Jake: Do you have any favorite songs or albums you’d like to share?
John: Sure. Favorite albums, you know, are going to vary a lot. And when I’m thinking of favorite albums relative to a listening environment I’m thinking in terms of acoustics, playability, or transferability of studio B to C to D. We call that translation; does the studio translate well? I tend to go after particular producers and their certain bodies of work or a particular production team as opposed to just an artist. And the only artist that I would say I would do that with would be someone like a Pink Floyd because their artistry and music is embedded in their production style and they’re very, very picky about it. I wouldn’t put that with any other band; they’re kind of in their own world. One, because they don’t release very much, and two, when they do release, they’re nit-picky about every [darn] detail, even when they play live. And even when they were [together], once every five years was probably quick for them because of the detail they put into their productions. So for a band, I wouldn’t have a favorite for the purposes of translation, but for a producer, people like Quincy Jones would come to mind and [otherwise] it would be a producer [and it] wouldn’t matter which genre of production [he or she] did. You know his productions are all going to be pretty good because his standards of arrangement and production and the quality of his engineering staff are all quite high. So those Quincy Jones productions by and large, would be good to check out. As far as trying to find out “how did your room do,” Pink Floyd albums would be good to check that out. A lot of artists’ albums I would not try to check anything [with] because one might sound really good but actually might be kind of lousy because they [use] different production teams a lot of the time. So that being said, you know, I’d rather not get into the genres of this band or that band. I don’t think of it that way when I pick people to play. Only in an environment where I want to check out the sounds [would I] pick [these things], you know.
Jake: And how would you define the field you’re working in? (more…)