That's one of the things I wish I had been able to maintain - playing music and getting into production, but I never had the time.
I still like the production side, but the industry has changed drastically from what it was in the 1980s and early 1990s until now, when someone can load ProTools on a computer and do this work somewhere other than a studio. There are still major studios, but they are not a 24-hour revolving door like they used to be when record labels had bigger budgets and a person could make a living as a full-time session musician.
I do have a couple of friends in specialized positions, though. I won't name any names, but back in May I visited The Mastering Lab or rather, the studio that now owns all of TML's equipment. (Acoustic Sounds purchased TML and moved all the equipment to Salina, KS after Doug Sax passed on.) They only have one of the mastering units set up, but it's fully equipped and they have cut records there. The console was all custom, hand-built electronics, and I believe it might be all tube-driven. (The lathe I know is is tube-driven.) A lot of the equipment from TML is still in crates--they don't have room to set it all up here. The console was cryptic enough that my friend has had to figure out what the controls do, and label them.
The part of the visit that struck me is how many thousands of well-known records were mastered through this system at the hands of Doug Sax.
They do cut primarily from analog (there is another adjoining room behind me in the first pic that has a tape library), but the system for cutting records from digital files is nothing more than an aging laptop and the red Presonus D/A converter box just past the stack of tapes.
It's housed at Blue Heaven Studios, which Acoustic Sounds set up in a renovated church. (They added a lot of wiring beneath the floor, out of sight.) That window behind the speakers above, and in the adjoining room (which IIRC has a mixing desk, along with nine or ten decks for duplicating 15 IPS/2-track tapes for sale), faces out into the church when the panels at the rear are opened. The studio was busier prior to COVID but lately, it has only been open for a few blues festivals.
www.arturia.com
