We are a professionally equipped 16 track digital and analog recording studio located in Taos, New Mexico. Our digital rig is portable, which means we can record where you are and integrate the analog gear later. You can learn all you need about our recording gear in Taos.
Over the last ten years the recording landscape has changed substantially. The prevalence and affordability of recording equipment has changed the demand for expensive studio time. More bands are interested in spending their budgets on home recording equipment and recording their own projects. We think that is awesome. That is exactly how we got into this business. Dave spent years upgrading his equipment into an astounding assortment of killer gear in the analog world, and Max followed suit mostly in the digital world.
Max and David started working together about a year after Max’s band recorded at The Barn studio outside of Questa New Mexico. David has since moved his studio into his house in Taos New Mexico, about a mile from the historic downtown plaza. By combining the gear between the two studios, the options have improved substantially. We now work seamlessly between the digital and analog worlds and sometimes weird places in between. The benefits of both are certainly argued, but at the end of the day, why not just use both! By recording digitally, and transferring to tape, you get the flexibility of the digital world and the sonic characteristics of tape. The one thing to keep in mind, is that it is much more time consuming to work with both mediums, and there are additional expenses involved with working on tape, but it is worth it. Working this way also means you can track anywhere. Our mobile DSO unit can professionally record 16 tracks at any location.
Along with killer gear options, you have the added benefit of working with two life-long musicians. David is well versed in many instruments as well as maintains a strong knowledge of music theory. Max is a drummer, which means he has no knowledge of music theory, but a great sense of time. We have helped produce many albums, and are willing to offer feedback or not, just let us know if you would like input. Many engineers were trained to keep their mouths shut during the creative process, we are engineers, be we are also very conscious and creative.
What the heck is DSO?
DSO stands for Displaced Significant Other. We’ll let you figure out why.
Think big… but small…
There are so many options when it comes to recording, there is no right or wrong. It doesn’t matter if you use a home studio or a professional studio as long as you love the way your product sounds and you had a great time getting there. That’s what we focus on, getting there. We think the experience is the most important part of getting a product that you are proud of and stands out in an ever growing ocean of available music. We believe that it is more important to focus on getting 4 really killer songs than to try to get 12. Seriously, how often do you sit down, uninterrupted, and listen to an entire album. Or better yet, how often have you looked back at an album and thought ‘wow those songs weren’t quite ready’ or ‘I wish we hadn’t even had that song on the record’? We all feel that way after a big project, and that is part of evolving, but you have to remember that those big studio albums that are perfect… usually took months and had many different people influencing the product. Few of us have the budget or time to spend months working on one album. So instead of spending three days trying to record 12 songs, what if you spent three days perfecting 4 songs? or even 1 song? If you think about how much music has changed and how the world of album sales has shifted, you will agree that quality is better than quantity. We have both started to shift our projects over to a song-at-a-time. If in the span of 2 years we have 12 songs ready for an album, maybe we’ll compile them, but for now we are going piece by piece.
With that said, if you don’t agree with our philosophy, we’re happy to help you perfect all 12 songs!