In November we ran a competition offering prizes of 5 copies of Levels from Mastering The Mix and we can announce that the 5 lucky winners are John Hartmann, Peter Bell, Simon Wilkinson, Jonathan Guillemette and Brian Montgomery.

Peter Bell

I am currently based in Sydney, Australia and work as a freelance audio professional in the fields of both live and recording/post production. Most of my studio recordings are in the jazz and world music idioms and include albums from artists such as Andy Fiddes and Cameron Earl. 

The Levels plugin will help in preparing my mixes for final mastering and on smaller projects as well as checking my in house mastered demos for clients. As I also dabble in some multimedia and video post work, the loudness and dynamic range metering will be invaluable in preparing files for broadcast and multimedia. as my work is done across various rooms and facilities (some with less than ideal monitoring) I am especially interested in checking out the bass level monitoring features of the software.

Jonathan Guillemette

I have a humble little home studio here in Canada, named Unleash Studio. I'm currently doing this part time but I'm working hard on making this a full time gig. I currently have two full length albums under my belt and a few EPs as well. I'm also in a metal band called The Astroplex. When I'm not writing songs for my own band, I do a lot of recording and mixing.

Getting my mixes professionally mastered has been an eye opener. Sometimes my low end would be wrong, or my levels were too hot or not hot enough. I've had issues with my stereo image or even certain phase issues. With a plugin like Levels from Mastering the Mix, I'll be able to avoid these pitfalls sooner in the mix process, which in turn will prevent me from having the mastering engineer calling me with an extensive list of revisions on my end. Less time wasted doing revisions means more time working on other clients' mixes. More mixes, more money. It all makes sense.

John Hartmann

My life has been a bit of a hodge podge of different jobs in the entertainment industry. I started as a musician, bass player, and a bit of sound mixing back east. Then after moving to Los Angeles in 1988 a friend tossed me into the television world.

I started with ENG audio for corporate shows with some broadcast friends, and learnt the broadcast way to do corporate shows.  Then into ENG audio for MTV / VH-1 on the US West coast for many years, getting experience with different cameras and sound on locations and learning that things can and will go wrong then moving into truck mixing for TV and into directing long form live corporate shows. 

I have had a ten year stint with House of Blues / Live Nation as a multi-track sound mixer and video director, music AD, and tech manager. During this time I also had a Post Production Audio Suite with a Promo Company in Hollywood. Tech managing for live concert multi-camera / multi-track video shoots has been paying the bills for quite a few years now. Always exciting to be part of a large crew. 

I get to work with the best of our industry in all these different disciplines. From directors, producers, sound mixers, music mixers, camera op’s, engineers. I feel truly lucky that I can make a living in this crazy world of capturing performances, gameshows, and special events.

These days as we move into the new era of loudness compliance, we all need a proper way to comply with levels. The tools for the job should be easy to see and understand. Levels has a new perspective and approach to the visual side for reference. Big and bright meters that are easy to check and easy to read with everything we need in a spherical display. I really love this new way of reading reference Information, headroom, stereo field, dynamic range, bass space, and mono all in one place. Its quick and easy on the eyes.

Brian Montgomery

My career has allowed me to work with many of the world's finest artists, musicians and producers and develop a diverse list of clients being involved with well over 300 major label recordings and won a TEC award for Donald Fagen's "Morph The Cat" and also three Grammy awards.  I learned my craft by sitting behind some of the greatest "ears" in the business while working on staff at the legendary Avatar Studios (formerly Power Station) in New York City. 

In so far as what Levels will do for me,  I'm obsessed with metering (both analog moving coil and sophisticated digital metering).  I'm hoping it will help to keep me in check and complement some of the other metering tools I rely on when mixing in the box.

Simon Wilkinson

I'm a musician, composer, producer, studio owner and voice over artist running Boomtown Studio. I use ProTools HDX, mainly as it's the best for me to use in my voiceover business with near zero latency recording and great audio editing. Combined with the C24 controller console it's a great system. 

Although I've been in the professional audio business for most of my adult life, one never stops learning and the Levels plugin will prove a great asset in picking up more useful knowledge to move forward with and helping me to deliver content to the right spec.