Alan Silverman
Alan Silverman is the founder of Arf! Mastering. He has garnered two Grammy nominations for Album Of The Year. His track record covers Rock, Jazz, R&B, Folk, Film, and World music with credits on over 60 Grammy winning and nominated albums and numerous Emmy winning music television specials, including world music sensation Lagrimas Negras, nominated for Record of The Year, Album of The Year, and Best Engineered Record at the Latin Grammy Awards.
Alan Silverman is the founder of Arf! Mastering. He has garnered two Grammy nominations for Album Of The Year. His track record covers Rock, Jazz, R&B, Folk, Film, and World music with credits on over 60 Grammy winning and nominated albums and numerous Emmy winning music television specials, including world music sensation Lagrimas Negras, nominated for Record of The Year, Album of The Year, and Best Engineered Record at the Latin Grammy Awards.
Alan began his engineering career in the '80s, assisting at Electric Lady Studios, working with producer Mutt Lange, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Hall and Oates, and Foreigner. He then moved on to become a staff engineer at A&R Recording Studios, working with legendary producers Phil Ramone and Arif Mardin, and artists Billy Joel and Judy Collins. At A&R he also recorded and mixed music scores for directors David Mamet, Richard Attenborough, Francis Coppola, and Frank Oz, and for major film composers Elmer Bernstein and Ralph Burns.
Alan turned to full-time mastering in 1996 and celebrated mastering his 70th Grammy Award project in 2016. He received critical acclaim for re-mastering the RCA and MCA back catalogs of the British super group The Kinks, for his remixing of the soundtrack for the Americana cult-classic Heartworn Highway, featuring Guy Clark, Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt awarded by Stereophile as one of the “66 Best CDs of All Time,” and for an SACD featuring Norah Jones. He has recently co-produced/mixed a top-100 charting album for Judy Collins featuring guest artists Willie Nelson, Michael McDonald, Jimmy Buffett, Jackson Brown, and Don McLean, and continues to master independent and major label projects across all genres for US and international clients at Arf! Mastering.
Alan is active in the Audio Engineering Society and has chaired workshops in high-resolution mastering at the Society's national conventions. He teaches the art of mastering to undergrads in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU's Tisch School Of The Arts, and to graduate students in the Tonemeister program at NYU-Steinhardt.
Favorite PSP plug-ins:
"PSP Xenon is brilliant, capable of preserving more of the mix at ghastly levels and pristine when used wisely."
"PSP FETpressor is fantastic. It reminds me of a hardware Urei LA3A – I just used one recently at Avatar in NYC. I’ve been comparing the PSP FETpressor with some excellent VST compressors and nothing else seems to be able to do what the PSP FETpressor can do. It sounds deep, rich, smooth, very clean, and has great control. It can wrap the mix around the loudest elements with remarkable musicality. Quite impressive."
"PSP's oldTimer has a digital brain and an analog soul. Pumps like classic analog but without the grit and loss of high end when pushed. Coloration is just enough to smooth the sound without dulling the edge. It's a terrific new brush for the paint box."
"In a trial on an energetic blues vocal and piano track, the PSP MasterComp did as well controlling peaks as one of my better analog compressors. The sound was smooth and clear."