George Y. Massenburg (*1947) is a Grammy award-winning recording engineer and inventor. Working principally in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Macon, Georgia, Massenburg is widely known for submitting a paper to the Audio Engineering Society in 1972 regarding the parametric equalizer.
At 15, Massenburg worked part-time both in the recording studio and in an electronics laboratory. He attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and Johns Hopkins University, majoring in electrical engineering. As a sophomore, he left the University and never returned.
Massenburg authored a technical paper entitled “parametric equalization” which was presented at the 42nd convention of the Audio Engineering Society in 1972. He is regularly published in professional journals and trade magazines worldwide. In 1973 and 1974, he was chief engineer of Studio Europa-Sonor in Paris, France, and helped Gerhard Lehner install the expanded Neve 80 series console at Barclay Records studio on Avenue Hoche. During those years, Massenburg also did freelance engineering and equipment design in Europe.
Massenburg participated (individually and collaboratively) in over four hundred record albums over the past 45 years. His work includes recordings of Earth, Wind & Fire, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Toto, Journey, Madeleine Peyroux, Weather Report, Aaron Neville, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Linda Ronstadt, Herbie Hancock, The Seldom Scene, and many more. He has designed, built, and managed several recording studios, notably Iti Studios in Hunt Valley, Maryland, Blue Seas Recording in Baltimore, and The Complex in Los Angeles. In addition, he has contributed to the acoustical and architectural design of many other studios, including Skywalker Sound and The Site in Marin County, California.

Dave Pensado is a Grammy Award-winning mix engineer. His career began in Atlanta in the 1970s and 1980s doing live and studio sound engineering. He has lived in Los Angeles since 1990. He mixes between 200 and 250 songs a year at Larrabee Studios in Los Angeles. When recording he usually records at Echo Bar Studios in North Hollywood.
On September 12, 2011, mixing engineer Dave Pensado started a weekly show called Pensado’s Place, together with Herb Trawick, his manager and business partner. The first part of the show is about audio engineering techniques; Dave evaluates—sometimes assisted or even replace by a guest speaker—new plugins, outboard gear like microphones, and he demonstrates in detail how to improve different aspects of the mix. The second part Dave and Herb interview together a mixer, master engineer, producer, label Ceo and/or singer-songwriter. Dave asks questions about the general approach and philosophy, and often zooms in on a selection of songs and/or albums his guest(s) worked on, discussing technical details. Herb merely focusses his questions and remarks on the business aspect of music. At the end of every show there is a Q&A: questions of the audience are asked and answered. All episodes are posted on the pensadoplace.tv website, but also on the YouTube channel Pensado’s Place, and are available for free.

Andrew Scheps is an American mix engineer, recording engineer, record producer, and record label owner, based in Los Angeles and the United Kingdom. He received Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album for his work on Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium, Album of the Year for Adele’s 21, and Best Reggae Album for Ziggy Marley’s Fly Rasta.
A Long Island native who got his start playing jazz trumpet, Andrew Scheps has mixed records for artists such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele, Metallica, Jay-Z, and many others. After graduating from the Recording Engineering Program at the University of Miami, he spent some time working for New England Digital as a field service technician for the Synclavier, one of the first digital synthesizers / samplers / workstations, then on the road with Stevie Wonder (as a keyboard tech) and Michael Jackson (mixing live sound), before settling in La.
Having got into mixing a few years before the analog-to-digital revolution, Andrew worked with a collection of vintage gear at his Punkerpad West studio in Van Nuys, California, including a Neve Electronics Bcm-10 with ten 1073s that were used for reference during the Waves Audio Scheps 73 plugin modeling process.
Scheps is known for his balanced, modern sounding, and often loud mixes. In July, 2015, while being interviewed on Pensado’s Place, he declared to work completely “Itb” (in the box), which stands for working completely inside a computer, without the use of external gear. His 100% transition to Itb mixing occurred halfway through mixing the Hozier record in the summer of 2014. “Going back into the box wasn’t a sonic decision, but I actually rediscovered that I really like it. It’s great to be able to work on three or four songs at the same time. I have not gone back to working on the desk since then. While I miss some of the visceral hands-on aspects of the console, there is a lot of creative freedom working this way. It might seem like a drastic change, but it is only the tools that have changed: remarkably my philosophy and sound have stayed the same.”