THE COMFORT FACTOR, PART TWO

Working in another studio is always fun. It's great to see how different people use their gear. How things are wired, how they interact, how they sound. Whether you REALLY need that $2000 compressor to get a good vocal sound.

Even more interesting is the overall feel. Tony Alva's Grey Cat Sound in Atlanta (where Ted and I were working last weekend, see "Christian Music" below) has a great feel. The control room is nice and clean, no ashtrays or empty beer bottles laying around (although I admit to loving both of these things). Everything is well organized and sounds good. It's entirely 16 bit ADAT based, which 8 years ago was as state of the art as you could get. In fact, if computer based recording hadn't exploded in the last 4 years or so, it would still be state of the art. Plus he's got 16 track analog tape (even cooler) that we'll have to fire up next time we're down. The board was nice, everything worked, and getting to listen to NS10's all day is a wonderful educational experience. Curtains adorn the walls, the furniture is nice and clean (as far as I know, nothing in the studio was found on the streets of Brooklyn on trash day, at least once Ted and I left).

Working on a recording can be inspiring. I was inspired to make our control room a little bit nicer. Finally patched up that last hole in the corner where we hadn't quite finished soundproofing. A day of paint, drywall, joint compund, and diffusion, and things already feel much improved. It's a lot of baby steps, which is what we'll take until the day when we can pull everything out and redo the whole place (soon as we sell a few records). But it's the little things that add up Maybe we all feel just a little bit cleaner after being in the South, where people chitchat a little more and rush around a little less, where ADAT is king and the guys at Guitar Center still try to sell you that extra bit of gear that you don't really need.