Berklee Today: Gavin Lurssen '91
Mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen '91
Photo by Jason Vaughnart
According to mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen, people in his line of work used to inhabit the background of the music industry. "Nobody used to care about mastering engineers," Lurssen says. "But now everyone wants to know what we think. All of the mastering houses I know of are doing well because more music is being made and consumed now than ever before. Everything you hear has been mastered. Music needs that process to become ready for the market."
Lurssen is among a small, exclusive group of mastering engineers who add the finishing touches to top albums and soundtracks before CDs are manufactured and released to the public. They set the overall volume level of a recording; correct the balance between the right and left sides; add reverb, EQ, and other processing; and are the last people in the production sequence to affect a recording's sound quality.