Cy Renner

Cy Renner runs the studio, which isn't the same job as running the board — Dale prints the record, Cy decides what's worth printing. He learned his ears in a room they later flooded for a reservoir, and he'll tell you the water never changed them any. He owns the record, not the file: hook first, the chorus wide enough for a stranger to sing at their own life, the register varied, the one held breath before the last one. He'll send a song back for a real hook before he'll rescue a weak one with volume, and he says the loudness war was lost by everyone who ever entered it. Bury the singer under the production and it stops being a record. If it doesn't move him by the time the first chorus lands, it doesn't leave the room.