Our live room is the star of the show. 36 x 30 with 20 ft ceilings it yields a very large open sound. The 21,600 cubic feet allows sound to spread naturally and decay smoothly. It incorporates a perfectly symmetrical design which produces stunning stereo imaging. It is a phenomenal space for recording anything from a delicate vocal or piano to the loudest and most aggressive drums and guitars.
Live Room
Control Room
Our main control room looks and sounds amazing. It features a compression ceiling with overhead gear racks, wood, lava rocks, and big Westlake mains. The carefully designed acoustics in our control room provides a super accurate listening environment and eliminates the guesswork that plagues many other studios. Wire mesh shielding was installed, during construction, essentially creating a faraday cage to block RFI/EMI and other interference from the audio signal. Our control room currently houses our 64 channel SSL 9000 J Super Analogue mixing console. For a complete list of gear check out our equipment list.
History
In the early 1980’s the bay area music scene was very happening. Lots of big records were being produced at handful of great studios like the Automatt, Wally Heider’s, and the Record Plant. The vast majority of the studios in the bay area, at that time, were all very dead sounding and many musicians, engineers and producers began to crave a more live sounding room.
The inspiration to build Studio D came from that desire; to have a tracking space that felt and sounded more lively and energetic, and catered to live performance. A partnership comprised of a handful of successful engineers formed with the shared goal of creating the perfect place to create. The design concept for the studio was a live sounding room with a large cubic volume, and perfect imaging left to right and front to back. Thus, the space was designed to be completely symmetrical, it is a mirror image without parallel walls.
The design for the control room was based loosely on the Hidley designed rooms at the record plant but with a bit less compression for a more open sound. The control room incorporated design ideas from many of the areas great studios of the time, and allowed clients to feel at home quickly.
Construction began in 1983 and continued for just over a year. When it opened for business in mid 1984, it was an immediate success. Faith No More’s album Introduce Yourself, and Huey Lewis and the News’ Fore!, were some of the first big projects to come to D. Soon after, the studio was featured on the cover of Mix Magazine as well as a handful of other audio publications. The studios success continued with a long string of Gold, Platinum, and Grammy Award winning records and has become many engineers favorite studio for tracking and mixing.
Studio Tour
Co-owner, Chief Engineer and Producer, Joel Jaffe takes you on a guided tour of the incredible live room and control room at Studio D, in Sausalito, CA