Option B

A new studio, and a young engineer, make Gateway more accessible

By Sam Pfeifle

AYAN AT WORK: providing world-class options to local bands.

Adam Ayan lives a charmed life.

As apprentice to Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering, one of, if not the, premiere mastering studios in the country, Ayan eats and drinks the music industry. Already, at 25, he has helped Ludwig to make crystal-clear successes out of Phish’s Hampton Comes Alive six-disc live album, No Doubt’s latest Return of Saturn, and Semisonic’s “Closing Time”-inclusive Chemistry, just in the last year. He edited projects alongside industry giants like Bruce Springsteen — remember when he was, gasp!, in Portland? — and producer Ron St. Germain (who helped to make 6gig’s Tincan Experiment sound so nice). And he has recently headed projects of his own, mastering the likes of Eric Clapton & B.B. King, Frank Sinatra, REM, and, locally, polishing the successful Greetings from Area Code 207 benefit project for the St. Lawrence Church. But that’s just the beginning.

Later this summer, Gateway, which currently books Ludwig’s time in the studio four and five months out, will double their ability to supply the musical community’s demand by opening “Studio B,” a sort of to-scale version of the primary “Studio A” space. And Adam Ayan will be sitting behind the boards.

“There’s no world-class mastering studio in Boston,” explains Ayan among the dizzying array of technical wizardry that populates Studio A. “So bands looking to get their record up to industry standard had to either come here to Portland or go to New York. No one thought they could come to Portland because Bob’s always booked. Well, now they can come up here and work in the second studio with me, who was mentored by Bob.”

Ayan graduated in 1997 from Umass-Lowell with a Bachelor’s in music performance with an emphasis in sound recording technology, what they call the SRT program. “I went to the university as a bass player,” he says, “but I got really into recording. I don’t really play anymore. This is my artistic expression.” He notes that a musical background is “absolutely vital for the job,” however, especially when he’s asked to read scores for classical mastering jobs.

After freelancing in Boston and New Hampshire, Ayan landed the gig at Gateway roughly a year later. Within six months, Ludwig had him in the studio with him, and under his wing. Now he’s ready to roll on his own.

This opens the doors to local bands who’ve always seen Gateway as basically unapproachable: sort of a slice of New York City sitting amongst the Portland rabble. And it’s hard not to get intimidated as you walk through the place, with hundreds of gold and platinum albums lining the walls: Pearl Jam’s Ten, Nirvana’s In Utero, a nine-times platinum by Mariah Carey. Now, however, Portland bands can have their albums sound just like the big boys and girls, even if they don’t have the major-label marketing blitz behind them.

“This gives them options,” says Ayan. “We’re still going to be doing major label records. I’m going to be doing major label records. But now it’s based on availability. If you want to do world-class stuff, you can come here.”

But just what is world-class stuff? Doesn’t world-class sound come from a world-class band making world-class music? Well, yes and no.

“There are a lot of great producers out there,” says Ayan, “but only a handful are spot on. We do anything from a repair of the mix — maybe there’s too much bass, to little percussion — to making minor tweaks to the EQ [sound levels].”

To show people what he can do, Ayan has compiled a CD of “before and afters” featuring work he’s done with an unsigned Canadian singer-songwriter named Frederic Gary Coneau and the Hoodoos, who will be releasing a new disc on the Telarc label. Like a sort of musical parting of the Red Sea, the disc makes believers out of skeptics.

“This is to show that it’s not all smoke and mirrors,” says Ayan, popping the disc in so that the music will issue from the $100,000-a-pop speakers at the front of Studio A.

First is Coneau. A gravelly voice floats over light percussion in a sort of Mark Knopfler sort of way. Not bad, really. Then comes the after. Suddenly the vocals stop floating and pop with the vibration of every smoke-damaged vocal chord. The bass rumbles through the room. A crash cymbal appears that wasn’t there before.

Next up is the Hoodoos. They’ve kind of got a Col. Bruce Hampton live feel, jazzy and rootsy at the same time: sounds like some of the bootlegs you might have heard in college. With Ayan’s mastering, however, they lose the slightly muted “live” sound without losing that “live energy.” And, all of a sudden, there’s a snare drum, and a bass; the lead singer could be standing next to you.

Obviously, some of these improvements won’t come through as well on that “box” you’ve been lugging around since you were 12, but you get the idea.

“For record companies and artists both,” says Ayan, “we’re your insurance policy. We listen to records from top-notch producers all day, every day. We know what’s competitive.”

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com.