A quality of decisions and the experience that informs them is what distinguishes the work of a mastering engineer. At Sonopod, our crew’s technical skills are led by a love of and fluency with a wide variety of music, a dedication to sound quality, and decades of experience in engineering.
Dave Greenberg
In the late 1980s, Dave began working as an assistant engineer in two of Boston’s premiere recording studios, while he was still an art-school student making experimental music, electro-acoustic instruments and sound processors. By the early ‘90s, Dave moved to San Francisco, and soon after, joined the engineering staff at Boomtown, a bustling recording studio owned by Clio-winning music company Keller & Cohen, an experience that brought the good fortune of learning from legendary engineer, Fred Catero. The years at Boomtown forged an invaluable skill-set, steeped in the traditions of analog recording and mixing, and of a studio etiquette and atmosphere rarely seen these days.
While Dave eventually became chief engineer at Boomtown, he also freelanced and continued to equip and develop his warehouse studio in the South of Market area. There, in addition to recording and mixing, the focus grew naturally toward mastering, continuing collaborations on projects developed in other area studios. After some years, Sonopod was officially opened to address the needs of an expanding workload.
With the early 2000s came the move from one beloved Bay Area back home to another. Unattended sessions and speedy FTP have enabled a geographically diverse client base while building new roots in the arts-rich community of St. Petersburg.
Over three decades, Dave has worked on a huge spectrum of music; from Grammy-nominated R&B to metal and math-rock, singer-songwriters, composers and award-winning artists, producers and labels all around the world. From the vantage of this finishing-stage in music production, Dave bridges the gap between the technical and the creative, helping to bring out the best in everyone he works with.
Melissa Harris Chambers
Melissa brings a diverse skill-set to her work as a mastering engineer, and the perspective of a lifetime spent immersed in music. Raised in St. Petersburg Florida’s iconic Asylum Records, her father its manager and former radio DJ, Melissa’s mental encyclopedia of what music sounds like is hard to match.
The first ever graduate of St. Petersburg College’s acclaimed Music Industry/Recording Arts program, Melissa has since spent over a decade working in professional audio across the spectrum of recording, mixing and even manufacturing (building analog consoles for Daking Audio). During the time she spent working as an assistant at Sonopod, she naturally assimilated the technological skill-set, led by an intuitive ear and great taste, the likes of which many spend decades to develop.
