ABOUT | turanaudio

TIM TURAN

Tim's introduction to recording sound was at the age of 3. As a teenager he spent his paper-round earnings on a JVC-SEA 70 graphic equaliser to make his records sound better and he's been doing it ever since. He has been a gigging and recording musician since 1974 and was signed to EMI in 1979 with The Car Thieves.

Tim spent 15 years working in studios recording, engineering and producing. His pursuit of sonic perfection led him to expand into the world of mastering. Since that time he has cut over 12,000 records in hundreds of genres, from experimental jazz to death metal and from choral ensemble to rap.

He works as an independent mastering engineer, adding expertise to the creative process while maintaining the client's overall integrity and control.

His technical expertise has led to lecturing at university level, presenting workshops, talks and seminars and frequent audio troubleshooting.

Tim age 3 recorded by his father in 1963

"I love what we did together, thank you for your time and talent."
Paul Samwell-Smith

“Tim is one of the mastering greats. If there was a sonic Olympics he would win gold every time”

Mark Gardener (Ride)

"A man who can hear the subtleties in a recording of a NASA rocket launch is a man with ears you can trust!"

Adam Franklin (Swervedriver)

Tim with the original master tapes of Madness 'One Step Beyond' remastered for the 35th anniversary release

"The tracks sounds fantastic, we have zero amendments and are beyond happy with them!" Loredo

MASTERING

Tim with the original master tape of Thin Lizzy 'Jailbreak' side one.

Mastering is the final creative process before duplication and manufacture. It can totally transform and enhance the sound of your music. Mastering can involve EQ'ing, compression, limiting, stereo width enhancement, de-clicking, editing, track ordering, track level balancing, topping and tailing (cleaning up the starts and ends of tracks), mixing, fault finding and repairs, noise reduction or removal. In fact we can do just about anything it takes to render your project to the highest professional level.

We provide Red Book CD-DA (plus metadata), DDP, Blue Book CD-XA (dual platform), ISRC coded WAV files or vastly superior sounding MP3's for download and streaming. All jobs are backed up and archived.

What mastering can't do is fix bad performances or truly dreadful mixes and recordings, for example if a vocal is a little low in the mix, we can do something about that, if it's really low in the mix then we will advise you to remix. A compressed and limited mix does not allow headroom to master and will therefore not achieve it's maximum potential.

Although the mastering studio is equipped with the latest technology it is the engineer, their listening skills and their experience that you are really paying for. The mastering engineer has to be able to "see with their ears".

MASTERING FOR VINYL

Mastering for vinyl production is a specialist process which accommodates issues such as frequency response, dynamic range, inner groove distortion, sibilance and running times verses loudness, in vinyl production. Tim has developed techniques to give the vinyl cutting head a chance to accurately cut the groove, this cleans up and tightens the sound in a rather pleasing way.

The maximum length for a 12” LP @ 331⁄3 rpm is 22-24 mins. At 45rpm it’s about 15 mins. For 7” singles @ 45 rpm it’s 6 mins.

You can read more about Tim’s mastering for vinyl in his blog here

Audio mastered for vinyl by Tim is also suitable for streaming. Streaming platforms require Loudness normalisation (LUFS) referenced in the EBU R128 recommendation for broadcast and streamed audio.

REMASTERING

Tim Turan is reknowned for his restoration of original legendary recordings which weren't given fair treatment when CD was first launched. Flat lifeless sounding CDs often sourced from the wrong masters were the order of the day. We are now in a position to do these "classics" justice. Good examples are: the entire back catalogues for Slade, Status Quo, Suzi Quatro, 10cc, Madness and many others.

EDITS & FIXES

After mixing an artist might decide to make further edits i.e. radio version, single version or album version. These edits can be made during the mastering session.

Clicks, pops, drop outs, crackles and other nasty artefacts however caused can also be fixed.

MASTERED FOR iTUNES (now known as Apple Digital Masters)

Apple Digital Masters is a very high quality 24bit AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) audio file available from Apple. It sounds far superior to regular MP3 files. This format is now widely used by major labels and artists who want their releases on Apple Music to sound significantly better than they previously did.

Only approved mastering houses (on Apple’s providers list) can submit Apple Digital Masters audio files. Tim Turan at Turan Audio is now certified, by Apple, as an approved Apple Digital Masters mastering engineer.

"The re-issues sound very good to me."

Mike Paxman (Status Quo producer)

"You've given the tracks such a great body and warmth as well as the energy from the top - I'm chuffed"

Richard Neuberg

"Another brilliant job"

Holly Barringer (Madness for Union Square)

Tim Turan and he did a fantastic job! ....... he did a great job, Tim Turan did.

Don Powell (Slade)