Interview: Daniel Dettwiler

Meet Daniel Dettwiler — renowned recording and mixing engineer, educator at top-tier educational institutions, and above all, a music lover on a mission for great sonics. Whether Daniel works in internationally acclaimed studios such as Abbey Road or Air Studios, or from his own base outside of Basel in Switzerland, his world-class abilities are attested by his recording clients, students, and professional audio peers like George Massenburg and Al Schmitt.

It is not uncommon for music studios to be located in repurposed rooms and buildings that were originally designed for entirely different activities. Studios are often built in old offices, factories, cinemas, storage spaces, or what have you.

It is, however, much less common for music studios to be converted swimming pools. But precisely that happens to be the backstory of Daniel Dettwiler’s mixing and mastering studio. As Daniel and his family moved to their house outside of Basel, Switzerland, work began to convert the swimming pool into a top-class mixing and mastering studio.

– I thought the shape of the pool would be great for a mixing studio, and so did my acoustic engineer. The construction work took over a year from start to finish, but the result is great and I couldn’t have wished for a better mixing and mastering environment than this.

Background

Daniel Dettwiler is clearly not someone who shies away from the unconventional, and he does not mind challenging widely held beliefs about music recording and mixing — or about audio training and education, for that matter. The path that led him to his current position as a prominent engineer and a professor of music recording is rather typical, though. Born in 1974, Daniel started taking piano lessons at the age of seven. As a teenager, Daniel became interested in recording and invested in a Fostex mixer and some synthesizers.

– I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a musician, producer, or mixing engineer. I learned a lot by recreating songs I loved with my synthesizers, but I soon discovered that it was mixing that interested me the most. I upgraded to a Mackie 8-Bus console, which was a huge investment for me at the time. Things just went on from there. I studied audio design, which combines audio engineering and music. While I’m more talented when it comes to mixing other people’s music compared to being a composer or a musician, I see myself very much as a musician when I’m behind the mixing console.  I’m not good at the underlying technology at all, like my good friend Eric Valentine for example. He does not only have a very musical ear, but he can also literally build mixing consoles and equalizers himself. I can envy that, it would be nice to be able to perform at least small repairs myself. So for me, recording and mixing is all about having a musical ear and aiming to make musical decisions.

Daniel actually owns two studios, he also has a recording studio more centrally located in Basel.

The Swiss Style

Working out of a small country like Switzerland can be challenging, and engineers from countries like the US and UK have a huge advantage from being located right where a lot of the world’s music is being made.

– Obviously, Switzerland doesn’t have international stars like Diana Krall and such. There were also no star engineers nearby that I could learn from or have internships with, so I had to really dig into it and learn it all by myself. But there’s also an advantage to that, which is that I developed a sonic signature of my own. I probably do things differently from a lot of other engineers.

One of the things that stand out as Daniel’s sonic signature is his intricate use of reverb.

– My mixes always have a large depth of field. Even in pop music, there is no reason not to have a clear staging. I’d use shorter reverbs to achieve it with a pop mix compared to jazz, but still, the reverbs need to be there to position things in the front-to-back plane. I go by a rule which is that no two instruments can take up the same position in the side-to-side or front-to-back planes, everything needs to have its own defined space. Another thing is that my mixes always have the listener embraced by sound. The mix needs to create the impression of a sonic space that extends beyond the speakers. So my speciality is to always create super deep and super wide mixes. With that said, I never work with templates or fixed systems, I always start with the raw tracks and start off by listening closely to them to determine how well they were recorded and if anything needs fixing rather than creative mixing. There’s a huge difference between working with tracks that were recorded at Abbey Road and studios of that caliber compared to tracks from lesser studios that always tend to sound small and boxy. So that’s a situation where I have to struggle a bit more to create mixes that are as deep and wide as I think they should be.

Outside of always creating deep and wide mixes, Daniel considers himself stylistically versatile and not one of those engineers who have a distinctive sonic signature. Daniel always adapts to the music he’s working on. That also means that Daniel has worked with a wide range of musical styles, such as classical, jazz, modern pop, film scores, and even some R&B. 

– I enjoy the process of figuring out what a song really needs and adding that. I think I could work with most musical styles. Perhaps not metal, although it would be interesting! These days I mostly work with jazz, partly because the budgets tend to be a bit higher than pop mixes. In the pop world, you compete with engineers who do entire mixes in four hours on their laptops, not because they’re lazy or lack knowledge, but because the pricing pressure forces them to work like that. It is impossible for them to afford to have a proper studio like mine and spend the time the tracks deserve. Mixing jazz is very different, you can easily mix an entire record in a couple of days. Once you have the basic settings on the console and the outboard equipment in place, you can use that for the entire production, just ride some levels or add other automation when needed. It’s the same with classical music. For the film scores I work on, which are mostly German productions, I’m usually budgeted 3-7 days of work. It’s much less than the big American films, but it’s workable.

Some engineers will make a sharp distinction between mixing and mastering and never do both — certainly not on the same projects.

– I think that’s a silly approach. Sure, there’s an advantage to being specialized and focused. Many mastering engineers are more technology-focused compared to mixing engineers. But I have both mixed and mastered for 30 years and I’ve never felt it was an issue. I consider myself specialized in improving sound, whether it’s a single track, a drum bus, or a full mix. However, I don’t track or produce music.

working with weiss

Switzerland may not be the biggest country in terms of artists and mix engineers, but there are several brands creating high-end recording equipment. Studer, PSI Audio, and of course Weiss Engineering. In such a small country, most people in a niche market like high-end audio tend to know one another. Daniel has been friends with us at Weiss Engineering for years. It was mostly digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters that brought Daniel Dettwiler and Weiss Engineering together.

– I was probably about 25 when I first realized how important converters are to the sound. At the time, most converters sounded like crap. Few brands knew how to create good converters, but I got a Weiss Engineering 18-bit DAC which was great for its time. At first, I was actually not able to discern the differences between the Weiss and cheaper converters. I was a student at the time, and my teacher set up blind tests for me which I didn’t pass. But after some proper ear training, I was able to pinpoint the differences and I would pass the blind test every time. 

So what is a quality DAC to Daniel?

– Converters are tricky because if you just look at measurements, the difference between a cheap and an expensive converter can seem insignificant. But a good converter properly maintains the physical integrity of the instruments, there’s something about the weight of the sound sources that’s just more real and natural. Furthermore, the depth and width are also maintained. The soundstage is bigger on good converters. It’s a bit of a mystery why it’s so hard to capture the differences with measurements, but any good engineer will be able to identify the difference by ear, even in blind tests. A very cool test is to find a good classical recording, where the oboe and the bassoon play in unison. On cheaper converters, it can almost give a flanging type of effect which you’d assume is a natural phenomenon. But it’s not there in real life or when recorded and played back through excellent converters.

When Weiss Engineering made its DAC1 Mk 2 available, Daniel tried it out — but wasn’t entirely convinced.

– It sounded great, with good spectral balance and physical integrity. However I felt the depth of field wasn’t perfect, and I confirmed this with a mastering engineer colleague to make sure it wasn’t just in my head. So, I ended up returning the unit. Daniel Weiss said he couldn’t really explain why I felt it was lacking and was out of ideas for how to improve it.

A couple of years went by, and eventually, Daniel Weiss called Daniel Dettwiler to announce that he now had a DAC1 Mk 3 available.

– He wouldn’t tell me beforehand what the difference was! He wanted me to try it out and give my unbiased opinion. So I tried it, and my opinion was that the DAC1 Mk 3 provides the greatest depth of field I have ever heard from any converter. I called Daniel Weiss up to ask what he did, and he explained that he barely changed anything on the digital side of things, but he completely redesigned the analog sections. Which I thought was quite interesting. So when I built my mix and mastering studio, I got the DAC1 Mk 3 and it’s what I use for all my monitoring.

Daniel Dettwiler is still in regular contact with us at Weiss Engineering and has provided extensive design input over the years. Most recently, he provided input on early prototypes of our DAC204 and DAC205.

– It’s interesting to work with Weiss Engineering because Daniel Weiss himself is much more of a technical engineer. He will half-jokingly say that he just does the engineering and let others tell him if the products sound good! These days, Daniel’s son Joschka also works with Weiss Engineering, and Joschka is much more of a mix and mastering engineer like me and he also runs a studio. We share a passion for music. So Daniel and Joschka Weiss complement each other extremely well. 

Professor Dettwiler

Daniel Dettwiler is not only passionate about creating great sound himself, teaching audio engineering is also a large part of his day-to-day life. He is a professor and teaches at two different Swiss universities. He also offers online courses through his website www.danieldettwiler.com.

– I suffer when I hear bad recordings and mixes. It’s horrible to listen to various playlists of great songs and musical performances that don’t sound as good as they could. Mixing and recording takes training, education, and a lot of practice. I definitely think education makes the process of becoming a good recordist and mixer much faster. So I guess I like teaching because I want to hear better recordings!

Daniel started teaching quite early on. The Jazz School at the Musik-Akademie Basel noted that many of their students were interested in learning more about jazz production and recording, and assigned Daniel to design such a course.

– As I started teaching, I quickly learned that it’s not so easy to teach how to get a good and full production. There are a lot of parts that go into creating a good recording and mix. But over time I’ve developed a system that makes it all easier for the students to grasp. I’m structuring it around three main elements that need to be in place for any good mix: the first one is spectral balance, which is a rather obvious one. The instruments should have the proper level and frequency content relative to one another. The second one is that the music should have a good depth of field, so there’s a clear sense of the space in which the music exists, and that all instruments have their own defined placement in the side-to-side and front-to-back dimensions. And the third one is that it’s important to maintain the physical integrity of the sound sources. They need to sound their actual size also when the music is played back at low sound levels. Listeners rarely play back the music at the actual sound level it was recorded at. When sounds are played softer, they also get perceived as being smaller — so it requires some work to maintain the perceived size of the instruments. So those are the basics of the system I work with. There are still many things to learn, but aiming to achieve these goals at least makes it easier to analyze and understand which problems one must solve with any particular mix.

Rounding off with those pearls of wisdom, we’ll let Daniel Dettwiler get back to creating outstanding audio recordings and teaching others how to do the same.