It changes the tracking day, and only the tracking day. A class A console with transformer inputs and an EQ that clicks in fixed steps forces decisions at the moment of recording: gain in 5 dB jumps, a shelf at 12 kHz or none, sixteen buses for however many microphones are up. What comes back to my room in Burbank is a multitrack with those decisions printed into it, and the rest of the record, overdubs, vocals, editing and mix, happens ten miles east. Sound City Studios, on Cabrito Road in Van Nuys, is the clearest case of why people still pay for that day.
What is on Cabrito Road, and how far is it from Burbank?
A studio that opened in 1969 in a former Vox amplifier factory, at 15456 Cabrito Road, Van Nuys 91406, in the industrial blocks of the neighbourhood (Sound City Studios). Van Nuys is a neighbourhood of the city of Los Angeles, in the middle of the San Fernando Valley; Burbank is a separate city to the east. From North Catalina Street the drive is about ten miles, 20 to 25 minutes outside rush hour on the 5 and Roscoe Boulevard, and closer to 40 at five in the afternoon.
The studio leased time to the public until 2011, when the owners closed it and sold much of the equipment; Fairfax Recordings used it as a private room until 2016; it reopened for bookings in 2017, and Tony Berg and Blake Mills took over the lease in 2018 (Wikipedia). The main live room is reported to be as built in 1969, down to the linoleum.
What was the Neve 8028, and where is it now?
A 28-input, 16-bus, 24-monitor console with 1084 equalisers and no automation, bought from Rupert Neve for $75,175 and described at the time as one of four in the world (Wikipedia). Buckingham Nicks recorded the first song on it; Nirvana's Nevermind was recorded there in 1991. When the studio closed in 2011 Dave Grohl bought the desk and installed it at his Studio 606 in Northridge, and the film he made about it, Sound City, premiered at Sundance in January 2013 (Wikipedia).
So the console that made the room's name is now a few miles north-west of it, in a private studio. Since the reopening the studio has two of the eleven surviving Helios Type 69 consoles and Pro Tools in the control rooms (Wikipedia). Anyone booking the room for the Neve needs to know that before the deposit.
What does a 1084 channel do to a signal that a plug-in does not?
Three things, and two of them are decisions rather than tone. The preamp in a 1084 is the 1073 design: two discrete class A transistor gain stages, Marinair transformers on the microphone input, the line input and the balanced output, and microphone gain from 20 to 80 dB in 5 dB steps on an Elma switch, with no separate mic/line switch because the gain control selects the input (AMS Neve). The output stage gives more than +26 dBu into 600 ohms at under 0.07 percent distortion, so the colour people describe comes from pushing the gain steps toward the top of that range.
The EQ is the second decision. On a 1084 the high shelf sits at 10, 12 or 16 kHz with 16 dB either way; the mid band has centres at 360 Hz, 700 Hz, 1.6, 3.2, 4.8 and 7.2 kHz with a high-Q switch; the low shelf at 35, 60, 110 or 220 Hz; the high-pass at 50, 80, 160 or 300 Hz and the low-pass at 6, 8, 10 or 18 kHz, both at 18 dB per octave (AMS Neve). There is no 2.5 kHz and no 90 Hz. An engineer at that desk chooses 3.2 or 1.6 on a snare and prints it. A plug-in with the same curves can be undone on Thursday; the printed version cannot, and the player hears the decided sound in the headphones and plays to it. The third thing is the step itself: two overheads on the same 5 dB step are matched more closely than two continuous pots set by eye.
What do sixteen buses and no automation do to a session?
They turn a mix into a performance and a tracking day into a series of commitments. With 28 inputs and sixteen buses, a kit with ten microphones often has its kick pair and snare pair summed to one track each at the desk, balance and polarity set while the drummer plays. No automation means that every fade and every ride on a mix pass is a hand on a fader in real time, and a mix pass with several hands on the faders is printed as it was played.
In a small room the equivalent is printing. When I track a vocal chain, the preamp, the compressor and the EQ go to disk as one file, and a dry safety goes to a second track at the same time. The folder that leaves for the mix carries both, named so they cannot be confused, and the method is in what should be in the folder you send to a mix engineer.
Is it the console, or the room?
For drums, the room. Rick Rubin's view, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, was that guitars sound much the same everywhere while drums change from room to room, and that Sound City's drum sound was among the best; Greg Fidelman is reported to have recorded a bass drum in each of the big Los Angeles rooms and played the results blind to Metallica, who chose Sound City for Death Magnetic on that basis (Wikipedia). None of that is about the desk; the desk left in 2011 and the drum bookings did not.
For everything else, the chain. A vocal or a bass DI through a 1073-type channel sounds the way it does because of the transformer and the gain structure, and both exist in rack units, which is how a Burbank room matches an overdub to a Van Nuys drum day: same gain step, same shelf, same high-pass.
When is the day worth it, and what comes back?
When the record is a band playing at once and the drum sound is the identity of the record. A record built from a vocal and programming gets the same from one good channel on the vocal. The split I plan for a band record: one day of tracking in a Van Nuys or North Hollywood room, drums, bass and scratch guitar live, printed through the desk at the session rate; then overdubs, lead vocal, editing and mix in Burbank, where the singer can do six passes without watching a clock. The booking questions, the drum day itself and what to agree before it are in tracking drums near Burbank.
What comes back is the multitrack with the console EQ printed, a DI for every amplified source, the room microphones as separate files, and a written list of which channel was set to which step and which shelf, because that list is what lets the overdubs match. Records I have mixed and mastered are listed with sources at /credits.
Frequently asked
Is Sound City Studios in Van Nuys or in Los Angeles? Both. Van Nuys is a neighbourhood of the city of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, and the studio is at 15456 Cabrito Road, zip 91406. Burbank, about ten miles east, is a separate city with its own municipal code.
Is the Neve 8028 from the Sound City film still at the studio? No. Dave Grohl bought it when the studio closed to the public in 2011 and installed it at Studio 606 in Northridge. The studio reopened in 2017 and now houses two of the eleven surviving Helios Type 69 consoles.
How far is Van Nuys from a Burbank studio? About ten miles from North Catalina Street, roughly 20 to 25 minutes west on the 5 and Roscoe Boulevard outside rush hour, and closer to 40 at five in the afternoon.
If you are planning a band record across two rooms
Send the song count, the instrumentation and the date for drums. A two-room plan with the tracking day and the printed chain list comes back. Contact at /about.