Er....about Dan. Dan Shike was born and grew up in the land of corn and basketball, Evansville, Indiana. Growing up with older siblings, he was exposed to much cooler music than the typical adolescent. A steady diet of The Eagles, Michael Jackson, Queen, The J. Giles Band, Joan Jett, David Bowie and The Stones gave him a rock and roll head up on the other toddlers and grade schoolers who were listening to Disco Duck and Fraggle...whatever that was. From there Dan had a heavy diet of music, music, music. Countless hours were spent listening to music, from Abba to Black Sabbath, amazed that he could hear the "room sound" on the drums of Autograph's "Turn Up The Radio" at the age of 12. Many summers of lawn mowing came after where every cent was put toward video games and stereo equipment. His mom had to drive him to the local Hi-Fi store to buy his first real stereo, at the ripe old age of 14. Time passed...Dan bought lots of speakers.... Dan went to the University of Evansville where he considered a major in physics with intention of a career in acoustics and speaker design - that is, until he heard of the Recording Industry program at Middle Tennessee State University. Within a week of learning of this "recording industry" and that you can go to school to be in it, he applied to MTSU and planned the big move to the south. Little did he know, there was good food there. Kleer-Vu Lunchroom. (On Highland Street two blocks off of Main in Murfreesboro - try it then call me and tell me how good it was after your nap) At MTSU Dan spent every waking moment (and a few not so awake) in the studios of the Recording Industry program. He worked in the recording studio maintenance lab and was a lab assistant for many of his instructors. It was there that the thought of moving into mastering emerged. He didn't do so well in history class, but he rocked the engineering classes. Post college, Dan worked as an assistant engineer at the MCA Music Publishing studio, held a staff assistant engineer job at Sound Stage Studios, and hung out in what free time he had with a couple very busy engineers in Nashville. After about an year and a half at Sound Stage, Dan went the independent assistant route to work steadily with one killer mixer for about 4 years and do some assisting and engineering on the side when he wasn't busy, which was nearly never. The desire for mastering grew all the while. In 2002, Dan did his first major label mastering project for DC Talk. Why start with an unknown? Things went well from there, and in the spring of of 2003 the mastering work and the assisting work couldn't coexist any longer, and Tone and Volume Mastering went full time and all out. A Bit About Us...