RSR503 - Alan Douches - Mastering Atmos and Blockchain for Indie Artists
Recording Studio Rockstars
Lij Shaw
4.8 • 543 Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2025
⏱️ 130 minutes
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Summary
Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: https://MixMasterBundle.com
My guest today is Alan Douches, a mastering engineer, CEO, and founder of West West Side Music with over 15,000 mastering credits. Alan has worked with a stunning roster of artists, including Sufjan Stevens, Converge, Mastodon, Chelsea Wolfe, Lucy Dacus, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, The Dillinger Escape Plan, LCD Soundsystem, and many more.
He's been instrumental in defining the sound of independent music, always championing DIY artists, and is now leading the way in bringing ATMOS production and mastering to indie music. Alan is also exploring the cutting edge of blockchain technology with his Web3 startup.
This is Alan's second appearance on the podcast—he was previously on episode RSR092. Thanks to Jesse Cannon for our original introduction!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Recording Studio Rockstars is brought to you by Isotope, Native Instruments, |
| 0:06.5 | Adam Audio, and S-A-E Institute, Nashville. |
| 0:10.4 | You're hearing my voice right now mixed through Isotope, R-X, Ozone, and Neutron on atom-audio monitors and headphones. |
| 0:19.7 | Please check out our awesome sponsors |
| 0:21.6 | using the links in the show notes below |
| 0:23.9 | and like and subscribe to our YouTube channel |
| 0:26.5 | and leave us a comment. |
| 0:27.8 | It's a great way for you to help support this show. |
| 0:30.3 | Now, get ready to rock. |
| 0:31.7 | What does it even mean to master an immersive format? |
| 0:35.5 | How is that different from mastering a stereo format? |
| 0:38.3 | There is some talk going on like what does mastering for Atmos really mean, right? |
| 0:44.3 | Or immersive, for spatial, I mean. |
| 0:46.3 | In many cases right now, what it means is, yeah, the mixer is working in a set of headphones, |
| 0:52.3 | maybe a 5.1 setup, but what does that do in a 12. |
| 0:56.5 | You know, 1 setup or a 7.1.4? |
| 0:59.5 | You know, what happens when it does get into that other format? |
| 1:02.8 | So it is more of a QC check on how does this handle across all. |
| 1:08.2 | You know, we have a Sonos sound bar with a sub, and so we have lots of systems |
| 1:11.9 | that we check things on, and we're learning about it as well. So I think there's a lot of that. There |
| 1:16.1 | are some tools available for adjustment, you know, but it's not as much that we're worried about |
| 1:21.4 | overall volume. |
... |
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