About Scott Hull
Scott Hull loves music. And he loves a challenge. A 28-year veteran mastering engineer and the owner of Masterdisk studios in NYC, Scott started his career in 1983 and has mastered hit records and classic albums in every genre, as well as many Grammy-winning titles. Scott is consistently listed in the top 10 of the Top 100 Professionals list at albumcredits.com. He is widely regarded as an expert in vinyl mastering.
Scott often speaks about the unique perspective that a great mastering engineer brings to a recording project. When Scott listens to mixes in his mastering room, he’s hearing not only the music as it is, but also where it wants to go. The experience of mastering thousands of albums — some of which have gone on to classic status — has given Scott a very deep field of reference. Skill, talent, sensitivity, experience and a passion for music: these are the reasons that artists from all over the world trust their music to Scott Hull.
Scott’s mastering expertise runs the gamut of modern recorded music. Equally accomplished in pop/rock, avant-garde, soundtracks, world, jazz, soul and many other areas of music, Scott is one of the most sought after mastering engineers in the business. Scott is also an expert on mastering for vinyl. Recent clients include Sting, the Tzadik label and the Luaka Bop label.
Scott Hull started on his road to mastering right at the top, with an internship at Masterdisk in 1983. Then he worked as Bob Ludwig's assistant and digital editor until 1993 when Scott finally got his chance to show what he could do. In 1994 Scott was named Chief Engineer at Masterdisk, and was now mastering major label and independent projects from around the world every day.
"Those first 15 years at Masterdisk seemed to go by in an instant," says Hull. During his tenure, Scott had the honor of mastering the legendary Donald Fagen's Kamikirad as well as some highly influential records like Garbage's 2.0, Shaun Mullins' Lullabye, Spacehog's In the Meantime and many other notable records.
"At that point it was time to strike out on my own. I moved my mastering operation to Classic Sound, assembled my own room full of analog and digital mastering gear and mastered the Grammy winning Album of the Year: Steely Dan's Two Against Nature." That first year Scott also mastered John Mayer's Room For Squares.
Things were changing rapidly, as Scott continued to build his reputation for excellence and creativity. While at Classic Sound, Scott also lent his signature sound to many other major label and independent records, as well as a host of influential jazz and contemporary music recordings, singer/songwriter projects and world music albums.
In late 2005, Scott opened Scott Hull Mastering. Capitalizing on the opportunity to own a piece of the rock, Scott and his small crew moved his studio once again to the heart of midtown Manhattan and set up as a full-featured, professional mastering facility. But fate unveiled an interesting twist. In June of 2008 Scott purchased Masterdisk mastering studios. Scott personally knew all of the engineers still at Masterdisk and he had worked with them 10 years before. And of course he knew the facility like the back of his hand. So who says you can't go back home again? (Provided it hasn't been torn down before you get there, of course!)
Since then Scott has been busy revitalizing the Masterdisk name by building on the work of the great engineers on staff (Tony Dawsey and Andy VanDette to name a couple), hiring new engineers, and bringing veteran engineer Vlado Meller on board in 2011. The studio has been thriving under his leadership with more expansion to come.
In the meantime, Scott is still mastering amazing projects every day. "The new music business is very interesting," says Hull. "Many more records are being made, and some of them are recorded unconventionally. More and more we see records come in that were recorded in less-than-optimal settings. So high-quality mastering is really more important than ever."
Projects recently completed by Scott include Sting, The Last Ship; Donald Fagan, Sunken Condos; and Loudon Wainwright III, Older Than My Old Man Now.
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