The Bunker Studio

These are the smallest of the we use—the SCM25A
We also have two pair of SCM45 and two pair of SCM110 ASL Pro
For us, the important thing with monitoring is that our systems make sense to us in our rooms. The consistency of using ATCs throughout our facility makes it easier to move from room to room without finding the shifts too disorienting
Out of all the technological links in the chain, loudspeakers—even fantastic ones like these—deviate the most from theoretical ideals
It’s not too difficult, in the 21st century, to make an amplifier or even a DAC that renders a fairly linear translation of its input
Speakers are a different story—they all put their own stamp on things, so it’s important to choose carefully

The EP-2 seen here descends from a curious 1950s tradition that persists in our culture to the present day
In the 1950s, an engineer named Sam Phillips was operating a small recording studio in Memphis called Memphis Recording Service, and an indie label called
Phillips was a forward-thinking, visionary risk-taker who was not afraid to employ experimental recording techniques (he famously said “If you’re not doing anything different, you’re not doing anything”)
One of his revolutionary-at-the-time techniques was employing an Ampex tape machine to create a delay effect—typically a very short, “slapback” type of echo
While this hardly seems earth-shattering now, it was profoundly unique at the time, and he typically employed it in his characteristic not-at-all-subtle manner
Sun Records had, at one time, simultaneous chart-topping singles on the pop, R&B, and country charts, so Phillips’s signature sound was quite predominant in the culture
Guitarists began looking for a way to re-create the effect live, so a designer named Ray Butts built a guitar amp called the EchoSonic, which had a small tape machine built in to generate the echo. He built only a handful of these, mostly for Sun Records stalwarts like Carl Perkins and Scotty Moore (Chet Atkins also got one)
Eventually, an engineer named Mike Battle decided that the echo unit would be better as a stand-alone device (usable with any amplifier), so he copied Butts’s design, and by the end of the 1950s the Echoplex was a commercial product. Chicago Musical Instruments (who also carried Gibson Guitars) was the distributor
Tape delay devices were just getting started, but it’s unlikely that they would’ve been commercialized in exactly the same way (and at exactly that time) had it not been for the culture-penetrating studio experimentalism of Sam Phillips.

Our A control room and at the end of a tracking day
Being a larger commercial tracking facility, we’re old-school about certain things
After every session, Studio A gets reset to its defaults—the vintage gets fully zeroed, and the live and control rooms get fully unpatched and organized
That way, the next session coming in gets a fresh start—there are a few reasons we adhere to this time-honored strategy
First is that we have multiple staff engineers, each having their own workflows, preferences, and strategies
Starting from zero ensures that they won’t need to undo another engineer’s work to carry out their own
Relatedly, zeroing also avoids unpleasant surprises—EQs and inserts engaged without intent, half-inserts on the patchbays, etc
Troubleshooting is also much faster without a whole bunch of unused patches hanging about
But perhaps most importantly—no two clients’ music is the same. If we start with a blank slate, we’re going to be making every move with *this* artist’s music in mind
Semi-permanent setups do have their place. Our smaller Studio B leans a bit more in this direction—it’s great for streamlining workflows and getting things happening quickly
But in a large tracking room handling the type of variety we facilitate, we feel that the classic methodology is still best

The and ribbons have a long history of excellent performance—and wind sensitivity!
You can see here that we’ve got a precautionary between this and the organ speaker it’s addressing
The spinning horn at the top of this cabinet can actually throw out a fair bit of turbulent air—mitigated somewhat by the louvered vents, but still enough that you can feel it with your hand
The mic itself has a cloth blast shield inside, so this extra precaution probably isn’t strictly necessary. But since the compression driver and rotary horn don’t produce a ton of ultra-high frequencies anyway, there’s little trade-off
The 77D (and its updated-metallurgy successor, the 77DX) are crude multipattern ribbons
We usually use them in their natural setting of “B” (for “bidirectional,” an archaic way of saying “figure-of-eight”)
By sealing off the rear of the ribbon to varying degrees, and with the aid of an acoustic labyrinth, crude approximations of omni and cardioid can be achieved
Its native figure-eight is really where it shines, though, so the adjustable screw on the back points to “B” the vast majority of the time

There are five vintage large-diaphragm designs that are more sought-after than most others by a large margin
It may have been who first coined the term “big five” to describe the following models from .berlin and (often badged under the brand):
The /U48
The U67/M269
The M49
The C12
The Ela M251/250
These classics aren’t necessarily “the best” in all scenarios, but their reputations and value are definitely rooted in their utility and excellence—entire workflows have been built around these tools
The so-called “big five” are fairly well-represented at our studio! The pictured Telefunken-badged (vintage) is our only example of that model, but we do have six U67s and five of the (excellent) new M49v reissue
While we don’t have any Ela M251s or vintage C12s, our resident friend and colleague has a great C12 reproduction that’s often hanging about
Additionally, we’ve just acquired a spectacular vintage C24, which is essentially two C12s in a single body, optimized for stereo use
Half of a C24 also makes a perfect substitute for a C12–even on a vocal. There’s no law that says you have to patch in both channels!

One of our most-used is the .berlin
We have five of these tube large-diaphragm condensers—three vintage originals that are well over half a century old, and a pair of new reissues
Our reissue pair has been tweaked with NOS EF86s (our favorite U67 tube) and sound pretty much the same as our vintage examples (but are a really great matched pair—for this reason, they often get first pull)
Lately, the reissue M49v has begun to rival the U67 as our most-used
We’ve got five of those as well, and they excel everywhere from bass to vocal to drums to piano

A few of the and processors in A!
There’s another rack of equal size on the opposite side of the room that contains effects, outboard preamps, and some extras
We also have a couple of pretty nice Neve consoles, but the most important part of our studio may be the rooms themselves
Quality outboard gear and plug-ins are getting more affordable and accessible by the day. The gap between entry-level and professional is probably narrower than it’s ever been
But one gap that’s probably wider than any point in history concerns the acoustic spaces themselves! A great set of tracking rooms like ours are large, demanding, and costly to build. Superlative mix/mastering rooms (like the ones designed for us by ) have all those challenges, and use a lot of cutting edge design philosophies in addition
There haven’t yet been any shortcuts for these acoustic realities, and nothing has yet emerged to make optimized tracking and mix rooms more widely available
When choosing a recording studio, it’s always great to visit the rooms themselves to get a sense for the acoustics (ideally, bring a trusted, experienced and knowledgeable recordist friend). We are very proud of our acoustics—they make our recordings, mixes and masters better, and are a big part of the reputation of our facility.

Two great vintage large-capsule condensers—one with a vacuum tube and one without!
The on the left employs its tube in a way that’s different from most mics—as a
The vast majority of the time, amplifying tubes (like this mic’s ) are configured so that output signal is taken from the anode, or plate
This “plate follower” configuration maximizes voltage gain, which is generally what designers are after when using a component specifically designed to amplify!
But if we want, we can also take signal from the tube’s , and that’s what Sony does here. In (over-) simplified terms, this is kind of asking the tube to stand on its head (rather than leveraging the amplification itself, we’re making use of some of the upstream effects)
Cathode followers are incredibly linear and have very low impedance output—useful qualities in a circuit! But the trade-off is that they can’t offer positive gain (cathode followers can only approach—never exceed—unity gain)
But the cathode follower’s low output impedance makes it practical to locate the mic’s output transformer a long distance from the tube without tradeoffs—there’s no reason to even locate it in the mic body itself, which helps keep things compact!
As with other cathode follower tube mics (like the Altec M11 “coke bottle”), the transformer of the is actually in the power supply. So if you see one of these mics for sale without the PSU, you must understand that half the mic is effectively missing!

We have been using a *lot* of .berlin lately!
Once we got our first pair we knew rather quickly that we wanted more. There are five here now (which matches our number of U67s)
One pair almost always lands on —it’s just our favorite mic for the job lately. We also often use them as drum overheads and on upright bass, vocal—really they work on almost everything
Lurking in the shadows is another new addition to our that we’re really excited about—we’ll share more about it in the coming days or weeks

A like our Studio A (control room pictured here) has many small details that most people never consider
One such detail is unique , or heating/air requirements
One interesting point that surprises many people—heat never runs in our as the gear generates plenty of heat on its own. Even in NYC winters, cooling is required
Take a look at the custom wooden grille for the air supply vent near the top of the frame and notice how widely-spaced the slats are
This is because of a unique studio requirement for HVAC: it has to be really, really quiet
A typical register will have closely-spaced vents that create a lot of turbulent flow (this results in the “rushing wind” sound we associate with forced-air heating and cooling systems)
By reducing speed of airflow (which involves managing pressure and volume) and reducing sources of turbulence, we can engineer a dead-silent hvac system that allows us to record and mix in a whisper-quiet environment
All of these little things go on behind the scenes to allow us to do our jobs to the best of our abilities

A couple of our favorite .berlin : the and the set up for tracking in Studio B
These two mics share some attributes in common—both are vacuum tube multi-pattern —but that’s about where the similarities end
The KM56 is a small-diaphragm mic using nickel foil as a capsule membrane, with the rare subminiature vacuum tube soldered directly in to the circuit (no socket)
The U67 is a large-diaphragm mic with mylar membranes coated in a vanishingly-thin layer of gold (only a few Angstroms in thickness to avoid adding too much mass). It uses the relatively-common vacuum tube in a conventional noval (nine-pin) socket
While we only have one KM56, the U67 is one of our most-used microphones (we have five). Along with the reissue M49V (we have four) our five U67s form a big of our mic locker and reveal our affinity for tube large-diaphragm mics

We have a lot of hanging around (including a lot of )
This is underrated—it’s great!
It’s got a couple of oscillators, a filter, and a drive unit—very intuitive and immediate
A very different beast from the vintage Model D in our collection, but useful in its own right

In the most literal sense of the term, all compressors are “voltage-controlled amplifiers” (or )
An amplifier, obviously, is anything that takes an input signal (in the form of AC voltage) and multiplies its voltage (for our purposes that means “to make it louder”)
Most amplifiers have some means to control the level of amplification—often this is a k**b on the front panel marked “volume”
But sometimes we want non-human entities to have that control (either for automation or when a human-and-k**b lacks the necessary speed or precision to be effective)
In these cases, we can add circuitry that allows a “control voltage” to instruct the amplifier instead of a k**b
In old vacuum-tube compressors, this often meant taking a portion of the input signal, rectifying it to DC, and adding it to the amplifying tube’s bias (lowering the amplification of the tube)
In the 1970s, created an early integrated circuit (“chip”) that contained a complete voltage-controlled amp circuit in a single device footprint
This breakthrough led to the series ( and seen here), and these are still among the archetypal VCA compressors
Today, the term is usually used to refer to devices containing such a VCA chip

Still can’t get enough of the
Our experience with originals is limited to vintage ones in other studios—and as compressors are notoriously high-maintenance, those examples can vary quite a bit in sound
But we do know that these reproductions are fantastic on all manner of vocals and instruments!

The centerpiece of our is this summing mixer—the first one made
We were using a name-brand summing mixer before, and this one is just so much better for us. It has all the features we need, but *only* the features we need (surprisingly hard to find in a commercial product!)
More importantly, it’s the best-sounding such device we’ve encountered; quality wide-band transformers on ins and outs, discrete op-amps and a hilariously-low noise floor
It allows us to maximize the benefits of our hybrid workflow, enabling us to print mix stems in real time as the two-track print goes down (this saves our clients time and money, and spares us the tedium of printing stems and with analog processing piece-by-piece)

The back end of one of the most legendary monitors: the
We still like these even though they’ve been out of production for many years
They’re not always the most pleasing or impressive to listen to, but they offer a lot of insight, especially in the midrange
Part of this is due to the fact that their time domain performance is objectively, measurably superior to most other

Do we post about the too much?
Maybe! But we have a lot of them, use them a lot, and love what they do!

we love a good stereo , and there are two great ones in this pic from and
When we find gear that works for us, very often we’ll end up getting a second or third unit so we can use the device in multiple rooms
These are in our Studio A, but we have two more units and one more between studio B and our
The same is true for the stereo compressor at the top of the frame—we’ve got one of those in each of three rooms as well

EQP-1A-SS are still favorites here
The tube get all the love, but we like these solid-state models just as much (they were certainly good enough for all those classic records made at the old Power Station!)
They’re nice and firm in the bottom end, and are just smooth and musical as their tube cousins
An added benefit is that they always sound as we expect them to—they don’t change as they warm up, or as the tubes age
We have plenty of vacuum tube gear (almost too much, really!) but we’re a bit biased toward these solid-state Pultecs

Sometimes people try and fail at their original objective and end up coming up with something new and great in its own right
The Gibson ES-150 pickup and EH-150 amplifier did a poor job of reproducing the sound of acoustic guitar, but they launched multiple traditions of music
Laurens Hammond’s organ didn’t do a very good job of imitating a pipe organ, and Don Leslie’s rotary speaker (originally intended to help by making the sound appear to come from all over the room as in a pipe organ installation) didn’t improve matters as he’d hoped
And Dutch company Eminent BV failed, with their String Ensemble, to convincingly imitate a real string orchestra
Nevertheless, the Solina in all of its guises (including the rebadged version distributed by , seen here in our Studio B) has become an enduring part of the fabric of music since the 1970s
Even people who aren’t familiar with it recognize the sound as soon as they touch it—it triggers associations with countless classic records

.berlin and are some of the most common choices for us lately
Sometimes one or the other, sometimes both in combination—frequently a pair of one and a mono iteration of the other
What are some of your favorite drum overheads?

The .berlin has been around for over half a century, and has been a staple in front of recording pretty much the entire time
We love them there, but we also use ours in many other applications—upright and electric basses, guitar cabs, and occasionally vocal (where they’ve been known to surprise)

We still feel our is one of the best places to mix anywhere
The room, designed by , and the large ATCs (SCM110ASL) make for some of the best monitoring anywhere
We’ve also got a fantastic collection of vintage and modern
But the most-unique capability is the ability to integrate said outboard gear into the DAW environment via digital patchbays. Recall of inserts, and no flaky patch cables!
Our new analog summing bus from was the final piece of the puzzle—in addition to sounding unbelievable (the best we’ve ever heard, truly!), it’s set up to allow us to print up to eight stereo stems in real time, as the two-track mix prints!
It’s a very efficient workflow. While much of the room’s time is spoken for by our clients, we’re also freelancer-friendly and welcome outside engineers

was right there when vacuum tube technology was coming back into vogue in the 1990s, and unlike many contemporaries, their gear has stuck around and remained as relevant as ever
Perhaps this is because, unlike many contemporaries, they produce original designs (as opposed to reproductions of vintage classics—a valid-enough pursuit in its own right)
As a result, has an identity (distinctive branding, too, with the violet faceplates that have remained their hallmark)
The two pieces here—the stereo EQ and the variable-mu tube limiter—might be their most-enduring
We’ve got several of each—we like at least one in every tracking room, and we actually have two Vari-Mu units in our mix room (one having stepped attenuators instead of potentiometers for perfect recallability)

Studio B is a favorite of many of our clients—it’s a smaller room with great, tighter acoustics and good vibe
The is a strength as well!
Unlike our larger room (which gets a distinct setup for each session) Studio B has a drum kit, amps, an upright piano and numerous keyboards already mic’d up and patched in
While the setup can be altered to suit the session’s needs, it’s nice to have stuff ready to go!
Writers and multi-instrumentalist producers who like to be able to react to the moment love being able to bounce around with minimal delay

Long-awaited, but finally here! Our new custom from
When we decided to transition away from our old SSL 4K, it was important to have the best analog summing solution we could imagine—one that would allow us to reap the benefits of a hybrid multibus workflow while prioritizing the absolute highest performance (both subjectively and measurably)
It wasn’t enough that it just sound good—we wanted it to be better than anything we’d ever used or experienced, and Dave Anderson was up for the challenge
Designing from a clean sheet of paper, he took our requirements and made a masterpiece—unlike a production item (which must optimize for cost and manufacturing expediency in addition to performance), there was only one objective here: to make the best summing mixer any of us had ever heard
Each of the sixteen inputs has a highly-tuned line amp (fully discrete, transformer-balanced, proprietary circuit) driving a high-impedance summing network. The summed signals combine into two high-headroom, custom 990-style discrete op-amps through two high-nickel output transformers
Response is extremely phased-linear razor-flat (±0.043dB) from 10Hz-80kHz. The whole thing is spooky quiet—noise floor measurements were so low that it’d be tempting to suspect they were in error—but it really is that good!
THD+N is an incredibly-clean 0.004%, and it can handle levels of +26dB before any notable distortion occurs. Past that point it gently transitions into a very pleasant (but subtle) saturation, weighted toward euphonic second-order harmonics, that’s mostly attributable to transformer core saturation.
When set for unity, the front panel trims are calibrated for precise 1:1 operation. ±2.5dB of level trim is available, in precise 0.5dB steps
Subjectively, it does that thing that a great high-headroom console summing bus does… fairly transparent, but just a little bit more subjective width, depth and vibe. We’re very psyched for it!

We still haven’t found a mic preamp we like more than the
We’re fortunate to have seventy-two of them in our facility (across two vintage consoles)
While the slightly-earlier cosmetics of the are arguably more-iconic, the input module used in these inline consoles has probably been used on more classic records
These mature 80-series consoles share everything we love about the sound, they were just functionally-optimized for a more-flexible studio workflow (and were produced in larger numbers)
Those workflows continued to evolve over the subsequent half-century, and an inline large-format console is no longer the dominant way to make records. But the utility engineered-into the design still pays major dividends for ensemble recording in a room like ours
It’s also a very efficient way to store large numbers of one of the great mic pre-EQs ever manufactured