Larry Ryckman’s Legendary Cofounder Shelly Yakus

Award-winning audio and technology entrepreneur Larry Ryckman is the CEO of AfterMaster Audio Labs, headquartered in Hollywood, California. Larry Ryckman cofounded the company with legendary audio engineer Shelly Yakus, who serves as the company’s chief engineer. 

Shelly Yakus’ exposure to recording came at a very early age – his father and uncle co-owned Ace Recording in Boston. He moved to New York in the mid-1960s and gained more recording experience. Yakus went on to co-design, equip, and operate A&M Records’ industry-leading music-recording studios in Los Angeles. He previously served as vice president of Record Plant and also was vice president of engineering at QSound Labs, Inc. 

Yakus has mixed and engineered recordings for some of the music industry’s best-known artists, including John Lennon, Tom Petty, Alice Cooper, Dire Straits, Meat Loaf, Amy Grant, Madonna, U2, B.B. King, Patti Smith, Peter Paul & Mary, Stevie Nicks, Cher, Aretha Franklin, and more. He was nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.

Common Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs

Accomplished entrepreneur Larry Ryckman serves as the president and CEO of AfterMaster Audio in Hollywood, California. Although he established the company over a decade ago, it was far from his first successful business. Larry Ryckman previously served as the president and CEO of Calgary Stampeder Football Club, American Artists, Inc., and QSound Audio Labs, Inc. Becoming an entrepreneur can be an exciting experience, but not everyone is cut out for success. Below are just a few of the common traits that successful entrepreneurs share:

- Self-motivated – Rather than sitting and waiting for a solution, successful entrepreneurs go out and find solutions themselves. They are constantly seeking out the next new thing and are driven by their own need to experience new challenges. As a result of their ability to self-motivate, successful entrepreneurs are usually skilled at motivating others.

- Passionate – Many individuals assume it is a desire for money that drives successful entrepreneurs. In reality, they are fueled by their passion for solving a problem or creating new products. This passion is normally based on a company’s mission and often results in entrepreneurs putting more time, money, and effort into an idea that may not seem fruitful.

- Versatile – When entrepreneurs first start a company, they are often working either alone or with a small group of people. Due to this, they must be able to adapt to varying roles and responsibilities to accommodate their growing company’s needs. Further, entrepreneurs must be capable of changing their path when a particular product or solution is not working out.

The Creation of the Compact Disc

Experienced audio professional Larry Ryckman serves as the president and CEO of AfterMaster Audio in California. Throughout his more than 30-year career, Larry Ryckman has mastered and produced numerous hit songs and albums, including Lady Gaga’s Telephone, Alice Cooper’s Madhouse Rock Tour, and Aerosmith’s We All Fall Down.

Compact discs, or CDs, have become a standard for storing music and audio. They have been in use for more than 30 years, but the path to their creation started in the 1950s, and Italian- born Antonio Rubbiani created an extremely rudimentary video disc system in 1957. Although this system was far from what is recognized today, it inspired industry-wide research into the video disc starting in 1969. This research eventually culminated in the Philips ALP, an audio disc system that used laser technology. Through the 1970s, the company worked on developing an audio format that was smaller than a vinyl record and could hold at least one hour of music.

By 1979 Philips reached success in this endeavor, and they made an agreement with Sony to create an audio disc that could hold at least 74 minutes of music – the entire length of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Despite its existence, the CD did not go out to market right away. Sony and Philips produced a Red Book that laid out all compact disc standards for the industry in 1980, and Philips created the first CD player by 1982. This same year, CDs hit the market with 150 available titles and soon began gaining traction around the world.

The AfterMaster Team’s Discography Features Top Artists

Together with Grammy-winning singer Justin Timberlake, music executive Larry Ryckman co-owns AfterMaster Audio Labs. Established in 2006, this company has led Larry Ryckman to collaborate with major artists.

AfterMaster Audio Labs creates innovative audio technologies and products. Its premier technology, AfterMaster audio, improves sound quality by bringing elements of depth and clarity to audio recordings. This technology is also known for enhancing sound with unparalleled amplitude without affecting other sound elements. Currently, the AfterMaster team has the largest collection of hit records than any other company in the world.

The discography of the AfterMaster team includes music by iconic girl groups and boybands such as the Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, Backstreet Boys, and NSYNC. The music of female vocalists Celine Dione, Toni Braxton, Beyonce, Whitney Houston, and Donna Summer were also engineered by this team. The AfterMaster Team is working with pop artists Ariana Grande, Britney Spears, Jesse J, Justin Timberlake, and Lady Gaga, to name a few.

Inside Larry Ryckman's "MyStudio"

Part of the re-invention of the Larry Ryckman empire sits in the food court of Arizona's largest outlet mall. A flashing marquee screams out to shoppers, bargain hunters and budding starlets to part with 20 bucks for five minutes in a high tech recording studio. Mystudio staffer Julia Lucafo gives us a guided tour.

Many Strides Have Been Made in Sound Engineering

Award-winning music industry executive and sound engineer Larry Ryckman heads AfterMaster Audio Labs, with studios in Hollywood. In partnership with superstar Justin Timberlake, Larry Ryckman and AfterMaster offer top-quality engineering and mastering services using industry-shaking technology that enhances sound clarity and depth while preserving the integrity of the original source.

Sound engineering technology has come a long way since its beginnings almost a century and a half ago. Toward the close of the 1870s, Thomas Edison showed the staff of Scientific American magazine how the phonograph worked by replaying “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as it had been recorded on a tinfoil-wrapped spinning cylinder. 

A decade later, German-American inventor Emile Berliner patented the first gramophone to make use of a flattened disk. His innovation enabled the mass production of phonograph records. 

In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first wireless radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1906, Lee DeForest’s triode vacuum tube was the first device to amplify a signal electronically.

Fast-forward to the 1930s, with electricity and the microphone assisting in the production of records from wax discs used to stamp molds for 78-rpm records made from a shellac composite.

The post-World War Two years saw major developments in recording on tape, and innovators began producing microgroove LP records. This was also the era when the profession of sound engineer began to come into its own, as a separate individual was tasked with cutting the mastering discs based on the tapes made in a recording studio.

Rod Stewart’s Multifaceted Career Spans Genres

 


Hollywood-based Larry Ryckman, head of award-winning AfterMaster Audio Labs, has mastered sound for a string of Grammy-nominated songs. He and AfterMaster have amassed the most extensive discography of hits by any company in their industry, and are the recipients of three awards for innovation from the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. Larry Ryckman’s roster of artist collaborations includes Madonna, Julian Lennon, Aerosmith, Diddy, Rod Stewart, and many more.

Singer-songwriter Rod Stewart, born in London in 1945, has enjoyed a rich career in pop music and rock and roll, and as a crossover artist covering classic American standards later in his career. He first rose to fame as a member of the British group the Small Faces - later simply the Faces - in the late 1960s. His early solo hit “Maggie May” and his album Every Picture Tells a Story made him an international star.

Through the 1970s and beyond, Rod Stewart wrote and performed wildly popular songs like “Tonight’s the Night,” “Young Turks,” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” His career slowed in later years, but his crossover into standards resulted in a revival of his popularity in the new millennium, with his album It Had to Be You receiving a Grammy nod.

Inducted into the United Kingdom’s Music Hall of Fame in 2006, Stewart was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 2012.