For more than two decades, Grammy Award-winning engineer James Auwarter has been fortunate to work across recording, mixing, mastering and immersive audio.
Long before he ever thought about engineering records himself, James grew up listening to a wide range of music. He spent his teenage years playing guitar and singing in a rock band. He also played trumpet through school, where he learned to read music, before then studying audio at Full Sail University. Once engineering became his career, and after meeting enough proper session players to know better, he mostly stopped playing, though that early musical foundation has served him well throughout a career spanning hip-hop, gospel, jazz, R&B, pop, rock and classical music.
For the first 15 years of his career, he was based in Chicago, beginning at HINGE Studios. One of his first major breaks came on Kanye West’s Late Registration. That led to work with West across a range of other projects. Over the years, James’s work has appeared on releases by Rihanna, Lupe Fiasco, Jamila Woods, PJ Morton, Mavis Staples, Kurt Elling, Anthony Hamilton and many others. His engineering work on gospel icons The Clark Sisters’ Live – One Last Time earned him a Grammy statue for Best Traditional Gospel Album. He has been credited on projects receiving 32 Grammy nominations to date.
James founded Coda Room Audio in Chicago in 2016 before relocating to London with his daughter in 2019. Coda Room Chicago remains active under the team James developed there. During the pandemic, remote mastering grew rapidly, and he completed hundreds of mastering projects for independent artists around the world, making mastering a much larger part of his day-to-day work.
That range of experiences shapes how James hears records today: a broad musical foundation, years spent recording and mixing, and an instinct for where the final decisions fit within the record as a whole.
Alongside mastering, James continues to mix in stereo and Dolby Atmos. His enthusiasm for immersive audio carries into his work at Abbey Road Institute London, where he leads the Dolby Atmos Mixing for Music course. There, he works with artists, producers and engineers on the creative thinking and technical craft behind immersive music.
Long before he ever thought about engineering records himself, James grew up listening to a wide range of music. He spent his teenage years playing guitar and singing in a rock band. He also played trumpet through school, where he learned to read music, before then studying audio at Full Sail University. Once engineering became his career, and after meeting enough proper session players to know better, he mostly stopped playing, though that early musical foundation has served him well throughout a career spanning hip-hop, gospel, jazz, R&B, pop, rock and classical music.
For the first 15 years of his career, he was based in Chicago, beginning at HINGE Studios. One of his first major breaks came on Kanye West’s Late Registration. That led to work with West across a range of other projects. Over the years, James’s work has appeared on releases by Rihanna, Lupe Fiasco, Jamila Woods, PJ Morton, Mavis Staples, Kurt Elling, Anthony Hamilton and many others. His engineering work on gospel icons The Clark Sisters’ Live – One Last Time earned him a Grammy statue for Best Traditional Gospel Album. He has been credited on projects receiving 32 Grammy nominations to date.
James founded Coda Room Audio in Chicago in 2016 before relocating to London with his daughter in 2019. Coda Room Chicago remains active under the team James developed there. During the pandemic, remote mastering grew rapidly, and he completed hundreds of mastering projects for independent artists around the world, making mastering a much larger part of his day-to-day work.
That range of experiences shapes how James hears records today: a broad musical foundation, years spent recording and mixing, and an instinct for where the final decisions fit within the record as a whole.
Alongside mastering, James continues to mix in stereo and Dolby Atmos. His enthusiasm for immersive audio carries into his work at Abbey Road Institute London, where he leads the Dolby Atmos Mixing for Music course. There, he works with artists, producers and engineers on the creative thinking and technical craft behind immersive music.
Discography
Discography
