LOS ANGELES ― As The Bakery celebrates its 10-year anniversary this year, Mastering Engineer Peter Hewitt-Dutton reflects on a decade of shaping some of the world’s most iconic records. Originally hailing from London, Hewitt-Dutton began his mastering career at the famed Metropolis Studios, where some of his biggest projects included contributions to remasters for Led Zeppelin, Oasis and Black Sabbath. In 2018, he relocated to Los Angeles and joined The Bakery, where his credits have only continued to expand—with a client list full of major acts, such as Billie Eilish, Ringo Star and Rufus Wainwright.
As vinyl cutting specialists, Hewitt-Dutton and the rest of his team at The Bakery have standardized their toolkits with NUGEN Audio’s Monofilter, which plays a vital role in their precision-focused work. “For vinyl, you have to control the depth of the groove very carefully,” explains Hewitt-Dutton. “If it goes too deep, it can destroy the equipment. If it goes too shallow, you create a groove that doesn’t play. The main culprit for creating problems in that area is stereo bass; Monofilter is designed specifically to deal with that. It provides a ton of control on how much we’re monitoring the bass and where.”
Monofilter offers precision where other tools fall short. “Every other similar solution we’ve used in the past is kind of stepped and we have to just refer to our settings, whereas the NUGEN version offers much more control over what we’re doing,” explains Hewitt-Dutton. “Monofiler allows us to pick the exact point we need to mono the bass in order to get the depth we want.”
This level of detail is especially crucial when clients request longer album sides, which is something Hewitt-Dutton sees more frequently as artists push the boundaries of vinyl’s physical limitations. “People want to make a pop album and put it on vinyl the same way it’s on Spotify, but these albums can be 45-50 minutes long. The format was really only designed to handle more like 35-40 minutes,” he says. “One of the first things we’ll always attack in these cases is the stereo bass. The more stereo bass we’ve got, the deeper the groove is going to get, which means the more space it takes up on the disc.”
By helping manage the low-end stereo content precisely and non-destructively, Monofilter becomes the difference between a compromised master and a flawless one. “The less we need to do to get the result we need, the better,” adds Hewitt-Dutton. “Monofilter lets us do exactly what we want without adding anything else to the sound.”
Another bonus according to Hewitt-Dutton is Monofilter’s respect for signal integrity. “Everything I’ve experienced with NUGEN is that you drop it on a signal path and, unless you tell it to do something, it doesn’t do anything. From the mastering perspective, that’s brilliant,” he says. “Monofilter allows us to carefully maintain what we don’t want messed with.”
From iconic reissues to chart-topping contemporary records, Monofilter has had its fingerprint on countless projects at The Bakery. “We used it on the last Billie Eilish album, ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ — that was definitely on the longer side; Monofilter was essential there,” he recalls. “We also used it for ‘Moana 2,’ ‘Mufasa,’ ‘Encanto’ and ‘Soul.’”
Furthermore, the classic rock genre has also benefitted from Monofilter. “We’ve done a couple of recuts for Chicago, and reissues for The Black Crowe’s ‘Shake Your Money Maker,’ for example. Really, hundreds of projects,” he adds.
As The Bakery marks its 10th year in business, the studio remains committed to delivering masterful, format-optimized releases, backed by best-in-class tools like Monofilter. “As we continue to grow, it’s tools like those from NUGEN Audio that help us to push the limits of what’s possible, especially on vinyl,” says Hewitt-Dutton.