Carly Simon ‎– No Secrets

Mastering Carly Simon, "No Secrets" for 24K CD

Remastering Carly Simon “No Secrets” was really fun, it is one of my favorite albums of all time, but it presented several challenges. The album was produced by Richard Perry (also known for Rod Stewart and Ringo Starr, among many others) and recorded by ace engineer Robin Geoffrey Cable (Elton John, Nilsson) at Trident in London. It was mixed partly at Trident and partly at AIR studios, also in London, and also by Bill Schnee (of Sheffield Lab, Direct-to-Disk fame) at Sound Labs in L.A.

It would have presented enough of a challenge if that alone were the situation, but just to make things more complicated, some of the final mixes were composites of mixes from more than one studio inter-cut together. This is clearly visible (not to mention audible) because the tape formulation, from at least one of the British studios, has bright orange backing (could be BASF, AGFA, or EMI tape, I’ve seen it many times), and the American tape has black backing, presumably 3M 206. Both types appear in some songs.

When comparing the tape to an original Doug Sax, The Mastering Lab, mastered vinyl it became obvious that he had his hands full cutting this beast. Levels and EQ have to be adjusted constantly to compensate for the change in sound between the different studios' mixes and to match up the pieces from different studios within some songs as mentioned earlier.

It kept me on my toes as I went back and forth between the LP and the tape taking copious notes. Doug used a compressor to make the vinyl version louder and I did not. I think you will like the results. It is a great sounding recording. The previous CD versions appear to have been mastered from an EQ copy as they match the LP right down to the compression.

Happy listening!

Kevin Gray / Cohearent Audio