{ { Infobox person
| name = Michael Graves
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| caption = Graves in 2023
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| occupation = Mastering engineer
| years_active = 1998-present
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| awards = Grammy Award for Best Historical Album: It's Such A Good Feeling: The Best Of Mister Rogers (2021) Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris (2018) Hank Williams, The Garden Spot Programs, 1950 (2014) Art of Field Recording Volume I: Fifty Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum (2008) 9 other nominations<p>Blues Music Award, Historical Album of the Year: Bobby Rush, Chicken Heads: A 50-Year History Of Bobby Rush (2017) | spouse = | website = osirisstudio.com }} Michael Graves (born December 23, 1968) is an American mastering engineer. He specializes in audio restoration and audio preservation. Graves is a four-time Grammy award-winner and a thirteen-time Grammy nominee. He is widely considered one of the best audio engineers in his field. Country singer Hank Williams' daughter Jett praised Graves' work on her father's Grammy-winning album The Garden Spot Programs, 1950, calling it "the best restoration I’ve ever heard before, the 1% of 1% of restoration engineering."
Graves has worked on a wide variety of archival musical projects, working with clients from around the world. Graves' main focus is historical audio that was recorded on deteriorating or obsolete media, as well as more recent recordings on which the sound is obscured for various reasons, utilizing tools and techniques to restore the original audio. His work has often been compared to that of an archaeologist because of Graves' similarly painstaking process of cleaning and restoring old and often damaged archival material. He works with such record labels as Dust-to-Digital, Analog Africa, The Numero Group and Omnivore Recordings, which specialize in historical recordings. He has also remastered recordings for commercial release by artists such as Hank Williams, Ray Charles, Joni Mitchell, Big Star, Blondie, Richard Hell, Janis Joplin, Stax Records, Nina Simone, Erroll Garner, Buck Owens and Bobby Rush.
Graves owns and operates Osiris Studio, a Los Angeles-based mastering and audio-restoration services facility that provides audio services to the entertainment and archival communities. The studio is named after the Egyptian god of resurrection, reflecting Graves' interest in bringing recordings "back to life."
Early life
Graves grew up in Texas. He began collecting records from a young age, taking advantage of his father's free travel perks as a Delta Air Lines employee to visit record stores across the U.S. and Europe.
He graduated from Georgia State University.
Career
Graves spent the early part of his career in Atlanta. He first became interested in audio restoration after receiving an early CD recorder as a gift in 1998. In the course of digitizing some rare records in his vinyl collection, he became interested in the possibilities of digital audio restoration.
In 2002, Graves founded Osiris Studio, initially working with private collectors to digitize and restore their music collections. In 2003, Graves was hired by Georgia State University to help digitize and preserve a substantial portion of its Johnny Mercer collection, one of the world's largest collections of commercial, home and unreleased recordings relating to noted songwriter Mercer. Graves continued working for Georgia State University, preserving assets in GSU's Southern Labor Archives.
Graves subsequently expanded his business, performing preservation services for the audio archives of such institutions as the National Park Service (Great Smoky Mountains, Joshua Tree, Sitka and Yosemite archives), Archives of the Episcopal Church, the Coca-Cola Company, Sacred Harp Publishing Company Archives, and the Centers for Disease Control's David J. Sencer CDC Museum.