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.