A Rich History of “Baking the Hits”: An accomplished studio violinist and veteran mastering engineer, Eric Boulanger brings a wealth of diverse experience to his facility, The Bakery, which he launched on the historic Sony Pictures lot in July 2015. The first-ever intern at Capitol Studios, he worked there with the legendary Al Schmitt, who mentored and guided Boulanger toward joining The Mastering Lab, the world’s first independent mastering studio, founded by the late Grammy winning engineer Doug Sax. In 2009, when vinyl mastering returned, Boulanger designed and built The Mastering Lab’s Ojai vinyl mastering room, complete with a custom high-res passive console. The experience and knowledge from his time at The Mastering Lab and with Sax lives on in The Bakery's unique, custom designed digital vinyl cutting system and overall musical approach. When Sax died in 2015, Boulanger launched his facility, whose branding line is “Baking the hits in the entertainment capital of the world. Recent projects include Green Day’s Revolution Radio, Colbie Caillat’s The Malibu Sessions, Rufus Wainwright’s Take All My Loves, Hozier’s “Better Love” and Selena Gomez’s “Kill ‘Em With Kindness.”
Sonic Excellence and Inspiration: Boulanger is a believer in having artists attend mastering sessions, and says that being at the Sony Studios lends itself to creating an environment rich with inspiration. On the technical side, The Bakery's mastering signal flow features a wide array of custom electronics––from tape machines to equalizers, compressors, limiters, A/D & D/A converters, monitoring amps and console. Despite the evolution of the high resolution download, audio mastering for CD remains an integral part of production. They offer a DDP format for electronic delivery of listening reference, supplying their DDP player software for clients’ convenience. They also offer secure deliver of WAV masters.
Vinyl Cutting: Affectionately named “RoboLathe,” The Bakery's vinyl cutting lathe meets the sonic demands of modern music production with the vinyl format. Their Neumann VMS 70 lathe with the SX-74 cutterhead is powered by a DSP-based platform designed by Boulanger. In addition to sonics never before achieved with vinyl, this system is fully automated, ensuring nuances perfected in mastering are saved, and fully repeatable.
For more information, visit thebakery.la.
