A Moment In Time With Scoring Mixer Alan Meyerson - and his Audeze headphones
by Scott Jay
26th November 2024
Sponsored by Audeze
Scoring Mixer Alan Meyerson with his Audeze LCD-5 headphones
Working from home
“Sorry I’m late! I was mixing Hans Zimmer Live and I couldn’t find the LFE [ed: surround low-frequency effects channel], it just wasn’t there, so I was digging around to see what happened to it!” Alan Meyerson laughs as he pops up on my screen from his studio which is located in Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions complex in Los Angeles, California. It’s one of two studios that Alan works in regularly - the other is at his home, which, according to Alan, “with no traffic, is 9 minutes (away)”.
Which one of these studios he is in at any given time depends on the circumstances of the project to hand.
“A lot of it has to do with budget. Certainly if it's anything I'm doing for Hans specifically, I'll do it in my studio at Remote Control Productions, which is the one I'm in now. And if it's something that has budgetary constraints, I can do it at home and give them a better deal on the room. And also, some of it is just lifestyle. If I'm, say, producing an album, there's no reason for me to come here and do it. If I'm home, I can work for a couple of hours on the weekend, take a nap, watch some football, and work a couple more hours. And that's just a really lovely way to do things. My home studio is a very, very good sounding room. So with stuff where I don't really have a deadline and it's just sort of me in a room mixing, a lot of times I'll do that at home, because that way I don't have to deal with, you know, assistants and runners and stuff like that.
I just sort of do my work, you know? And my wife is home and my dog is home. When I'm here [at Remote Control], it's a little bit more structured and a little bit more expensive.
I'll do some of the big studio films here. But specifically, if it's a project that's sort of already embroiled into this world. So I would say at the moment I'm 60-40 with the 60% at home,” he explains.
Much has been written about Alan’s origin story - the short version is that he started out recording ad jingles in NYC, and a chance meeting on a job with Hans Zimmer combined with an innate ability to record and mix orchestral music in a hypermodern, almost “rock and roll” style led him to be one of the most in-demand music post guys in Hollywood. With credits on films from such luminary directors as Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve and many, many more, it’s virtually a given that Alan is the best of the best. But we weren’t having the call to chat much about the past - it’s well-documented and his work speaks for itself. I was interested in what Alan was up to lately and where he might be going next.
About his workload, Alan is satisfied. “I’m as busy as I want to be. In the past I was doing 18 hour day 6 or 7 day weeks but this year has been a bit more laid back in terms of pressure and project deadlines. The industry has been quiet for some people but I don’t think it will always be like that. For now, I’m lucky.”
The recording is the mix, except when it’s not
“Being in a room with a bunch of great musicians, I mean, you can't top that - sitting alone and mixing is fun. And certainly, you know, monetarily, it's definitely my main breadwinner. But still, I love recording more than anything. That goes back to my youth, and my days as a jingle engineer, where I was recording and mixing every single day, five days a week - so I'm very connected to that,” Alan tells me.
The DPA 4041 large diaphragm mic Alan Meyerson uses in his custom immersive array
As a recordist Alan also has a penchant for buying microphones, which many Gearspace members will identify with all too well.
“I recently built an immersive array that I add to my orchestral recordings that sort of gives me the world of immersive recording as a fader, you know, so it's eleven microphones. And I push it up and it's a whole other perspective on the orchestra that blends with the other “normal” mics.
And I did that with DPA 4041s - and they ain't cheap!” Alan says with a laugh. He’s also recently acquired mics from Schoeps, AEA, Vanguard, and more. “I love mics,” he confirms. “It’s a fun, if expensive hobby!”
“I feel like musicians are sort of my kindred spirits. I mean, when it comes to orchestral stuff, I suppose the old adage that ‘the recording is the mix’, in some sense, is sort of true.
It’s true for guys like John Williams. But not so much in the world we live in now - when you get into other guys who are very, very orchestral, James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri and guys like that, there's a lot of additional elements that are going on at the same time. So although ‘the recording is the mix’ while you're recording, when you go to mix it and you have additional computer-driven elements or samples and stuff, it's really gonna affect your perspective and the balance on the orchestra, even to the point where you might have to EQ it differently because if your prerecorded material is super bright, your orchestra's gonna sound dull,” he laments.
“You know, what sounds like a perfect orchestra on its own is gonna sound dull in the body of a Hans Zimmer score, or a Harry Gregson-Williams or a John Powell score - people that use a lot of electronics and stuff like that. So that old adage is still valid in a few scenarios," Alan opines.
Are you not entertained?
It’s difficult to avoid the biggest and possibly most highly-anticipated film of 2024 - Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s sequel to the 2004 historical epic. If you’ve seen it, you’ve heard some of Alan’s latest released work.
“Yeah, well, Gladiator II is one I just mixed,” Alan humbly remarks. “It was recorded by the incredibly awesome Pete Cobbin and Kristy Whalley, who are phenomenal. I mixed it at Harry's Gregson-Williams’ studio in West LA. He has an ATC mix room that's basically a carbon copy of mine. We mixed it there and it was honestly one of the smoothest projects we've done in a long time. Everything was approved and the music was phenomenal. And the mixes - he (Ridley Scott) was happy with everything and we just moved along on it. I think we did the whole thing in like three and a half weeks. Really no problem. The recordings were great! So that was a lot of fun and the movie's amazing,” he tells me about the post process.
“At first I thought, oh, how do you sequel Gladiator? I screened it and I thought, oh my God. I’m watching it for the first time and the real music isn't in yet. And I thought, oh, well, it looks good. But, then by the time we mixed the score and put it in, it was like, f***, this is for real.
This is a great movie, you know? So that was lucky because you never know. I've been very lucky with sequels. I’ve obviously done the Dark Knight stuff and the Minion stuff and the Shrek stuff and the Kung Fu Panda stuff and the Dune stuff. So I really can't complain about sequels,” Alan chuckles as he recalls some of his work.
I ask Alan about the challenges of doing a sequel where the composer is different from the beloved original. “Harry Gregson-Williams and Hans Zimmer are sort of cut from the same mold. And Hans was very instrumental in Harry's career. They're still very close. And there's a tremendous amount of respect in the music that Harry wrote for Hans. Some of the themes do survive, which is lovely. So there's continuity, yet it is a much more modern sounding score. It is not trying to appeal to the people that want to see (the original) Gladiator only. They want to get younger people into the audience to see this film. So it sort of gives itself to that,” he answers thoughtfully.
I ask what else he’s done recently that he’s particularly proud of. Alan thinks for a moment before piping up assertively.
“Well, Wild Robot is a phenomenal piece of work. The composer, Kris Bowers, he's nominated for a Grammy® against Hans, who's nominated for Dune Part 2. So I have two films that are nominated for Best Soundtrack that I mixed!” he exclaims like a proud parent.
“Dune 2 is a fantastic project and it's amazing.”
Hans sort of kept to this concept that ‘we're not going to put an orchestra on this’ and that it's all going to be individual players and really bespoke sounds and stuff like that. And it sounded great!
They let me do an Atmos soundtrack mix, which was cool because I didn't get to mix Atmos on that film. That was a perfect example of a project where my delivering Atmos was limiting to them regarding the final theatrical mix [Alan normally sends a 5.1 or a 7.1 mix to the dubstage and give the re-recording mixers the freedom to make it work in Atmos] - but they did want an Atmos soundtrack. So I remixed the whole thing in Atmos, and I had so much more flexibility and freedom. That was amazing.
Nick WollegeNick Woolidge, who's someone I've worked with for many, many, many years. I didn’t record it, but we used my microphone array setup (mentioned earlier) - it sounded great. I mixed it at my house and they loved it. It’s just an incredibly well-crafted film. Kris actually won the Academy Award for directing and writing a short documentary called The Last Repair Shop. So he's not only a film score composer, but he's also a director, a writer and a filmmaker. Young guy, 33 years old, you know, just amazing. He did the music for TV’s Bridgerton! I love working with young people. I'm hoping that when I was young, people felt that way about me, but I certainly feel that way about them.
An Audeze odyssey
Score recording and mixing are no different from any other pro audio discipline in that headphones are an essential tool for the job, and Alan’s choice is Audeze.
“I have two models right now - I have the LCD-5s. and I also have one of the Manny Marroquin sets. I needed two because I was working in two places and I didn't want to carry my headphones back and forth. Audeze sent me a set of the Mannys and I liked them a lot.
You know, they're amazing headphones. And what makes them amazing is, first of all, for someone who hates wearing headphones, when you have the miles on your ears, you don't want to put anything against your ear and you definitely don't want to put anything in your ear.
So these things, they sit on a cup that it's like having a speaker connected to each ear.
And there's so much clarity and the low end is so accurate. The high end is quite sparkly and quite detailed and they don't blow up,” he observes.
“At home I have two great headphone amps. I have one from Grace Designs here at Remote Control. And then at home I have this really ridiculously overbuilt Manley headphone amp. But I love it, and it's just such a pleasure to listen on them. Sometimes I forget I have (the headphones) on!” he says with a smile.
“I have to be careful with how long I listen on headphones because it takes me a while to get back into reality when I take them off. But there's no other headphone out there that gives me the ability to listen that long. I mean, I did use, and I still like Sennheiser 650s, but this is to a different point and a different level. The staging that they have is just amazing,” Alan asserts.
“Both studios are mainly ATC speakers. At my studio at Remote Control Productions, my fronts are 100s, and then my sides, surrounds, and heights are all 12s. And at home, I have 50s as my front, and 20s as my surrounds. I'm just in 5.1 there, because I'm in a smaller room. I'm actually using Genelecs for my heights, only because first of all, they're great speakers, but second, the mounting hardware and the size of the speaker - ATC didn't have one that was the appropriate size for what I needed for my house. So I went with the Genelecs and that's worked great. So my rooms are compatible, just a little bit different in the low end. And I rely on my Audeze headphones to sort of get me from one to the other if I have to pass a project back and forth,” remarks Alan.
Alan continues with some advice about mixing with headphones, especially for those of us that don’t have access to a world-class room. “The better the headphone you have, the better the results are gonna be,” he states. “If you’re trying to mix in immersive, then you'll need some software to help you with that. But if you're just mixing in stereo, I would say, have a couple of different points of reference and export a WAV and listen to it in your car for example - do all those things to make sure that what you're hearing in your headphones is your reality. That reality is transferable to other monitoring.
For me, it doesn't matter what my room sounds like or what my mix sounds like to me. What matters is what it sounds like to them, my clients. Fortunately for me, that all works because I like it and they like it.
For someone who's starting out that only has headphones, I would say get a proper headphone amp, something that has some power so that you don't have to run it super hot. There are a lot of great amps that aren't super expensive now, and if you’re buying an Audeze headphone, you’ll want something that’s at least comparable” he advises.
Everyone’s gone to the movies
“I love going to the movies! You know, we went to see Covenant, the one about getting a new Pope. It was great! I'll go see a movie I did three, four times in different theaters. We’re going to Wild Robot, Gladiator II, and as for Dune, well, I probably went to see that one five times in a theater. I went to see it in IMAX, I went to see it in Atmos, I went to see just how it survived the normal sort of theatrical surround, and it was so much fun,” he comments.
“I like going to non-blockbuster, non-tentpole movies too, and you know, we'll frequent the vintage movies and the local indies and stuff like that. That's a lot of fun. It doesn't feel like work at all,” he continues.
Quality control issues do not go unnoticed, though. “I'm actually a great audience - if it’s good! If it's not good, and when I say good and not good, if the post-production isn't done well, if the dub mix isn't really up to it, that's frustrating. When there's a technical problem, it just jumps out at me, and I can't get past it, and so that's a little frustrating, but when things are working, I love it,” states Alan. “I walk around the theater listening in different spots!”
What we do in life, echoes in eternity
Regarding the future, Alan is as philosophical as you would expect a person who has seen it all in the movie business. “You know, I love what I do, so there's no reason for me to stop doing it until they stop hiring me. So, I'm gonna continue to work. I'm 66, and I'm still busy. There's no reason to stop as long as my ears hold on and my body holds on. But what I am gonna do is I'm gonna start trying to take back some of my life! I'm newly married, we like to travel. I'm gonna continue to do Mix With The Masters - I’ve done it 11 times already, and I love doing it. I love teaching and I love mentoring. I have some proteges, and I have some assistants, and I love working with them. I can’t see myself winding down the mixing within the next two years. Maybe five, we’ll see what the universe holds for me,” he says, thoughtfully.
“But if you were to take it out to 10 years, I would say at that point, I'm gonna be sitting on a beach somewhere with my shoes off!”
Follow Alan Meyerson on Instagram here
For more information on Audeze headphones visit here
Scoring Mixer Alan Meyerson with his Audeze LCD-5 headphones
Working from home
“Sorry I’m late! I was mixing Hans Zimmer Live and I couldn’t find the LFE [ed: surround low-frequency effects channel], it just wasn’t there, so I was digging around to see what happened to it!” Alan Meyerson laughs as he pops up on my screen from his studio which is located in Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions complex in Los Angeles, California. It’s one of two studios that Alan works in regularly - the other is at his home, which, according to Alan, “with no traffic, is 9 minutes (away)”.
Which one of these studios he is in at any given time depends on the circumstances of the project to hand.
“A lot of it has to do with budget. Certainly if it's anything I'm doing for Hans specifically, I'll do it in my studio at Remote Control Productions, which is the one I'm in now. And if it's something that has budgetary constraints, I can do it at home and give them a better deal on the room. And also, some of it is just lifestyle. If I'm, say, producing an album, there's no reason for me to come here and do it. If I'm home, I can work for a couple of hours on the weekend, take a nap, watch some football, and work a couple more hours. And that's just a really lovely way to do things. My home studio is a very, very good sounding room. So with stuff where I don't really have a deadline and it's just sort of me in a room mixing, a lot of times I'll do that at home, because that way I don't have to deal with, you know, assistants and runners and stuff like that.
I just sort of do my work, you know? And my wife is home and my dog is home. When I'm here [at Remote Control], it's a little bit more structured and a little bit more expensive.
I'll do some of the big studio films here. But specifically, if it's a project that's sort of already embroiled into this world. So I would say at the moment I'm 60-40 with the 60% at home,” he explains.
Much has been written about Alan’s origin story - the short version is that he started out recording ad jingles in NYC, and a chance meeting on a job with Hans Zimmer combined with an innate ability to record and mix orchestral music in a hypermodern, almost “rock and roll” style led him to be one of the most in-demand music post guys in Hollywood. With credits on films from such luminary directors as Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve and many, many more, it’s virtually a given that Alan is the best of the best. But we weren’t having the call to chat much about the past - it’s well-documented and his work speaks for itself. I was interested in what Alan was up to lately and where he might be going next.
About his workload, Alan is satisfied. “I’m as busy as I want to be. In the past I was doing 18 hour day 6 or 7 day weeks but this year has been a bit more laid back in terms of pressure and project deadlines. The industry has been quiet for some people but I don’t think it will always be like that. For now, I’m lucky.”
The recording is the mix, except when it’s not
“Being in a room with a bunch of great musicians, I mean, you can't top that - sitting alone and mixing is fun. And certainly, you know, monetarily, it's definitely my main breadwinner. But still, I love recording more than anything. That goes back to my youth, and my days as a jingle engineer, where I was recording and mixing every single day, five days a week - so I'm very connected to that,” Alan tells me.
The DPA 4041 large diaphragm mic Alan Meyerson uses in his custom immersive array
As a recordist Alan also has a penchant for buying microphones, which many Gearspace members will identify with all too well.
“I recently built an immersive array that I add to my orchestral recordings that sort of gives me the world of immersive recording as a fader, you know, so it's eleven microphones. And I push it up and it's a whole other perspective on the orchestra that blends with the other “normal” mics.
And I did that with DPA 4041s - and they ain't cheap!” Alan says with a laugh. He’s also recently acquired mics from Schoeps, AEA, Vanguard, and more. “I love mics,” he confirms. “It’s a fun, if expensive hobby!”
It’s true for guys like John Williams. But not so much in the world we live in now - when you get into other guys who are very, very orchestral, James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri and guys like that, there's a lot of additional elements that are going on at the same time. So although ‘the recording is the mix’ while you're recording, when you go to mix it and you have additional computer-driven elements or samples and stuff, it's really gonna affect your perspective and the balance on the orchestra, even to the point where you might have to EQ it differently because if your prerecorded material is super bright, your orchestra's gonna sound dull,” he laments.
“You know, what sounds like a perfect orchestra on its own is gonna sound dull in the body of a Hans Zimmer score, or a Harry Gregson-Williams or a John Powell score - people that use a lot of electronics and stuff like that. So that old adage is still valid in a few scenarios," Alan opines.
Are you not entertained?
It’s difficult to avoid the biggest and possibly most highly-anticipated film of 2024 - Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s sequel to the 2004 historical epic. If you’ve seen it, you’ve heard some of Alan’s latest released work.
“Yeah, well, Gladiator II is one I just mixed,” Alan humbly remarks. “It was recorded by the incredibly awesome Pete Cobbin and Kristy Whalley, who are phenomenal. I mixed it at Harry's Gregson-Williams’ studio in West LA. He has an ATC mix room that's basically a carbon copy of mine. We mixed it there and it was honestly one of the smoothest projects we've done in a long time. Everything was approved and the music was phenomenal. And the mixes - he (Ridley Scott) was happy with everything and we just moved along on it. I think we did the whole thing in like three and a half weeks. Really no problem. The recordings were great! So that was a lot of fun and the movie's amazing,” he tells me about the post process.
“At first I thought, oh, how do you sequel Gladiator? I screened it and I thought, oh my God. I’m watching it for the first time and the real music isn't in yet. And I thought, oh, well, it looks good. But, then by the time we mixed the score and put it in, it was like, f***, this is for real.
This is a great movie, you know? So that was lucky because you never know. I've been very lucky with sequels. I’ve obviously done the Dark Knight stuff and the Minion stuff and the Shrek stuff and the Kung Fu Panda stuff and the Dune stuff. So I really can't complain about sequels,” Alan chuckles as he recalls some of his work.
I ask Alan about the challenges of doing a sequel where the composer is different from the beloved original. “Harry Gregson-Williams and Hans Zimmer are sort of cut from the same mold. And Hans was very instrumental in Harry's career. They're still very close. And there's a tremendous amount of respect in the music that Harry wrote for Hans. Some of the themes do survive, which is lovely. So there's continuity, yet it is a much more modern sounding score. It is not trying to appeal to the people that want to see (the original) Gladiator only. They want to get younger people into the audience to see this film. So it sort of gives itself to that,” he answers thoughtfully.
I ask what else he’s done recently that he’s particularly proud of. Alan thinks for a moment before piping up assertively.
“Well, Wild Robot is a phenomenal piece of work. The composer, Kris Bowers, he's nominated for a Grammy® against Hans, who's nominated for Dune Part 2. So I have two films that are nominated for Best Soundtrack that I mixed!” he exclaims like a proud parent.
“Dune 2 is a fantastic project and it's amazing.”
Hans sort of kept to this concept that ‘we're not going to put an orchestra on this’ and that it's all going to be individual players and really bespoke sounds and stuff like that. And it sounded great!
They let me do an Atmos soundtrack mix, which was cool because I didn't get to mix Atmos on that film. That was a perfect example of a project where my delivering Atmos was limiting to them regarding the final theatrical mix [Alan normally sends a 5.1 or a 7.1 mix to the dubstage and give the re-recording mixers the freedom to make it work in Atmos] - but they did want an Atmos soundtrack. So I remixed the whole thing in Atmos, and I had so much more flexibility and freedom. That was amazing.
Nick WollegeNick Woolidge, who's someone I've worked with for many, many, many years. I didn’t record it, but we used my microphone array setup (mentioned earlier) - it sounded great. I mixed it at my house and they loved it. It’s just an incredibly well-crafted film. Kris actually won the Academy Award for directing and writing a short documentary called The Last Repair Shop. So he's not only a film score composer, but he's also a director, a writer and a filmmaker. Young guy, 33 years old, you know, just amazing. He did the music for TV’s Bridgerton! I love working with young people. I'm hoping that when I was young, people felt that way about me, but I certainly feel that way about them.
An Audeze odyssey
Score recording and mixing are no different from any other pro audio discipline in that headphones are an essential tool for the job, and Alan’s choice is Audeze.
“I have two models right now - I have the LCD-5s. and I also have one of the Manny Marroquin sets. I needed two because I was working in two places and I didn't want to carry my headphones back and forth. Audeze sent me a set of the Mannys and I liked them a lot.
You know, they're amazing headphones. And what makes them amazing is, first of all, for someone who hates wearing headphones, when you have the miles on your ears, you don't want to put anything against your ear and you definitely don't want to put anything in your ear.
So these things, they sit on a cup that it's like having a speaker connected to each ear.
And there's so much clarity and the low end is so accurate. The high end is quite sparkly and quite detailed and they don't blow up,” he observes.
The Audeze LCD-5 headphones as used by Alan Meyerson
“I have to be careful with how long I listen on headphones because it takes me a while to get back into reality when I take them off. But there's no other headphone out there that gives me the ability to listen that long. I mean, I did use, and I still like Sennheiser 650s, but this is to a different point and a different level. The staging that they have is just amazing,” Alan asserts.
“Both studios are mainly ATC speakers. At my studio at Remote Control Productions, my fronts are 100s, and then my sides, surrounds, and heights are all 12s. And at home, I have 50s as my front, and 20s as my surrounds. I'm just in 5.1 there, because I'm in a smaller room. I'm actually using Genelecs for my heights, only because first of all, they're great speakers, but second, the mounting hardware and the size of the speaker - ATC didn't have one that was the appropriate size for what I needed for my house. So I went with the Genelecs and that's worked great. So my rooms are compatible, just a little bit different in the low end. And I rely on my Audeze headphones to sort of get me from one to the other if I have to pass a project back and forth,” remarks Alan.
The Audeze MM-500, Alan Meyerson’s other Audeze headphones of choice
For me, it doesn't matter what my room sounds like or what my mix sounds like to me. What matters is what it sounds like to them, my clients. Fortunately for me, that all works because I like it and they like it.
For someone who's starting out that only has headphones, I would say get a proper headphone amp, something that has some power so that you don't have to run it super hot. There are a lot of great amps that aren't super expensive now, and if you’re buying an Audeze headphone, you’ll want something that’s at least comparable” he advises.
Everyone’s gone to the movies
“I love going to the movies! You know, we went to see Covenant, the one about getting a new Pope. It was great! I'll go see a movie I did three, four times in different theaters. We’re going to Wild Robot, Gladiator II, and as for Dune, well, I probably went to see that one five times in a theater. I went to see it in IMAX, I went to see it in Atmos, I went to see just how it survived the normal sort of theatrical surround, and it was so much fun,” he comments.
“I like going to non-blockbuster, non-tentpole movies too, and you know, we'll frequent the vintage movies and the local indies and stuff like that. That's a lot of fun. It doesn't feel like work at all,” he continues.
Quality control issues do not go unnoticed, though. “I'm actually a great audience - if it’s good! If it's not good, and when I say good and not good, if the post-production isn't done well, if the dub mix isn't really up to it, that's frustrating. When there's a technical problem, it just jumps out at me, and I can't get past it, and so that's a little frustrating, but when things are working, I love it,” states Alan. “I walk around the theater listening in different spots!”
What we do in life, echoes in eternity
Regarding the future, Alan is as philosophical as you would expect a person who has seen it all in the movie business. “You know, I love what I do, so there's no reason for me to stop doing it until they stop hiring me. So, I'm gonna continue to work. I'm 66, and I'm still busy. There's no reason to stop as long as my ears hold on and my body holds on. But what I am gonna do is I'm gonna start trying to take back some of my life! I'm newly married, we like to travel. I'm gonna continue to do Mix With The Masters - I’ve done it 11 times already, and I love doing it. I love teaching and I love mentoring. I have some proteges, and I have some assistants, and I love working with them. I can’t see myself winding down the mixing within the next two years. Maybe five, we’ll see what the universe holds for me,” he says, thoughtfully.
“But if you were to take it out to 10 years, I would say at that point, I'm gonna be sitting on a beach somewhere with my shoes off!”
Follow Alan Meyerson on Instagram here
For more information on Audeze headphones visit here
