Luiz Tornaghi graduated from IAR in 1993 and, after spending two more years in NYC, returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1995 to work at Visom, one of the main mastering studios in Brazil, where he eventually became Chief Engineer. Visom recorded and mixed at 96 kHz as soon as the technology became available, which gave Luiz the opportunity to work on the cutting edge, creating some of the first masters in 5.1 for DVD, DVD-audio, and SACD. Of special importance was a project he did in 2001 in which he transcribed and restored (from acetate records) 12,000 Brazilian songs that were recorded from 1902 until the 1950s.

Over the years, Luiz has had the privilege of mastering and mixing for some of Brazil’s foremost artists, including Maria Bethania, Ivan Lins (for which he won a Latin Grammy for Album of the Year in 2005), Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Joao Donato, Francis Hime, Paulinho da Viola, and Simone, among many others.

Today, Luiz is a partner in the mastering studio Batmastersom, which has a 5.1 system with B&W 805 speakers and does all processing with computers. In Luiz’s words, “we are finally at a point where, if you are very careful about every aspect of your system, you can have an all-digital signal path with enough quality to get any job done and have the invaluable advantage of instantaneously tweaking details anytime throughout a project.”