sound engineer has our studio tracks, not responding to attempts to contact?

[()smoke()]

cliff's notes version:

1) paid sound engineer for 6 studio tracks for our ep, recorded last september
2) visited again in march to critique mastering, he told us we'd have samples in email by that weekend, mastering completely done in 2 weeks
3) never received any samples
4) he hasn't responded to a single call or email since
5) today i try to call and his cell is no longer in service

advice?

we've already discussed as a band that we probably just lost everything and will have to find another studio to start over, but i thought we could try to find the studio owner first and see what's going on, maybe the tracks are still there...i figure he lost the hard drive or something and that's why he won't respond because all our stuff's gone

[ggunn]

Originally Posted by ()smoke()

cliff's notes version:

1) paid sound engineer for 6 studio tracks for our ep, recorded last september
2) visited again in march to critique mastering, he told us we'd have samples in email by that weekend, mastering completely done in 2 weeks
3) never received any samples
4) he hasn't responded to a single call or email since
5) today i try to call and his cell is no longer in service

advice?

we've already discussed as a band that we probably just lost everything and will have to find another studio to start over, but i thought we could try to find the studio owner first and see what's going on, maybe the tracks are still there...i figure he lost the hard drive or something and that's why he won't respond because all our stuff's gone

Lesson: Hard drives are cheap. Back up your data and take it with you, and then make a backup of the backup onto DVD.

[()smoke()]

Originally Posted by ggunn

Lesson: Hard drives are cheap. Back up your data and take it with you, and then make a backup of the backup onto DVD.

is this common practice? ie, asking for the raw files, i mean

if we had the data, we could have just had it mastered somewhere else--i sure wish we'd have asked for the raw mixed files at the last encounter

it's definitely a learning experience, no question

[ggunn]

Originally Posted by ()smoke()

is this common practice? ie, asking for the raw files, i mean

We did. We got a backup of our entire directory every night before we left the studio, and then we took the hard drive that traveled and backed it up on a drive that stayed put in my studio, and we archived THAT to DVD periodically during the project. Paranoid? Well, yes. You never know; all your work is just a hard drive crash away from being lost forever.

[()smoke()]

Originally Posted by ggunn

We did. We got a backup of our entire directory every night before we left the studio, and then we took the hard drive that traveled and backed it up on a drive that stayed put in my studio, and we archived THAT to DVD periodically during the project. Paranoid? Well, yes. You never know; all your work is just a hard drive crash away from being lost forever.

thanks for the advice, we'll definitely take backups next time...i'm not certain what's going on with why he's dodging us, but having the data would be good in any respect

[Pilgrim]

If he doesn't respond, take him to small claims court and get your money back.