Audeze sits down with Grammy Award winning engineer Chris Allen

Chris Allen is a multiple Grammy Award winning recording, mixing, and mastering engineer. With more than two decades of experience in some of NYC's most famous studios, Chris has worked with legendary artists in jazz and rock, as well as soundtracks for film and television.

"I’ve always relied on headphones while mixing and mastering, but with the MM series, I am getting drawn deeper into the music." - Chris Allen

Here's our chat with Chris:

Can you pick out any highlights from your work that you're particularly proud of? 

Samara Joy’s “Linger Awhile”

Recorded at Sear Sound and mixed in my studio.

Samara is one of those generational talents that I feel extremely fortunate to have made a few records with. Her voice is incredible, dynamic, and constantly evolving. She has already won Grammy’s for Best Vocal Jazz Album and Best New Artist in 2023 at the age of 23, and she’s just getting started. 

Kurt Elling featuring Danilo Perez “Secrets Are the Best Stories”

Recorded at Sear Sound and mixed and mastered in my studio.

Another Best Vocal Jazz Album winner.

There are only a handful singers that have the technical abilities and skills like Kurt. His sessions are some of my favorite studio experiences, and he is a true gentleman. Danilo is one of the most interesting and creative pianists I’ve worked with. This record gets deep and takes the listener in a dozen different directions.

Joshua Redman featuring Gabrielle Cavassa “where are we”

I absolutely love this record. Josh brought me down to New Orleans to the amazing Esplanade Studios. Everything hit tape before transferring to Pro Tools, giving the record a warmth and roundness that you just don’t get going straight to digital.

The band is ridiculously good, as are the guest artists.

Working with Josh has been a goal of mine for a long time. He is one of the most accomplished saxophonists in jazz, and I believe this is his first record sharing the bill with a vocalist. Gabi has a smokey, quirky voice that draws you in from her first word. This was one of the best experiences of my career.

Mary Halvorson “Belladonna” and “Amaryllis”

Recorded at Sear Sound.

Mary has quickly become one of my favorite guitarists. This was another fun studio experience. Another great ensemble. I had a great time working with her and producer John Dieterich (Deerhoof).

Crosscurrents Trio “Good Hope”

Dave Holland (bass), Chris Potter (sax) and Zakir Hussain (tabla and percussion).

Recorded and mixed at Sear Sound.

These guys are absolute legends of jazz, and three of the kindest individuals I have worked with. We recorded the trio all in the same room. We took a very honest and natural approach to the sound of the record, and I think it comes through. The opportunity to record tabla is rare, so working with Zakir was like getting a one on one masterclass from a true master of the instrument.

Sigur Ros “Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust"

Recorded at Sear Sound.

This was an early session for me at Sear, and an experience that I will never forget.

We filled the entire 2200 square foot live room with instruments and mics so the band could walk around the room and search for the right sound for each part of each song. I believe the final count was 74 inputs.

On the first day of the session a freak blast of radio interference blew hundreds of capacitors in the console. Apparently the radio antenna on top of the Empire State Building had a grounding issue that was so severe that no one could start their cars in a 4 or 5 block radius. We overnighted 3500 capacitors, assembled a team of techs, and recapped the entire console over the weekend so we could start recording on Monday.

Some other highlights for me:

Paul Simon “In the Blue Light”

Recorded at Sear Sound.

Fleet Foxes “Crack-Up”

Recorded at Sear Sound.

Robert Randolph and the Family Band “Got Soul”

Recorded at Sear Sound.

Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band “Between My Head and the Sky”

Recorded and mixed at Sear Sound.

How would you define your main role on most of the projects you work on these days?

These days I am fortunate enough to see most projects through from tracking to mixing, and many through to mastering. But I spend the majority of my time mixing.

While I love the tracking process, I enjoy mixing more than anything.

Unfortunately, mastering seems to be the smallest part of most budgets, so I do end up doing it when the budgets are too tight to use the mastering engineers that I know and trust.

How did you get started in music? What kind of music did you listen to while growing up and how has that progressed?

I started learning to play trombone when I was 9 years old. My school district had a great music program with teachers that were dedicated and inspiring. I think I started actively listening to music around the same time. I always had a walkman and pair of headphones with me, listening to old cassettes from my parents' collection until I could start earning a little money to buy new music.

I listened to a lot of metal, punk, rock, and anything that came out of the grunge and emo scene in the 90s and early 2000s. In high school I listened to all sorts of music from hardcore to big bands to experimental rock, and in college I started listening to jazz and some classical.

Can you name any factors that influenced the course of your musical life? Heroes, role models, moments, interactions, etc?

My music teachers Dave Hawthorne and Tim Watson had a huge influence on me. They pushed me to pursue a career in music and I can’t thank them enough.

In high school I was introduced to a local recording engineer, Ron Keck. We did mostly remote recordings at the time, edited and mixed in his studio in his house. He really set me on a path towards studio work. He now owns a successful studio facility in upstate NY called Subcat Studios.

College at SUNY Fredonia is where the idea of a career as an audio engineer really set in. I started working towards two degrees, trombone performance and sound recording technology, but it didn’t take long to fall in love with being in a studio. The director of the program, Bernd Gottinger pushed us hard and maintained high standards for math and science.

I was a huge fan of Dave Fridmann who was also a professor in the recording program. His work with The Flaming Lips was especially inspiring and interesting to me. He was the first one to tell us how difficult it would be to survive in this industry, and he was absolutely correct.

After college I interned at a few studios in NYC until I landed at Sear Sound. Sear is where all of the dreams became reality.

Walter Sear was an excellent teacher and his mentorship was invaluable.

I assisted some of the best engineers and producers in the world, worked with every genre of music, and eventually started making a name as an engineer.

Nothing can prepare you for a career in audio like working for a world class studio. The 20 years I spent there taught me almost everything I know about music, engineering, and who I am. It was an amazing experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. 

Can you briefly describe a moment of frustration from your past work, and what you may have done to overcome the obstacles? Would you approach it differently now?

There was a short period of time that I started feeling complacent and bored with the work I was doing. We were super busy and I started to feel a bit like an under-appreciated factory worker. I let myself burn out and stopped absorbing new information. It started to show in the quality of the recordings I was making, and took a hard reality check from a friend and regular client to snap me out of it.

I started looking for ways to keep each session interesting. Getting a little more creative and flexible in my mic choices and placements, and listening to new music each morning to see if I could find inspiration in recordings by other engineers that I admire. I needed to fall in love with the process again, and I did.

Is there any gear you find yourself turning to most when working on a project? What are some of your favorite tools/instruments recently?

Headphones have become an invaluable reference when traveling to unfamiliar studios. Every control room is tuned(or not tuned) different, and not every studio is going to have monitors that you know and trust. Having a consistent reference point that removes the room from the equation, and that you can carry with you is crucial to a capturing music properly.

For software, iZotope RX is the tool I rely on the most. With the vast majority of my work being acoustic music, being able to deal with distracting noises quickly without leaving artifacts has been a huge help in delivering an uninterrupted listening experience.

Do you have any words of wisdom for people who might aspire toward a similar path for their own careers?

Never allow yourself to think that you can skate by on the knowledge you’ve acquired. This industry is constantly changing and there are thousands of small pieces of information that are going to be helpful as you develop your career.

College will help teach the basics, and show different directions that can be pursued, but only real world experience will teach someone how to survive and excel in this industry.

There are no shortcuts.

Go to school, then get an internship at a studio that is known for training the engineers that you admire. Prepare for years of long hours and terrible paychecks. Learn to recover quickly from mistakes and difficult sessions. Take every assistant gig available and pay attention to every detail of what the engineers are doing. Make sure to learn something every single day, and don’t be afraid to move on to a different studio or position if you notice your intake of knowledge starting to plateau.

Do your best to kind and be patient. It’s not always easy, but your clients will remember their experience with you first, and the quality of your work second.

How long have you been working with headphones, and how do you typically use them in your workflow?

I’ve been using headphones for as long as I can remember, but I started relying on them more often when budgets forced me to start mixing in small, noisy NYC apartments where speakers would piss off the neighbors. Lately, I have been able to work on monitors for the majority of the time I spend on mixes, but I tend to do most of the fine tuning, seeking out noises, and quality checks on headphones. Since going freelance, I have been working in studios all over the country that I only get to visit once in a while. Keeping a high end pair of headphones in my bag that I know intimately has been a huge help in adjusting to the rooms and figuring out each individual studio’s quirks, strengths, and weaknesses.

How have your Audeze headphones affected your work?

I’ve always relied on headphones while mixing and mastering, but with the MM series, I am getting drawn deeper into the music. The accurate imaging makes placing each instrument in the soundstage faster and easier than on monitors. The instrument separation reveals the space they were recorded in, and helps finding the right reverb levels and lengths more obvious.

Mixes are coming together faster and with more precision, and vocal placement is absolutely perfect.

Everything I have mixed with them so far has translated beautifully to all of my other playback systems.

Can you tell us what you've been working on with them recently?

Mixing new music from jazz sextet One for All, singer/songwriter Rachel Baiman, pianist/keyboardist Shedrick Mitchell, and a phenomenal new vocalist Stella Katherine Cole.

I just finished mastering a duo record with Larry Golding and John Sneider.