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Five Questions With soundBlade PowerUser David Hadzis

"soundBlade is the best mastering system I have ever used. Love it!"

A music industry professional since 1985, David Hadzis is both the founder and manager of Arthanor Productions in Geneva, Switzerland.

Having begun his career as a composer (he has been honoured four times by the Ascap International Awards), David has subsequently achieved prominence as a musician and singer, sound engineer, record producer, project manager, consultant and as a music columnist for Television Suisse Romande, Switzerland's French-language TV network. Along the way he has collaborated with a wide spectrum of internationally acclaimed musicians, artists and producers.

David was recently honored by the Academy of Jazz/United Music Foundation for his restoration and archival work on the Sidney Bechet album 'En Suisse'.

He is a voting member of the Grammy Awards and is active within Memoriav, the Association for the Preservation of the AudioVisual Heritage.

We posed these five questions to David:

1) Tell us about your mastering philosophy and workflow

"I always try to get as much fluidity in the music, no matter when it was recorded. I think that musical instruments always sound more or less the same, no matter when they were recorded. It is only interpretation that has somewhat evolved in all musical genres. So when I am told "hey, this is an old recording, it is natural that there should be hiss, clicks, crackles or pops", I always reply "but this is not the way it sounded when they played live".

I have hundreds of plugins in my arsenal. Why? Because I know that depending on the material I am working on, one plugin will always provide me better results than others. But no matter what type of music I work on, soundBlade will always make the final result sound better."

2) What projects are you currently working on?

"I just completed a very large project on jazz legend Sidney Bechet for the United Music Foundation, a Swiss non-profit for the preservation of recorded music heritage.

It consists of a 4-CD boxed set of mostly unreleased recordings made in Switzerland between 1949 and 1958, as well as a 216 book with some 250 photos and 140 documents. Since I like to "multitask", I also handled all the research and production for this project.

I also produced a new recording by British legend Petula Clark, which she co-wrote with Tony Hatch, the songwriter of her worldwide hit Downtown. It's an amazing song with positive vibes. I hope it will be released soon."

3) Why/how do you use soundBlade HD?

"I was a soundBlade early adopter back in late 2005/early 2006. I use it for most anything ranging from restoring, mastering, editing, marking, delivering... It really depends on the project. But I know that no matter what type of music I am working on, soundBlade will always give me unparalleled sound results.

The other day, I personally delivered a few masters to a major European plant. When the masters were verified in front of me, I was told that they were perfect and that they could go straight-ahead to glass mastering. Then I checked what other types of equipment they had and saw...soundBlade with a Model 302!"

4) What other DAWs do you use for production?

"I use ProTools HD for multi-track recording."

5) What is the future of music delivery?

"I think high definition is definitely the future. Of course, I think people will still want vinyl or CDs to collect, and I guess they have their own type of sound. But eventually, with Internet speed and storage constantly increasing, I think it will be much more convenient to upload large lossless high definition files and get to listen to what we have been striving for so long. For me, soundBlade is definitely part of this big picture."