My friend and a fellow member of the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society, Jim Merod has many roles. He is a professor (and Ph.D) of English and American literature who has taught at Brown, Brandeis, Cornell, Stanford and UCLA. He is a prolific writer, as well as a music critic who writes for ENJOY THE MUSIC. He is also an audio guru and writes equipment reviews for POSITIVE FEEDBACK ONLINE.
Most importantly, at least for our purposes, Jim is an outstanding recording engineer who in the early 1990s founded BluePort Sound recording studio and BluePort Jazz, a label with 15 published albums. For more than 25 years, he has recorded a "who's who" of legendary jazz, blues, and Latin musicians: Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Ella Fitzgerald, John Hicks, Sarah Vaughan, Kenny Barron, Clark Terry and Wayne Shorter, just to name a few.
Typically, Jim records "live" on location. A believer of the "less is more" philosophy, he uses as few microphones as the situation allows, and mixes everything "live to 2-track" right there and then at high resolution (24-bit, 96kHz in PCM format). Editing and mastering are kept minimal, also, to protect the essence of the live event. Top-notch equipment is used in recording and mastering. Jim's partner, Steve McCormack -- yes, of The Mod Squad and McCormack Audio fame -- lends his hands and ears. The result for a listener is an honest and vivid capture of a live event, with ambient "warts and mysteries" as Jim notes, that is invariably exciting and often stunning.
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