Andrés Mayo Mastering & DVD wins Carlos Gardel Award for Technical Excellence, Best Sound Recording 2008

Buenos Aires, Argentina: Carlos Gardel was known as the King of Tango. In Argentina, he was a living legend in his own time, and his name remains affixed to many of Buenos Aires' most treasured institutions. Among these is the Carlos Gardel Award for Technical Excellence: a prestige sought throughout all of Latin America. Every year, submissions rain in from Mexico to Chile.

This year, mastering engineer Andrés Mayo, musician and producer Pedro Aznar, and mixing engineer Ariel Lavigna received this award for "Best Sounding Album" for the recent mastering of Pedro Aznar's and David Lebon's double CD, made entirely with the Lavry Gold AD122-96MkIII. The music was originally captured live in 96 KHz / 24 bits precision. "The recording was so good" said Aznar, "that there wasn´t need to redo almost anything. We used mostly the first day and added up some of the second day." This team of three has previously won two other Carlos Gardel Tech Ex Awards already, and this third triumph confirms their dedication to workmanship.

"I used the AD122-96MKIII converter for the mastering stage, and it was able to provide unparalleled transparency, thus greatly facilitating my job." said Mr. Mayo. "I really love the Soft Saturation +3 dB feature; I use it often to get the level I need without over-compressing in the analog mastering chain. It really helps a lot to avoid the common feeling of being 'hammering the transients'. I also like to play around with the dithering and noise shaping options until I find what works best for the album I am working with. And its clock is really rock-steady, I always keep an eye on it with a high resolution frequency meter and it really doesn't move at all between sessions, provided that you run the recommended calibration process after any sample rate changes."

Andrés Mayo's work is prolific throughout Latin America. His portfolio spans over 1,200 albums since 1991 including Luis Alberto Spinetta, Fito Paez, Gustavo Cerati, Bersuit Vergarabat, Mano Negra, Hector Infanzon, and Kudai. He is also the current vice-president of the AES Latin America Chapter. Mayo moves forward from this victory, and is currently mastering the latest album of the esteemed Luis Alberto Spinetta for Universal Music Argentina. The album is scheduled to be released next month.

"We were trying to achieve a consistent RMS level on the whole album, without a smashing limiting," Said Mr. Lavigna. "The mixes already had the level of noticeable compression we were looking for, and the AD122-96MKIII`s soft saturation feature at the end of the analog chain at the mastering stage, provided a significant extra level thus preserving the feel of the original dynamics. It`s a wonderful live album, we enjoyed the recording process up and down the stage, and the mastering gave us exactly what we wanted."

Ariel Lavigna has done considerable work in both music and film. He finished his formal education in 1995, but his professional interest began in 1987 when he was making home-made recordings of his band. His experience and talent have made him Pedro Aznar's favorite mixing engineer, and their collaboration has again resulted in accolades.