ARF! MASTERING COMMITS TO ELEVATING ARTISTS, MUSIC AND SOUND WITH LAVRY ENGINEERING A/D AND D/A CONVERSION

New LavryBlack DA11 Joins LavryGold DA-924 and LavryGold AD122-96MKIII at Trailblazing NYC Mastering Facility

NEW YORK: A sharp pair of ears for potential is the driving force at Arf! Mastering. Founded by Alan Silverman, the New York City facility has become a vital sonic center, where the music of established and emerging artists alike can be mastered in a signal path that’s being constantly refined to make the most of their sounds.   

Silverman’s passion for equipping his midtown room with the absolute best gear available grows from a simple guiding philosophy. “In short, I’m a music lover,” he says. “I love working with musicians, artists, and I enjoy doing what I can to help their creations take on the best form that we can manage. After working as a recording engineer/producer for fifteen years, I eventually discovered that mastering really suited me. I liked the freshness of a new project every day or two, and that my training as a mixer and producer served as a valuable background for mastering.”
 
A GRAMMY-award winner whose credits include Norah Jones, Chaka Khan, The Kinks, Medeski Martin & Wood, Dolly Parton, Cheap Trick, and scores more, Silverman strikes a balance between extreme selectivity about what hardware/software he employs and an open mind towards innovation. With this mindset, Arf! is equipped with Lavry Engineering’s LavryGold DA-924 and LavryGold AD122-96MKIII conversion systems in his processing chain, and has recently been joined by the newly released LavryBlack DA11 for his meticulously culled monitoring setup.

“If you’re going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk,” explains Silverman. “As a mastering engineer, you are given a lot of trust: Artists have to know their songs won’t take a hit in your system. So #1, you need to have an ultra high quality chain, so the signal in that chain is not diminished. #2, you need really good monitoring. That’s one of the most difficult things to achieve – a system that’s fun to listen to but also deadly accurate. Converters are hugely important for both, because everything passes through them.”

At Arf!, Silverman’s Sequoia workstation leads into the LavryGold DA-924 and through an analog chain that includes the only Rupert Neve Masterpiece in Manhattan. From there, the audio goes into the LavryGold AD122-96MKIII and then through his digital effects loop. In the monitoring chain, the new LavryBlack DA11 feeds into a Switchman MKII, McIntosh MC252 amplifier, and Revel Ultima Studio2 monitors.   

“My hat’s off to the design engineers who make our gig possible,” Silverman says. “Dan Lavry is one of history’s great audio design engineers, and he’s full of surprises. The LavryGold series offers the ideal combination of transparency and musicality. It also has a classic ‘thing’ about it. Even though it’s a digital piece, it brings to mind the great analog gear of the past, like Neve or API. The LavryGolds also have fantastic resolution and separation. Let’s say you have a rock track with a keyboard, crunchy guitar and vocal all in the same tone range. With the LavryGolds you can hear the individual parts easily, whereas with lesser converters it’s more of a pileup that you have to try to pick apart.”  

A longtime user of the LavryBlack DA10 in his monitoring chain, Silverman was interested to see what the newly released LavryBlack DA11 would sound like. “The DA11 is a great piece – smooth, rich and analog-sounding, with low-level resolution that compares very well with a significantly more expensive D/A converter,” he says. “The sound seems even fuller, and more ‘audiophile’ as it were. The LavryBlack DA11 is a very pleasant D/A converter to listen to. I was surprised at how well the DA11's usb input worked with Sequoia V10 on my notebook PC running Windows XP pro.  It was literally plug and play, and worked with sample rates from 44.1k to 96k."

As music itself continues to sail into uncharted territory, Alan Silverman is pleased to find himself and Arf! transforming right alongside. “One thing you learn in audio is that there’s always something new to discover artistically and technically,” he states. “The evolution of my room has gone from a pretty good car to a Formula One racer. That makes it fun to be at work, and translates to the best results for the artists who are my clients.”
 
About Lavry Engineering:
Lavry Engineering, located in Poulsbo, Washington, was founded by digital audio expert Dan Lavry in 1993. The company specializes in products for professional audio, broadcast, audiophile and surround markets designed to satisfy the growing demand for hi-res digital audio performance. Lavry Engineering’s Gold, Black and Blue product lines offer a range of systems accommodating a wide range of budgets and applications. For more information, please visit www.lavryengineering.com.
All referenced product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
About Arf! Mastering:
For more information, please visit www.arfdigital.com