Recently I did a mastering for Bondy Chiu. It is an unusual project. Well, I mean Kent Poon works for pop singer, that must be something interesting. The recording is LIVE. Full band recorded and mixed in HK Avon studio.
Right before I got the mixed tape, I didn't know anything about this project, not even know who is the singer/performer. My very good friend David Lee is involved, he has been in the audiophile software industry for more than decade. When I was teenagers, I bought my first 24K Gold Records from a Hong Kong audiophile records store - "33-1/3". David was in charged. I still remember the 24K Gold disc is from Chesky Records. While I cannot decide if I should buy the 24K Gold or regular CD, my sis Raphael gave me $100 dollars and said "now you can buy the 24K Gold disc la". She always put cheers on others and I'm so proud to have a sis like her. How is that related? Bondy actually is very good friend of my sister and my friends group. The world is so small.
My first impression, the music is FANTASTIC I must say! Tommy Ho and his band has performed a really excellent quality music. I did not tell many others but I admire Tommy talent for so long. All the musicians work together so well. I need to give credit to Bondy/Tommy that this records is almost 1st time I can listen so many elements on a commercial pop songs. Maybe I should say this records is not like everyday we find in stores. It is not a normal copy cat. I think this alone should worth music lover to purchase a copy.
Have you ever hear musician scream out "ghost buster" for a song ending? The musician jamming session is very unusual long from 16 bars to 3 mins! A normal chinese pop song is around 3 min long in total these days.
From what I know this production is not backup by large records company. It is purely done by an inspiration of making some good music for the artist herself. I admire this braveness. For sonic quality, few of the songs are best in local music history. 許願樹 is my own personal favorite because I can hear the first time top HK musicians singing in an album. Be Your Love, 祝君好 are also very high quality standard.
Whole production was made in 24/96 through my custom mastering chain with Tube, Class A discrete circuit. Weiss Engineering processors gave us very important help, especially the DS1-Mk3 with M/S compression saved few important places. Analogue MS compression can never sound as transparent. The Weiss DAC2 & AFI1 are used for the monitoring and transfer path.
I enjoy working on this album mastering because there is NOTHING like this in local made music records. The music is made for the artist, the live recording is made for jamming musicians.
Audiophile believes the quality of replicated CD will make a different in sound quality. The production team also beware of it. This album is MADE IN UK by docdata. The cost for each replicate disc is enough to create triple amount of CD here in HK. We provided a super low BLER CD-MASTER. The industry standard BLER (block error rate) is C1 220. As you can see the C1 is just 0.8 on the CD-Master. If you read from other places, the FIM Ultimate CD is within BLER C1 5.
As a mastering engineer, I cannot control what comes in to my room. But this project I really have to give credit to the artist as she does not want anything like "commerical".
This recording is not for showing off audio effects on how good your system sound in bass and treble. It gives a live jam session with tons of details in every bar that you can feel it. At then end, we all love music, and we all love high quality audio.
Bondy is a family friend. I wish she can sell enough amount for her to continue the next production. I also wish I can be involved much earlier so that I can control the production quality as I would have wanted in recording/mixing. Obviously I am biased, but try listen to this record and you can feel all the musicians are really playing LIVE with excitement. They are not performing for money.
The records will be on street in early December.
The photos and info regarding the album are borrowed from the following blogs:
http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/choro-q/article?mid=42333&prev=42409&next=42268
http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/jw!w0Bfi.KeAAVJn34N0wKhd7bV/article?mid=41453
http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/choro-q/article?mid=40976
http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/skinnyporpor-bondy/article?mid=13037
http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/skinnyporpor-bondy/article?mid=13012
http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/skinnyporpor-bondy/article?mid=13141