Studio Confidential: Engineers Night Out

A Supergroup Behind the Music Puts On a Show

Imagine going home to visit your parents for their 50th anniversary, out in Connecticut, a quiet, celebratory day with the family. The phone rings, and your mother answers.

“Hello, is Frank there? This is Barbra Streisand and I need to talk to him.”

Mom: “No, really who is this?”

Frank tells him mom it’s OK, and he’d take the call.

Frank Filipetti, one of the unsung stars of the unsinging part of the recording business, was a mixing engineer on Streisand’s 1997 album, Higher Ground. Streisand was listening to the playbacks, and pop’s greatest diva thought she heard a few things that could use some fixing.

“I think my vocal is a little soft” on one of the tracks,” Streisand told Filipetti. “Is it okay if we raise it about a quarter of a decibel?” You and I and Superman’s dog probably could not distinguish what a quarter of a decibel sounds like. But Streisand hears things other mortals do not. They are wired differently. Most artists are, in fact, technophobes, Filipetti said. To deal with…