me with a stare that chilled me to the bone. He didn’t say anything, which was terrifying. I thought ‘Oh no… my hero hates me!’.

Not long after, he phoned me and said ‘Dear boy, would you consider engineering some projects I have coming up?’. I said yes, of course, and I think I probably needed to change my underwear after we hung up. I worked on a few things alongside Glyn including the CSN record ‘After the Storm’ and Stevie Nicks ‘Street Angel’. I learned so much in that time. Glyn hated fader automation and insisted on mixing without it. He would chuck up a balance and listen for awhile. If he was not pleased then whack… all the faders would get slammed to zero and he would chuck up another balance until it settled into a place that pleased him. That methodology continues to inform all of my work, in and out of the studio. I’m a better live mixer as a direct result of Glyn’s influence. All mixes were a performance in his world and I took that to heart.

I’m very proud of my work on the television show Ally McBeal, which I worked on from the pilot episode until the very end, only missing a couple handfuls of episodes due to schedule conflicts. The show’s creator David E. Kelley had purchased the rights to the entire Lieber and Stoller publishing catalogue and episodes of the show were often written around a selection of these songs. In every episode at some point the artist Vonda Shepard and her band were featured. The show was unusual in that we recorded those musical bits prior to the actual filming of the show so they could be played back on set, which was a unique way of working at the time. We often had to record, mix, and deliver 20 minutes of music in just a day or two in the studio. Thank you Phil Ramone and Glyn Johns for giving me the confidence and acumen to do that with grace and ease!

I’m also very proud of the work I’ve done with Jackson Browne that blurred the lines between my live and studio engineering worlds. We made records including ‘Solo Acoustic Vol. I and II’ and ‘Love is Strange, En Vivo con Tino’ (live in Spain with David Lindley and Tino DiGeraldo) where I was FOH or monitor mixer, recordist, editor, album mixer, and co-producer. I really developed my DAW editing chops on those projects and will be forever grateful to Jackson for including me in his world.

AT: What are some of the highlights of your career so far?

PD: Too many to pick from, but a Grammy nomination for engineering in 1994 for Jackson Browne ‘I’m Alive’ probably tops the list. Didn’t go home with the statue but it was thrilling to be nominated by my peers and attend the event as a nominee.

Right up there with that is being part of the team that won the Emmy Award for sound mixing for the TV show ‘Ally McBeal’ in season 1999/2000. Again, no statue, only the lead mixer (the guy with the least number of faders in front of him) goes home with the statue. I do have a nice framed certificate on my wall reminding me that I’m an Emmy winner.

For memorable gigs, I’d have to cite Jackson Browne’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. I got to work alongside Robert Scovill whom I adore and have learned a ton from.

Also post covid I had the pleasure of sharing FOH with David Morgen on a James Taylor tour of North America which Jackson Browne was the opening act for. David is a true master of the craft and I learned a ton just watching him and system tech Thomas Morris set up the Clair Cohesion PA we were using. I learned that it’s possible to achieve far greater results than I had previously imagined in sports arenas if you take the time and put in the effort. This dog is not too old to learn new tricks!

AT: What is your preferred method of recording /mixing?

PD: I have lived through a lot of changes in recording technology in the last 35 years. When I arrived at The Complex, George was using the Mitsubishi X-850 digital multitrack recorder which was relatively new and revolutionary at the time. It was a 32-track machine that recorded on one-inch reel-to-reel tape. The tape needed to be formatted with digital black before recording, so a lot of my time was spent after hours formatting tape for the following day’s session. I spent nearly a year there before I ever touched an analogue multitrack recorder. The Complex had a complement of Ampex ATR-124 analogue multitracks which were amazing machines that I grew very fond of. They were a little finicky to manage as the remote was a huge beast with some features that could really ruin your day if you weren’t paying attention and the alignment procedure was different from a Studer or other analogue multitracks. They also sounded better than any other analogue multi I’ve ever used.

In the early 1990s the new MDM formats such as the ADAT and DA88 appeared. Those formats became central to several projects I did in the ’90s. Suddenly remote recording didn’t require an expensive truck and staff. I made a number of ‘guerilla’ recordings in the ’90s I’m quite proud of. A couple examples would be ‘Born and Raised’ from the band Venice which we recorded at a house in rural San Diego very near where I now live. They were recorded to MDM at the gig with editing and mixing done in very non-traditional spaces. I also co-produced two live records with David Crosby’s band CPR (his project with keyboardist son James Raymond and guitarist Jeff Pevar) in the late 1990s, which were recorded while mixing FOH. I continued to use them for remote/live recordings until portable DAWs became a reality.

With regards to the Jackson Browne records, ‘I’m Alive’ and ‘Looking East’ were entirely analogue productions. I got quite good at two-inch tape editing, often using an Eventide H3000 sampler or ‘clone’ reels of 24-track tape with offsets on machine synchronizers to fly in bits to bridge edits. It was difficult and time consuming work. Nobody was happier than I to see that DAWs were in the very near future.

Shortly before making ‘The Naked Ride Home’ in 2002, the studio purchased a Steinberg Nuendo system. We considered getting ProTools at that time, but they had not come to market with a system capable of 96k/24-bit yet so naturally we chose Nuendo. ‘The Naked Ride Home’ was made in hybrid style. I would load the Studer A-800 with large reels that would record 32 minutes at 30ips and would just keep them coming all day during tracking sessions. Sometimes I would fit the 16-track headstack and sometimes the 24-track, depending on the size of the band. I think the final reel count for the whole process was well in excess of 150. I had secret signals with Jackson to let him know when I needed to change reels. It was important to him that the band not know or be concerned with the red light being on as he felt (quite rightly) that it affected what people might play. I got really good at swapping reels quickly. After we sent the band home for the day we would listen to the bits that he had marked as interesting and transfer them to Nuendo. We would build basic tracks from widely disparate takes and edit them together as a ‘map’. The band would come in days later and we would play them what we had collated. I’ll never forget the look on their faces! They would look at me wide-eyed and say ‘When did we play that!?’. We would often re-record tracks based on our original map, sometimes two or three times. Jackson uses the studio as a writing tool and I was really happy to be party to that. ‘Time the Conqueror’ was recorded using the same method.

‘Standing in the Breach’ made in 2014 was the first Jackson Browne studio album I recorded directly to digital. By that time we had replaced the Nuendo rig with ProTools. By 2014 analogue tape, particularly large reels, had become difficult to source and prohibitively expensive. I’ve never looked back.

AT: What are some of your favourite, or preferred, workspace/methods for recording, and why?

PD: I can’t really put a finger on that except to say that every project is unique, and every effort should be made to find the space, the methods, and the technology that are appropriate for any individual recording. Having said that, sometimes you will find yourself in less than ideal circumstances, and I think that one has to be willing to adapt to any situation, and make the absolute best out of what you have to work with. It makes no sense to me to whine about not having this or that room, console, mic, or whatever. Take what you get and bring every bit of talent and experience you have to the table. Be willing to reach beyond what you think your limits are and find a new or different way to achieve any given goal.

Basically, I will use whatever is available to me and do my absolute best to achieve an artist’s sonic vision with what is at hand.

I once did a session with Elliot Scheiner where we were going to record a big percussion setup. I was really interested to see what microphones he would choose to capture all of the little bits. He chose SM57s. Lesson learned.

However, if I did have to pick one thing, at gunpoint, it would be a good espresso machine…

The advances in DAW software coupled with high quality, high sample rate/bit depth A/D conversions have really replaced any love I once had for analogue multitrack recording technology. One thing I did discover when making the transition from analogue or hybrid analogue/digital recording to straight digital is interesting. At first I struggled with getting really satisfying drum and bass recordings straight to digital. Then it dawned on me that a digital recorder doesn’t taper off the very low frequencies like an analogue recorder does naturally. High quality digital will faithfully record anything you feed it right down to DC. I started applying HPFs to low frequency sources like kick drums and bass guitar when appropriate which is somewhat counterintuitive. For example, I will almost always engage a Neve 27Hz HPF on a kick drum to avoid recording frequencies that will only rob monitor amplifier power and mix bus space without being audible. That instantly cleared up the problems I was having early on.

I’m not a huge fan of digital plug-ins that attempt to mimic old analogue technology so I tend to employ older analogue pieces like compressor/limiters, mic preamps, tube mics, and older EQs, like Pultec, etc, on the record side before the initial A/D conversion and then make every effort to not do too much manipulation in the digital realm. Of course, I will still reach for a plug-in when necessary but that is always a last resort; not a preferred method. I’m still fond of using a high quality analogue mixing desk like Groovemasters Neve 8078 as a combining matrix/mix bus for a DAW’s outputs, but those things are getting harder and harder to maintain properly and one day not too long from now will be totally replaced, I believe. They just don’t make discreet transistors like they used to, and it can be argued that they shouldn’t. Mixing in the box will be more and more the norm as we move on, perhaps it already is without me having noticed it!  

Another thing that has changed for me was that life circumstances caused me to eliminate a critical listening environment at home. It actually improved my work, and my mental health, to not bring things home from the studio and obsess on them. Work is work and it should stay there. Home time is for rest and family. I’m still guilty of checking stuff in the car after a session but I refuse to let it sway me. If I’m not enjoying it, I turn it off and there is (almost) always tomorrow.

AT: Can you tell us about some of your techniques and favourite gear for live sound?

PD: One thing I always pay attention to is filling my master mix bus as much as possible, and using a matrix for distribution and overall level control. Since I record every show with a multitrack recorder, which also records my master mix bus on two tracks for delivery to the artist, it’s important to keep consistent levels on that bus regardless of the venue.

I prioritise vocal intelligibility above all else. Nothing irritates me more than not being able to understand every word an artist is singing, or saying. Of course, I am often irritated when in highly reverberant environments! I aim for 100% but that’s never the reality. I often have to remind myself that not even a functional legislative body can change the laws of physics, and even in the most ideal environments live sound is a series of compromises.

I always make an effort to always present any artist at an overall level that is appropriate for that artist and their audience. For my current artist that means an LEQ-A over the whole show of 93-94dBA with occasional peaks to 100-101dBA at FOH. That would be an inappropriately low level for an act like Porcupine Tree (the band I would most like to mix but probably never will) but entirely appropriate for Jackson Browne and his audience.

I love the modern line array PA systems. By the late 1980s I had become increasingly disillusioned with the state of PA speakers. I could never achieve anything I considered great, only varying degrees of acceptable. Then the world changed dramatically.

I vividly remember mixing a one-off show for Jackson Browne in Ojai, CA, sometime in the mid-1990s where the PA was provided by Jeffrey Cox, the guy who first brought L-Acoustics V-DOSC to the US. When I pushed up the vocal fader, the hair on my arms stood straight up. I’d never heard that kind of clarity and coherence in a PA speaker over the entire coverage area. In that moment I got very excited about live mixing again. Since then a number of different manufacturers have built amazing-sounding PA systems. The technology continues to improve and I’m very excited for what the future will bring.

Digital mixing systems, when properly integrated with a modern PA, are also game changers. It’s now common practice to have only one set of high-quality A/D/A conversions in a system and maintain a high sample rate/bit depth digital stream from mic preamp to power amplifier. In the early days of digital mixing, systems were often set up with multiple conversions which never ever sounds good. That was largely by necessity, as the tools for proper integration were not yet common. I am convinced that that reality was largely responsible for the initial resistance to the adoption of digital mixing technology.

I really do not miss analogue consoles at all. I don’t miss spending my day chasing hums, buzzes, and grounding issues. I don’t miss running from one end of a large format analogue console to the other to make adjustments. I don’t miss having multiple cables running to outboard racks that need to be examined every day because the multi-connectors often have pushed pins. I quite like having 96 channels available within easy reach. The toolset I have available to me now is so powerful that I cannot imagine ever going back.

I’m currently using a Digico SD10. I have grown very fond of it, and all current Digico products are top quality stuff. I use the console ‘bare’ – no Waves server or other outboard trickery is necessary for me to achieve the results I desire, which makes touring worldwide much easier and more consistent. Also, with their excellent suite of offline editing tools, it is quite easy to switch between their various platforms and build shows in the comfort of my home or hotel room.

My current Digico setup has an optical loop that shares the stage rack/head amps with monitor world, so line checks consist of me sitting at FOH with a cocktail following along as the monitor engineer conducts the line check. I really like that.

Also since I record every show multitrack, I’m able to get a big head start on sound checks by playing back the last show. I have found that I need to be careful about making too many decisions based on that, but it does help me to ballpark overall level and distribution before the band ever walks onstage. A time saver for sure.

Another great advancement is the availability of high quality measurement and analysis tools such as Smaart. Analysis is never a substitute for critical listening skills, but to be able to quickly verify what you are perceiving sonically is very useful. Accurate measurements of delay timing, phase, and coherence help to set up PA systems quickly and efficiently with great confidence.

Microphone wise, if I had to pick one mic in my current kit that I really love, it would be the Lewitt 640REX I have in the kick drum. It’s a dual-element mic with a condenser and dynamic element that have separate outputs. The great part is the elements are physically coincident so you don’t need to play delay games to get the attack to line up. It lives inside the drum on a suspension mount.

AT: Do you have any tips/words of wisdom for someone starting out in the world of audio engineering?

PD: Yeah… Turn back, it’s a trap! Seriously, I would counsel any young person who is interested in this life to think very carefully about their future. If having a family is important to you, be aware you will have to have a partner who understands your dedication to the craft and is willing to put up with you being gone for long periods. You will have to resign yourself to missing huge parts of your children’s development, and deal with the effects that will have on your children, and your partner. It’s not easy. Divorce and estrangement are very common among us and it’s not to be taken lightly.

Also for those who have graduated from the now ubiquitous programs like Full Sail, etc… Don’t expect to come out of school and drop right into the hot seat. Get a job at a sound company or recording studio and be willing to sweep floors, scrub toilets, make coffee, and run for food for clients. Find an engineer who’s work you admire and watch them. Be willing to be an apprentice because nobody ever came out of the gate as a star. It takes work. It takes single-minded dedication. It’s a process. I’m 64 years old and I learn something new every day. The day I don’t is the day I quit.

Paul Dieter discography