Crommatic
Grammy-Winning Audio Engineer

Sandeep Kulkarni (00:06.488) Today's guest is Crommatic, a Grammy-winning engineer and producer based in Los Angeles, known for helping shape records across hip-hop and R&B from Trippie Redd to Chris Brown and beyond.

Suraaj Parab (00:17.978) Welcome, Crommatic, to The Artist Conversation.

Crommatic (00:21.96) Thank you for having me, guys. Really appreciate it.

Sandeep Kulkarni (00:26.06) We have a lot to talk about because mixing and mastering—of course, a lot of musicians and artists know the value of it—but for people who are not well-versed in it, this is going to be very interesting. I want to start talking to you about your origins and building your ear. When you first started doing a lot of this work, when did sound engineering stop feeling like a technical role and start feeling more like your actual creative voice that you're putting into the music?

Crommatic (01:05.68) I would say that the technical role stopped feeling super tedious and turned into more of an art form when I parlayed into the studio front. My start in music and audio was actually in live sound. I was able to convince my college at the time to turn one of the jazz ensembles into an actual recording program. I started out in the jazz ensemble, but by the second year, we had like five guitarists who were all better than me. So I was like, let's try to stay musical, but let's bring in another facet of audio and make this work. Those were the stepping stones. After school, I went and lived with a band and acted as their live technician. That transitioned into being a guitar tech and managing signal chains, getting everything going with good levels. As I garnered more trust from the band, I started to write with them. Because of my technical skills, I was a massive asset in the studio. When there were creative crossroads—like what to do with a two-bar turnaround or a lyric change—I had their trust because of our relationship. That organically evolved into fully writing songs and moving into a producer role, because I’ve always been a musician with a deep love for the foundation of how music starts.

Sandeep Kulkarni (03:23.788) Did being exposed to consoles and fast-paced environments in live sound help you when you transitioned into studio mixing and mastering?

Crommatic (03:42.121) Oh yeah. I would recommend live sound for every studio engineer. First, because you are problem-solving in real-time, and the absolute pace of it teaches you speed. You don't have a lot of time to fix an issue when you're dealing with an upset singer, wedges, or monitors. We don't always have the luxury of a nice two-hour line check. Usually it’s a quick, "All right, is it working? Next band," type of thing, and you're meeting people for the first time. Having all of those intense micro-experiences within an hour is a perfect crash course for the studio. Seconds feel like hours in the studio. As soon as you can troubleshoot, get things moving, and maintain the trust of the artist, you win. The moment an artist feels like they are working with an inexperienced engineer, things can get a little hairy.

Sandeep Kulkarni (05:01.294) I do a bit of live sound here and there, and it is exhausting. The trickiest part is definitely handling a singer who isn't happy with their wedge mix, or a player who wants a completely different monitor mix in the middle of a live set. If you are operating a digital console and don't know the workflow inside out, scrambling to find pages while the band is staring at you is a nightmare.

Crommatic (05:53.593) Exactly. That's the difference experience makes. Early on, I became highly sought after because I truly understood the artist's mindset. I became the designated sound guy for a specific band, traveling on tour with them because they knew I understood the boards. Moving between the East Coast and West Coast, you encounter different consoles—one venue is Allen & Heath, the next is Midas. We even use PreSonus over here. If you don't know those digital workflows, it gets tricky.

Analog setups like a Mackie are actually easier for me, because I can instantly ride the faders—anticipating the chorus to throw on reverb and delay, and then pulling it right back out for the verse. I also worked with bands that had the strangest DI setups. I remember one four-member band that came to South by Southwest with 16 DIs and a laptop. I had to act as the middleman with the house sound guy. I had to politely communicate, "Look, I'm not here to step on your toes, but our drummer is going to physically move to a different microphone for this section, so you can mute that channel to kill unnecessary feedback." Being that buffer came in handy. One year at South by Southwest, the house audio engineer didn't even show up. Because I was there and knew the gear, I ended up running front-of-house sound for the two opening acts before our band even went on. We even hauled a real stand-up piano to South by Southwest when we were only 20 years old. We were just young and going for it.

Suraaj Parab (07:56.403) Live gigs are wild. In the studio world, people hear a beautifully polished record but rarely consider the person shaping the sonics behind the scenes. What first pulled you toward mixing and mastering as your permanent lane?

Crommatic (08:20.396) It was a gradual evolution. I originally prided myself on being an exceptional recording engineer, and I still do. But I quickly realized the fundamental workflow: you need a great recording, which feeds a great mix, which enables a great master. It's like a car—if you have great tires and great brakes, you aren't going to crash.

During my time acting as a recording engineer at Trippie Redd’s studio, the scale and velocity of the sessions were insane. The kids wanted tracks finished immediately. Trippie would always step out of the booth and say, "I need this to sound mixed and mastered by the time I'm done recording." As an engineer who had done traditional apprenticeships at Ocean Way under veterans who believed in distinct, separated stages for recording, mixing, and mastering, it was a culture shock. But when you are dealing with an artist of that caliber, you just say, "Cool, I'll figure it out." Between 2016 and 2018, that was the demand. You had to learn how to apply heavy effects chains in real-time without causing digital latency.

I wasn't great at it in the beginning, but I adapted. Artists started dropping those raw export sessions directly onto SoundCloud, and they would rack up millions of streams. They would come back into the studio, show me WorldStarHipHop, and I'd think, Man, I wish I could have taken a second pass at that mix! But the vibe was there and they were happy. I still carry that trait today: when an artist walks out of my room, they leave with a track that is fully ready to drop if they need it. In the modern TikTok era, everything that exports out of my computer is polished enough to immediately clip for social media. If it catches traction online, we can always bring it back in for a final polish.

Sandeep Kulkarni (10:57.196) The industry has shifted so much toward instant gratification and fast output, largely driven by social media algorithms.

Crommatic (11:12.779) I have a love-hate relationship with being at the forefront of how that era developed. When clients come into my studio now, I tell them, "I'm going to give you an '80 percenter' during the tracking session." Because of my specialized recording templates and fast computers, my rough tracking mix includes full vocal leveling and creative vocal production on the spot. That represents 80% of the final sound. That remaining 20% is where we dive into extensive note revisions, track stems, and the dedicated mastering stage. I don't do full mastering on the fly because printing through all of my analog hardware mastering gear for three or four songs requires a completely dedicated day.

Sandeep Kulkarni (12:10.264) You mentioned building the template behind Trippie Redd’s studio sound. When you are constructing a unique sonic identity for an artist, what are you listening for first?

Crommatic (12:37.483) I want to hear the truest form of the raw vocal first, and then we can get creative. An artist like Trippie Redd is a pure projector; he literally leaves everything on the mat when he sings. A typical input level for a Neve 1073 preamp is 40 with the trim at unity—that's a safe baseline for most vocalists. With Trippie, you have to instantly knock it down to 30. He will stand back from the microphone and project with massive power. As an engineer, that's incredible because he gives you the entire sonic spectrum—all the warmth, grit, and data all at once. He is a phenomenal artist. Once I establish that true vocal foundation, we introduce the creative elements—auto-tune, delays, and reverbs. I once recorded Trippie in a completely untreated office space using a Neumann U87 and an Apollo Twin, and it sounded exactly like a major commercial record because of how he projects. Rich the Kid is the exact same way. They have immense vocal presence.

Suraaj Parab (14:44.498) How do you differentiate between a mix that is merely technically correct versus one that actually feels alive?

Crommatic (15:07.299) I operate entirely on feel. Technical correctness is highly subjective. As I’ve focused heavily on mastering over the last few years, I absolutely pay attention to digital specifications, LUFS targets, and reference tracks, but overall feel trumps everything. The emotional intent has to be captured during the recording stage. When I am cleaning up, subtracting frequencies, and pocketing vocals later on, I look for two things. First: does it hurt? Second: am I locked into the track? If I can just sit back and enjoy the song without my ears catching a technical distraction—like a digital click in a two-bar turnaround or an untimed vocal double—then the mix is doing its job. There are always elements you can perfect. I listen to commercial records daily and spot things I would change, but if an artist insists on raising their vocals by 3 dB, I’m not going to argue with them; it’s their music. My biggest metric is ensuring the mix doesn't cause physical listening discomfort and allows the consumer to enjoy the record for what it is. You have to understand the genre, too; you can't mix a country record the way you mix an R&B track.

Sandeep Kulkarni (16:58.232) When you ask "does it hurt," are you referring to ear fatigue caused by harsh frequencies?

Crommatic (17:09.592) Yes. Consumers and artists get bogged down in technical engineering jargon, but you can explain these complex sonic phenomena simply. Ear fatigue is real. If a mix is harsh in the high end or cluttered in the low end, it drains the listener. A massive source of ear fatigue actually stems from poorly handled low end. If there is an uncontrolled buildup of sub-frequencies around 30 Hz, your ears get overloaded by the sound pressure level (SPL), even if it doesn't sound explicitly harsh.

It comes down to managing the three basic food groups: the lows, the mids, and the highs. I lean toward a warmer sonic signature. I want a mix that you can crank all the way up without it piercing your ears, rather than a track you have to turn down because the vocals are overly sibilant around 3 kHz, 6 kHz, or 8 kHz. In the low end, it’s all about how cleanly you carve out 300 Hz and how you roll off 20 Hz to 30 Hz. Everyone has different methodologies, but that is my philosophy.

Sandeep Kulkarni (18:45.132) Have you ever had to navigate a situation where an artist is so attached to a muddy demo mix that they resist your technical adjustments?

Crommatic (19:12.377) All the time. Artists frequently fall in love with the rough demo mix because of "demoitis." If they love the vibe of the demo, there are ways to polish that specific file to bring it up to commercial spec. To me, that just validates my approach of mixing while I record. I strive to get the vocal mix right on the first pass.

Working under legendary vocal producers like Ryan Toby and Pooh Bear, I’ve picked up incredible tricks to guide artists when they hit a creative wall. I always let them exhaust all of their raw creative ideas first. During a tracking session, they are essentially hiring me as a vocal producer. Many clients come to my room specifically to track through my custom vocal chain because I have about $15,000 invested into that front-end hardware. They know they are getting pristine recordings, solid vocal production, and a real-time mix. If a producer delivers a clean, well-arranged two-track instrumental, a high-end master will do the song complete justice. But if we are forced to deal with an over-compressed two-track that has a bloated low end, I’ll have to stem-split it inside Ableton, which can introduce digital artifacts.

Sandeep Kulkarni (21:08.15) You've made your proprietary tracking template a major part of your public identity. What elevates a vocal template from being just another standard preset into a tool that actually shapes a cultural sound?

Crommatic (21:45.52) My vocal templates—including the ones I engineered during the Trippie Redd and Pouya sessions—are incredibly simple. When engineers download them, they are shocked by how sparse they are. My entire philosophy is that a template should get out of the way of the raw performance. If you are an exceptional recording engineer who understands mic placement and input gain, tracking is a breeze. My template isn't a flashy, one-button "mix and master" gimmick. I don't stack eight plugins on the raw recording channel; instead, I utilize my auxiliary effects sends and buses. I have complex things happening on my aux tracks—like throwing a Lexicon reverb into a Soundtoys H-Delay on a single bus—but my primary vocal channel remains clean.

Looking at my tracking chain right now, it is simply an auto-tune plugin, a de-esser, a subtle compressor, and a corrective EQ. I rely entirely on my buses for exterior space and modulation. It is easy to fall into the trap of stacking plugins directly onto the vocal track, but using parallel buses preserves the core transients.

I operate on a "five percent" methodology—I look for micro-adjustments across my gear and the artist to extract the absolute best quality. If I deliver a clean, dynamic vocal recording to a dedicated mix engineer, he isn’t going to open the session and be furious with me for cooking the vocals with irreversible compression or muddy reverbs. I always anticipate that the artist might have a preferred mix engineer down the line, so I print a solid, clean level that leaves room for interpretation.

We track through a physical hardware Neve preamp and a Tube-Tech CL 1B compressor over here, so the tracks are inherently warm. When I want to add width on the fly, I engage a doubler via an auxiliary bus. If I want harmonic saturation, I route it through a Solid State Logic bus. I usually run two distinct reverbs simultaneously to establish a unique 3D depth across different song arrangements, alongside standard sixteenth, fourth, and eighth-note delays.

Buses can even assist with your EQ balancing. For example, instead of boosting 8 kHz on the vocal track and making it harsh, routing a touch of the signal to an H-Delay on a sixteenth-note send weirdly adds an elegant high-end sheen. It's an intuitive methodology that relies on being present in the room. If an artist comes in to cut a conscious rap record over a dry beat, I’ll mute all the spatial effects entirely to let the 16 bars sit raw. The template is an organizational foundation, not an AI gimmick. I carry this exact template from Trippie Redd to Chris Brown to Jesse Rutherford.

Sandeep Kulkarni (26:14.574) Can engineers download this template online?

Crommatic (26:22.145) Yeah, absolutely. The template is available directly on my website at crommatic.com.

Suraaj Parab (02:23.615) 2020 was a year of intense output for you, working on records for Wiz Khalifa, A$AP Ferg, Cordae, and Chris Brown. What did that high-pressure period teach you about creative stamina?

Crommatic (26:59.625) Coming up in this industry, veterans always tell you, "You get one shot, make it count." That isn't always true, but 2020 was absolutely my definitive 'one shot' moment. Everything I had done up to that point was pure preparation. I treated every single session with the exact same level of elite focus, whether I was tracking Trippie Redd or an unsigned local artist.

In early 2020, I received a cold call on a Sunday from a producer in Kanye West’s circle. An engineer from a previous writing camp with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) remembered my speed and asked if I could handle a high-profile session immediately. I threw my gear in the car and showed up. They were tracking Tone Stith, who has written massive records for artists like Janet Jackson. Tone is an absolute professional, and the producers in the room were top-tier. I set up, locked into my workflow, and delivered. They loved the speed and the sonic quality, so they kept calling me back. I eventually became the second engineer at that facility.

Right as quarantine hit in March 2020, the head engineer had to step away due to health precautions surrounding COVID-19. Suddenly, I became the primary guy. After the initial two-week lockdown, artists were desperate to get back to work. I was dodging curfew restrictions just to sneak into the studio. We pulled grueling, around-the-clock sessions. Because I had done the prep work to stay sharp, I was ready to command that seat, which directly led to tracking all those major artists.

Sandeep Kulkarni (29:44.866) It’s inspiring to see that years of grinding in the background paid off when the window opened.

Crommatic (29:53.161) You have to take the craft seriously. Looking at modern hustle culture, I think people expect instant financial returns. When I moved to Los Angeles, I didn't charge a dollar for my engineering services for the first three years. I managed a UPS Store in the Pacific Palisades to pay my rent, lived in Los Feliz, and didn't even own a car. I would wake up at 5:00 AM, walk a mile down Sunset Boulevard, take a two-hour bus ride across the city to work a shift at the store, and then take a two-hour bus ride back to grind in the studio all night. I did that for years. Those day jobs kept me alive, but they also taught me to maximize every single second I was given inside a studio. The moment I realized my value as an engineer, I was able to quit the day job. I refuse to deliver subpar material to an artist. It breaks my heart when independent artists pay $100 or $300 to an engineer and receive a terrible mix. They are bringing you their most vulnerable, creative moments, and they deserve to be treated with absolute professional respect.

Sandeep Kulkarni (31:17.806) With streaming platforms demanding constant output and high volume, how do you protect the integrity of the art from becoming a assembly line?

Crommatic (31:39.738) That is a crucial conversation. There is a massive disconnect between corporate streaming metrics and artistic value. Personally, I believe we need a movement to make art exclusive again. When SoundCloud first blew up, it was an exciting frontier, but there was still a healthy ecosystem supported by physical copy sales and digital downloads.

Today, the hyper-saturation of dropping a new song every week—a model popularized by independent successes like Russ—has completely oversaturated the marketplace. While it worked beautifully for Russ and Trippie Redd back when the platform algorithms were completely open, the current system heavily suppresses independent creators. Dropping constant volume actually devalues your brand.

We need to pull back and reintroduce mystery, allure, and exclusivity into music releases. The icons who pull this off masterfully have spent a decade studying trial, error, failure, and systematic rejection. Modern creators give up far too quickly. Try coming into the Los Angeles studio circuit as an engineer today—your immediate competition includes veterans who are still actively sitting in the engineering chair who mixed David Bowie, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z. I have had the honor of beating out some legendary engineers for major album placements, which validates my ears and my workflow, but it’s a standard you have to fight for daily.

Suraaj Parab (34:14.2) Speaking of major milestones, you earned your Grammy Award through your engineering work on Chris Brown’s album. What did that ultimate recognition mean to you, and how did it affect your inner drive?

Crommatic (34:34.746) It's a surreal story because we cut that specific record back in February 2020. In the music industry, records are cut and then sit on a corporate shelf indefinitely. I kept my head down, maintained my discipline, and didn't obsess over release dates.

Four years later, in April 2024, the track was officially released on the deluxe edition of Chris Brown's 11:11 album. The song, "Residuals," instantly blew up and helped push the album into Grammy contention for Best R&B Album.

Chris Brown started performing "Residuals" live on tour, which breathed massive new life into the entire album campaign. His live performance was incredible—he had a custom bust-down microphone and was literally floating through the air on wires while delivering this classic R&B ballad. It was exactly what we envisioned when we engineered it.

The origin of that track was wild. It was right before the global lockdown, tension was high, and the music industry was in a weird place. The production duo Black Tuxedo sent over a rough track built around a four-on-the-floor drum pattern and gorgeous chord progressions.

Going beyond the role of a traditional engineer, I always bring my own arsenal of high-end hardware to sessions. That day, I showed up to the studio with my guitars, analog Moog synthesizers, and my mobile Universal Audio Apollo rig running Arturia virtual instruments. As I listened to their layout, the track screamed Prince to me. The producers agreed, so I tracked four distinct layers of rhythmic electric guitar, added fat Moog synth bass lines, and laid down a massive, blazing guitar solo at the end of the song.

We wrapped the final edits by that summer, sent the session off, and I eventually moved to a different studio facility, completely losing contact with that production camp. Four years later, I heard the song playing and thought, Wait, this sounds incredibly familiar. I dug into my 2020 hard drive archives, found the original Black Tuxedo email session, and realized they kept all of my original guitar tracks, the Moog synths, and even my custom delay throws completely intact. Seeing that the creative integrity of what I delivered survived the corporate pipeline of managers, A&Rs, and co-producers was incredibly validating.

Sandeep Kulkarni (39:45.506) That is an incredible milestone. To have your raw instrumentation stand the test of time on a major placement is spectacular.

Crommatic (39:50.511) It was a beautiful surprise. Four years later, I stood there thinking, Yeah, we really did make a phenomenal record.

Sandeep Kulkarni (39:54.222) You’ve also been heavily involved in immersive audio mixing, specifically working on Atmos projects like the Lakeyah record. What excites you about spatial mixing, and where do you think the future of commercial sound is heading?

Crommatic (40:46.716) In a weird way, I feel like my brain has been waiting for Dolby Atmos my entire career. During my early studio apprenticeships at 18 years old, before I even understood technical audio terminology, I would tell senior engineers, "I want to completely control the spatial placement of a song to make the listener feel completely encompassed by the details." Back then, I was trying to describe immersive sound but didn't have the tools. We used basic stereo imagers, spatial alignment plugins, or things like the Waves Brauer Motion plugin to simulate a 3D field across a flat stereo left-and-right plane.

When Dolby Atmos formally entered the market, I was granted a platform by senior engineers to go through the official accreditation process at United Recording. Sitting in a calibrated multi-speaker Atmos room and hearing sound move around me changed everything. It is a full-body experience.

Listening to spatial audio on headphones is called a binaural render—which is essentially the modern equivalent of comparing a compressed MP3 to a full WAV file. But when you are standing inside a physical, tuned Atmos room, it is a completely different physical experience. It completely alters how you approach music production.

The industry often overlooks how immersive audio will revolutionize live concerts and festival spaces. Imagine standing inside an immersive stadium concert.

$$2.0 \text{ (Stereo)} \longrightarrow 5.1 \text{ (Surround Sound)} \longrightarrow 7.1.4 \text{ (Dolby Atmos Immersive Audio)}$$

I spent some time working in television and film audio post-production on major Netflix documentaries like Chef's Table. The original orchestral score would be delivered to us as organized surround-sound audio stems, allowing us to mix the strings dynamically across a 5.1 surround-sound field. However, the commercial licensed songs sent by mainstream musical artists were strictly delivered as flat 2.0 stereo tracks. When I asked the lead re-recording mixer how he balanced a flat stereo track inside a massive 5.1 movie theater mix, he said, "We just automatically duck the stereo file by 6 dB, center it, and keep the mix moving." I thought that was a cheap compromise for the artist's work. The orchestral score felt alive and wrapped all around you in 5.1, but the commercial licensed song felt completely flat and pushed right to the front. Now, as a studio engineer, I have the hardware capability to deliver a full 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos mix to my artists from day one. When Hollywood calls to place their song in a massive film franchise like Fast & Furious, they can instantly hand over a native Atmos file that lines up perfectly with the theatrical surround-sound mix.

The first movie I ever watched in a dedicated Atmos theater was Fast & Furious 9. Hearing bullet trajectories, environmental pans, and car engine revs localized perfectly in the physical space blew my mind. Now, we can give mainstream R&B and hip-hop music that exact same cinematic luxury.

Suraaj Parab (44:42.651) That is a spectacular look into the future of music production. Thank you so much, Crommatic, for sitting down with us today. Your technical insights, deep instincts, and dedication to preserving the raw feel of the culture are incredible.

Crommatic (45:05.596) Thank you so much, guys. I love talking shop with true musicians.

Sandeep Kulkarni (45:06.166) This conversation stands as a powerful reminder that behind every historic record, there is an engineer listening closely enough to bring the artist's truest vision into crystal-clear focus.

Crommatic (45:23.255) We care deeply about the records. The professionals who are doing this for real aren't just relying on cheap YouTube tutorials or automated AI mixing algorithms. We put real heart into the sonics.

Suraaj Parab (45:38.098) You guys truly are the unsung heroes of the music universe—the Batmen of audio engineering working diligently in the dark. Thank you to everyone tuning in. Please check out Crommatic's discography and vocal templates on his website. Follow his journey on Instagram, and we will see you in the next episode of The Artist Conversation.

Sandeep Kulkarni (46:28.75) Take care, everyone. Thank you, Crommatic.

Crommatic (46:23.603) Thank you guys.