In South-West Houston
Meyerland / Westbury area, Houston TX
$60.00 per hr
713 665 4665
OK – let’s get serious now. Yes, we have all of those things, but not for the reasons stated.
The Overall Feel
Most studios are are cramped, sterile, and claustrophobic places. Control rooms are built small to keep the cabling lengths short (thus improving signal to noise ratios). But the overall effect is like being stuck in a submarine for 10 hours a day.
Our view is that it only takes a few changes to make the transition from being claustrophobic to being cozy. Therefore we consider the studio, especially the control room, to be a work of art. We strive to invoke an Edwardian feel to the place.
Were we successfully? To some degree we were, but we were forced to deal with modern equipment; this placed us at the mercy of their industrial designers. Therefore there are frequent cultural and artistic clashes that cause our studio to have an ethos that spans a gap from Victorian to ultra-modern. Therefore it comes out sort of steam-punkish. But that’s ok, we like steam-punk. We believe that it does come off as being a warm, cozy, Edwardian inspired space for artists to relax and create. And that is the entire purpose.
The Studio
There are three spaces to our studio, there is the studio, an isolation booth, and the control room.
The studio proper is where the artists are. It comprises roughly 150 square feet of floor space.
We also have an isolation booth. It is a little large for an isolation booth, but still it is an isolation booth. There is nothing more un-sexy than this space. But we paid very special attention to bass trapping here. There is a tendency for isolation booths to be a bit bass heavy; we didn’t want that to happen. We also have avoided parallel surfaces.
Then there is the control room, this is where all the magic happens. The control room is carefully designed to have no parallel surfaces. The equipment tends to introduce some parallelism because that is the way that equipment is designed, but the room itself does not. Parallel surfaces create standing waves, thus introducing a strong colouration which makes it difficult to accurately monitor one’s mixes.
Our Equipment
The centre of all modern studios is the computer. Ours is an 8-core Mac Pro Tower. For storage it has four SSDs (one RAID, an SSD for booting, and an SSD for storage of images and videos), plus five hard disks, for a total of approximately 28 terabytes of storage. The computer uses multiple data buses, a 3.5 GHz clock speed, and 96G of RAM. In simple terms, it’s a kick-ass machine.
We use a variety of software. We jump back and forth across several software packages, but mainly Logic, Garage Band, and Audacity for audio work, and Final Cut Pro for video work.
Aside from the usual assortment of software plug-ins, we have a reasonable number of external hardware effects. My personal favourites are hardware compressors, of which we have several to choose from. We also have an Eventide Eclipse Harmonizer, and an Edison EX1 -Stereo Effects Processor.
We have roughly 50 microphones spanning everything from a modern Neumann U87ai to a cheap Czechoslovakian military surplus 1960s piezoelectric mic (don’t laugh, it has its uses). Our mic locker contains models from Neumann, BLUE, AKG, and a host of others.
Our approach to microphones is simple. We fully recognise that something like a $3500 Neumann will never be a bad choice, but it isn’t always the best choice. We want to make the best choice. You need to have the best sound, and we will work with you to find the best way to bring that sound out.
Our overall philosophy is to pursue a blend of the classic and modern sound. To this end we use equipment which spans a broad spectrum from cutting edge modern plugins to old school inspired vacuum tube analogue compressors, preamps, and mics.
We also do a lot of video work. We have won three international awards for our music videos. But at the same time we are very willing to accept humble projects such as instruction videos.
Here is our contact information:
David Courtney
Westbury / Meyerland area, Houston, TX 77096
713 665 4665
E-mail david@chandrakantha.com