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The Studio

Any artist will tell you that 'practice makes perfect' but at some point, you need to show the world what you can do. This is why The Space offers a state-of-the-art recording studio. Professional sound requires the finest of equipment, and we have gone to great lengths to build the most proficient sound center north of Boston.

The studio is available for booking nearly anytime day or night, seven days a week. Contact us for scheduling.

Located only 40 minutes from Boston and Cambridge, 20 minutes from Lawrence, MA and Nashua, NH

Tracking & Mixing

Recording Rate w/ Engineer : $55 per hour

Mastering

$60 per hour

Tracking

The evolution of the transistor has given musicians the power to capture their ideas and make great recordings with a laptop and a few mics. It has yet to leave behind the need for an acoustically sound space to record in. Our main tracking room with its extensive acoustic design and treatment, high ceiling and full floated floor is a warm and comfortable space with plenty of room for the biggest bands or ensembles. Its ambiance is flattering to any instrumentation, from full drums sets (ours or yours) to acoustic guitar and voice. The two adjoining isolation booths, multiple rehearsal spaces throughout our facility, and our 24 track simultaneous capability allow us to capture clean, isolated tracks of your entire band while you perform the way you feel most comfortable: as a band with eye contact between all the musicians. Our headphone monitoring system allows each musician to control their own mix from their own remote station or stay raw and forget the headphones all together.

While we can take you from basic tracking all the way through to creating the final master, we're also happy to just fill in the gaps in your production process. Come in for basic drum tracking and walk out with the raw tracks in the format of your choice (Pro Tools, Sonar, OMF for Logic, Cubase, Nuendo and other DAWs, Wav or AIFF, all compatible with Mac or PC). Take your time getting your guitar takes down at home and bring them in to be re-amped through one of our amps or your amp in our tracking room with our selection of mics and mic pre's. Don't settle for poor quality amp sim plugins or that just passable 57 crammed up against the speaker. Bring your sequenced tracks in to our B room to use our collection of synths for that analog character soft synths just can't reproduce. Let us add real reverb and room sound to your vocals or guitars by bouncing them off the hardwood floor of our large function hall. There's also no need to feel rushed on choosing takes in the studio; you can take copies of sessions home and take your time making your choices and making editing decisions.

Mixing

Digital recording has been an undeniable leap forward in editing, dynamic range and its ability to store a virtually unlimited amount of takes. At The Space, we use Solid State Logic converters to transparently fuse the power of digital with our fully analog 24 channel Toft ATB24 mixing console. Malcolm Toft designed the Trident consoles used by David Bowie and Radiohead among countless others and the ATB series is his latest effort to preserve the character of his original creations. The magical way its British EQ blends tracks and its intuitive hands on controls are the perfect compliment to the precision of the Waves plugins we use.

In addition to mixing what we track, you can bring in your sessions in nearly any format to mix yourself on our console or with whatever help you need.

CD and Audio Mastering

I refuse to write yet another mysterious definition of CD mastering. While the process often involves some very creative and hard to describe approaches, the goals are simple:

1) Create consistency in a collection of tracks (CD)

2) Create consistency between your tracks and the rest of the mastered music in the world, particularly of similar genre.

You've put tens or hundreds of hours into writing, recording and mixing your music. You're ecstatic about how it sounds (or maybe you're not). Now, take a track by your favorite band and listen to it on your home stereo, your car stereo, your PA system and your headphones. Play your mix right after it. Do you feel the need to turn up the volume when listening to your track? Adjust the bass? Does your mix have the same punch from the kick drum? Does it distort in the loud sections? Do the quieter sections get lost when driving around? Does your vocal have the same presence and sense of being right there in the same room? The right mastering engineer can make it happen.

Live and Location Recording

Armed with an Alesis HD24 24-track 24-bit hard disk recorder, The Space is available for multitrack recording wherever you are. Many musicians are at their best performing on stage and drawing on the energy of an audience or maybe you want to get a great recording of that organ at the church down the street from your house. We can provide you with the raw tracks or bring them back to our studio for mixing. Contact us for a quote on the tracking; mixing and mastering are available at our studio at normal rates.

Clients
Follow the links to find out more and hear samples of our work...

Goosepimp Orchestra (funk)

Sun King (rock)

The Big Sway (rock)

Hot Day at the Zoo

Los Bungalitos (punk / metal)

Adam Ezra Group (rock)

Dave Munro / Air Traffic Controller (pop / folk / rock)

The Flip (pop / rock)

The Sinbusters (punk)

Hidden Criminals (disco / dub)

Yunel Cruz (bachata)

Josh Beetler (acoustic / experimental)

Tepthida Khmer restaurant (radio commericial / jingle)

Academy of Notre Dame Tyngsboro Girls' Choir (choral)

John Daggett Jr. (bagpipe)

Congo Monster (rock)

Black Planets (jazz / jam)

Five Seventy (metal)

Venezula (rock / alternative)

Trial by Fire (rock)

Alligator Wine (rock)

Cemetery Blues (folk / punk)

Casual Saxtet (jazz)

Studio A
Design

Technical design & consulting by Brian Redmond

Acoustical design & consulting by Phil Reese

Gear

Toft ATB24 - 24 Channel Console
Millennia HV-3B - 4 Channel Mic Preamp
SSL XLogic Alpha-Link MADI AX - 24 Channel ADA

Microphones

Neumann TLM 49 - Large Diaphragm Condenser
(2) Audio-Technica AT4050 - Multi-Pattern Condensers
(1) Shure SM81 - Small Diaphragm Condensers
(2) R0DE NT5 - Small Diaphragm Condensers, Matched Pair
(2) Crown PZM30D - boundary mics
(3) Sennheiser MD421 MKII U4
(5) Shure SM57
Shure Beta 52A - kick drum mic

(1) Radial JDI MK3 - Passive Direct Box
(2) Radial X-Amp - Active Reamplifier
(1) Radial JDX Reactor - Amplified DI

Dynamics and Effects

FMR RNC 1773 - Stereo Compressor
FMR RNLA 7239 - Stereo Compressor

Software

Pro Tools 8
Cakewalk SONAR 8.5
Waves Native
Celemony Melodyne
Steinberg Wavelab

Monitors

M-Audio Studiophile DSM3 w/ SBX10 subwoofer
Furman HDS-6 - Headphone Distribution Amp

Percussion

Gretsch Catalina Maple Kit w/ DW hardware and Zildjian As
Taye Maple Kit w/ Taye hardware and Istanbul Agop Cymbals

Amps

Marshall Haze40 Tube amp w/ 12" Marquee Celestion Speaker
Music Man 100RD All Tube Head
Dr. Z Route 66 All Tube Head
Dr. Z Maz "Junior NR" 18W Combo
Fender Blues Deluxe
Line 6 Flextone II
Ampeg BA115HP 1x15 Combo Bass Amp
SWR Super Redhead 2x10 Combo Bass Amp

Keys

Roland RD-600
Baldwin Acrosonic Piano
Kurzweil SP76
Farfisa VIP 600 Organ
Leslie
72' Fender Rhodes

Guitars

Fender Telecaster Deluxe
Yamaha APX-8A Acoustic / Electric

Studio B

Akai MPC4000 sequencer/sampler

Roland JP-8080 virtual analog synthesizer

Oberheim Matrix-1000 analog synthesizer

Alesis QS 6.1 synthesizer

Kurzweil Micropiano sound module

Korg KP3 Kaoss Pad effects module

Event 20/20bas studio monitors

Intel Core2Duo with Windows XP and XP64

Echo Audio Layla24 Audio Interface

Presonus Digimax 8 channel mic preamp

Alesis ADAT XT20 8 track S-VHS based digital recorder