 ELLIOT MAZER’S FURMAN SOUND IT-REFERENCE KEEPS THE RAT PACK SINGING AFTER THE LIGHTS GO DOWNFurmanPosted 2003-09-19 Elliot Mazer’s high-profile production and engineering credits are impressive to say the least, so it’s not surprising that when the Blackout of the Summer of 2003 struck the northeastern United States and much of Canada on August 14, 2003, Mazer had a lot on the line. Like many other studios in the region, Mazer’s New York studio, running off a Furman Sound IT-Reference Discrete Symmetrical AC Power Source suffered from the power outage in the middle of a very important session.
Diana Haig (Elliot Mazer’s wife) was in the process of putting the final pre-mastering touches on a DVD-Audio project for Warner Records featuring a live performance by Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, and Dean Martin titled, The Summit - an Evening with the Rat Pack. Mazer comments, “While using Pro Tools, she noticed that the mouse began acting strange. We saved the session and the lights went out – then the entire studio gracefully shut it self down. I heard the relays click in the IT-Reference immediately after the power went down.”
With any large scale electricity disaster comes the inevitable pre-outage power surge. Thanks to the Furman Sound IT-Reference and the individual Furman Sound PL8 Power Conditioners protecting Mazer’s ProTools HD system and racks of outboard gear, all was safe and sound when the power was restored. Mazer remarks, “After the power came back on, we checked the computer hard drives and they were fine. We looked at the folder for the project and saw that the session was saved at 4:09 PM, which is the exact time the blackout occurred. With the power restored, I ran Disk Warrior on the hard drives and then it was business as usual.”
Elliot Mazer produced and engineered some of the most famous albums of his generation. As a producer, Mazer worked on Neil Young’s masterpiece, Harvest, and 7 other Neil Young albums, Linda Ronstadt’s Silk Purse, and Janis Joplin’s Cheap Thrills, Farewell Song and In Concert. As an engineer, Mazer worked with Robbie Robertson, Martin Scorsese, and Bill Graham to capture the soundtrack to The Band’s legendary, star-studded movie, The Last Waltz. Recently, Mazer worked with Pete Townsend to remix The Who’s rock opera, Tommy for a DVD-Audio release.
With such a striking list of credits and a high standard of excellence, it’s no wonder that Elliot Mazer places the utmost importance on sonic clarity, hence his dependence on Furman Sound’s IT-Reference for its ability to reduce common mode and transverse line noise. Mazer concludes, “The IT Reference box is fantastic. It helped us lower the noise floor in the system and allowed us to interconnect the various digital and analog systems. We used to have to run grounding cables around the studio and you could measure 10 volts potential between gear. Once we put the IT-Reference in, all of that went away, everything sounded better and became more stable. Aside from the blackout on August 14, 2003, fuses have blown in the past and the system always went down gracefully. We use 192 kHz sampling rates and have to make sure the entire signal chain is extremely clean, and the IT-Reference assures that it always is!”
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