After working for a while in audio training and as a freelance engineer he joined CTS Studios in 1987 and continued to combine a specialisation in audio CD pre-mastering with balance engineering. Following the closure of CTS Studios at Wembley in 2001, Mike moved to Lansdowne Studios in Holland Park but faced with the ever reducing scale of the music industry presence in London Mike left CTS-Lansdowne in 2003 and now runs his own mastering facility in Cornwall. Mike has maintained his enthusiasm for mastering over more than 35 years, saying "every day is different - I do everything: contemporary dance, MOR, big bands, classical, folk, children's albums, show soundtracks, bhangra, Asian classical and devotional music, spoken word - you name it." Mike says "When I first started, disc cutting was all mechanics and plumbing! These days most of the hard work is done with software and delivered on optical disc or by FTP. Happily Cornwall is at the forefront of superfast fibre-optic broadband, which is great, and we were one of the first adopters of the technology in the area. It's an enormous benefit, especially when moving large, HD files around!" Since moving to Cornwall Mike has continued to be involved at the very heart of the professional recording industry as a member of the board of the APRS - the Association of professional recording Services - and has also become very much involved in the local music scene. He now produces and presents a weekly music show on CHBN, the community radio station in Truro, and regularly welcomes local musicians to the programme to chat and play live. |
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Mike Brown began his professional audio career in 1974 at Pye Studios, Marble Arch, becoming a balance engineer in 1977 and a disc cutting engineer in 1978. His most impressive statistic is that by the end of that year he found at one point that he had cut 4 of the top 6 singles, one week! By 1979 he was already working with digital audio, cutting both classical and pop LPs from early digital recordings.