IAR teacher Sam Skaf, who specializes in analog and digital technology, recently mastered the album Somebody’s Got to Win for artist Fo Onassis. The album was produced by IAR graduate Robin Henriquez. Sam was asked to do the mastering by one of his students, Jesus Henriquez, who engineered the project.

“I heard the album and liked it. It sounded professionally produced and engineered. I didn’t know that Lynx (one of his former students) was such a talented producer until after he graduated. Jesus is an extremely intelligent student and engineer,” said Sam.

Sam’s mastering technique for the twelve songs consisted of 48K/24-bit files being exchanged via FTP servers. The tracks went through a T.C. Electronics System 6000 digital mastering processor, and he used custom tube EQs and compressors. His digital audio mastering workstation of choice was Magix’s Sequoia.

The album started in Jesus’ basement and was finalized at Reflex, a studio in Piscataway, NJ which is owned by Jesus, his friend Robin, and Fo Onassis. “For engineering the album, I used a RØDE NTK microphone, Waves plug-ins, and a Trident pre-amp. The production was done with a Yamaha Motif keyboard, an Akai MPC1000 , ProTools LE, live drums, sax, and vocals. We really wanted to focus more on the musical aspect of hip-hop with an old-school flavor,” he said.

“The album is on an enhanced CD, which means that it contains multimedia content,” said Sam. For more information, please visit cdbaby.com and myspace.com. The album is also available for purchase/download at the itunes.