Mastering engineer Katie Tavini is driven by a lifelong fascination with sound. Inspired early on by her dad’s vinyl collection and her own musical explorations, she developed a profound curiosity about how music moves people. After beginning her career as a studio engineer, Katie discovered mastering in 2011 and never looked back. Today, she brings balance, emotion and clarity to a diverse range of artists, upgrading to a pair of PMC 6-2 studio monitors to help elevate her skills to the next level. And her nomination for a 2026 Music Producers Guild Award for Mastering Engineer of the Year is testimony to her craft.
An optional sound engineering module during a music degree at Salford University opened up a new world for Katie. “We were taught to use the studio as a creative tool, and I really enjoyed the process of working with musicians to see what we could come up with,” she recalls.
After graduating, Katie began working as a studio engineer in Manchester. In 2011, a friend asked her to master an album – a request that ended up changing the course of her career. “We ended up with something we were all happy with, and then people from the same Manchester punk scene started asking me to master their music,” she says. Katie threw herself into learning the craft, spending hours in critical listening sessions and effectively reverse-engineering the mastering process.
A move to London to join the British Library’s sound archive team gave Katie a chance to further develop her love of mastering and refine her listening skills. Taking on a shared studio space in 2018, it was a natural progression to build her setup around a pair of PMC twotwo.6 monitors. “I thought that they were the best speakers I’d ever heard,” she says.
Katie is now back on home turf in the North of England and has upgraded to PMC 6-2 main monitors for her mastering studio in Liverpool. Initially trying out a demo pair, she was concerned they might be too big for her room and more powerful than she needed. “I work at low listening levels so I don’t get fatigued, and I level-matched them with my previous pair,” she explains. “It then took me half an hour to decide to buy them; it was a very easy decision! They sound really good in my room and they give a lot of detail, especially in the mid and low-mid ranges.”
Katie was also astonished to hear the difference in a subtle panning detail on a familiar track. “Even on headphones, I couldn’t hear that tiny movement before, but now I can hear so much more detail in the stereo image,” she says. “And, because they are bigger, I can ‘feel’ more of the low end. I’ve found I’m more confident working on these speakers – they give me so much fidelity.”
Katie is now noticing the difference when it comes to her workflow. “More of my masters are being approved on the first draft now, as I can hear what needs to happen much quicker,” she says. “Often, when I get feedback, it can be about something very subtle, and now I can get to it really quickly.”
Another significant step was the purchase of a Rupert Neve Master Bus Transformer, which she’s found makes her workflow feel more solid and consistent. “The PMC 6-2s, together with the Neve, have made the biggest difference,” she says. “I designed the studio myself and built up the gear that I like to use, so it’s a really nice place to work.” And with clients including Kate Nash, Bloc Party and Nadine Shah, it’s clear Katie’s bespoke studio is striking all the right chords.
