Neptune Wavs is a great place to record the audio for your next production. There is a lot to say about getting this process right. Take your time and capture audio correctly using the tried and true methods of the last century of audio production.
Here you can make sounds with great instruments in well treated rooms. You can capture those sounds with a large assortment of premium and industry standard microphones that are then connected to discrete transformer balanced preamps in our analog console. Universal Audio converters connected to a powerful mac supported by 8 extra cores of UAD processing catalog your audio. UA conversion is musical and full and their "hardware" history is the reason why.
After all of your audio is recorded you are ready to mix. Check the gear page for a complete list of instruments, hardware and software.
Philosophy
I believe tracking is the most important part of the recording chain. I believe in the philosophy of getting things sounding as right as possible with just a microphone. I take my time and try different mics in different positions until beautiful phase coherent sounds are coming through the speakers. You know tracking is done right when you go to mix and think, "Wow I don't want to touch a thing!" This happens 99% of the time if you use a good mic on a well played instrument that goes into high quality preamps. When that correctly recorded audio goes down a channel of the API console and comes out the speakers you will hear a wonderful 3D image that sounds warm and clear and like the records you love.
Live Bands
I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with finding the best ways to capture musicians performing together. I've always hated headphones and thought there was something inherently wrong with them. Recently I saw George Massenburg confirmed my suspicions in a rant in one of his youtube tracking tutorials. Headphones can do weird stuff to pitch and skew your bodies basic senses. They have a place and I use them if I must but I always try to find a way around it. My studio is set up to get the separation I need for great recordings but where musicians can hear themselves without headphones. Basically it's just two rooms. The main room is very live and open and has the audio equipment to. The second room is smaller and is still live but with a much shorter decay. The room has been designed to have different textures on each wall. Thick carpet, bamboo, hanging fabrics, books, ceiling treatment and bass traps. In a live band situation I record drums in the small room with the door open who plays with the musicians in the main room. You can track vocals with the instruments. I also put vocals in the small room and put drums and instruments in the big live room. Both options are very effective for well tracked audio of a band in flight.
Singers/Songwriters
I enjoy helping people who sing or write music create excellent audio recordings of their work. I am an experienced performer who can perform on your recordings and I can bring in many talented friends to supplement what I can't do. Drummers, horns and vocalists are all available to help us create things far beyond your expectations.
You can make a record at home with Kontakt libaries. I pride myself on being the kind of engineer that will go on craigslist and find a vibraphone if you want a vibraphone on your recording. I will always try to find the real thing and capture it right here. If I have to use a digital synth or a software instrument it's getting plugged into a vintage tube amp with a ribbon mic a foot away.
Neptune Wavs offers professional mixing services for any multi-tracked audio productions. There is a "best of both worlds" approach to the subtle art of mixing multiple audio recordings together to create one balanced stereo track. The two worlds are digital and analog and here at Neptune Wavs you will find that we employ both of them in order to create stunning and compelling audio recordings that surpass your expectations of what you can accomplish in a boutique project studio.
After tracking your audio here or somewhere else, the mixing process starts by sending out the individual tracks directly into our all discrete transformer balanced analog console which is just a fancy way of saying super high quality mixer. There are no computer chips in the API console, it is just old fashion analog goodness made of hiqh quality transformers, opamps and other "real" things. Just sending the audio out of high quality converters into these API channels brings everything to life. The carefully crafted channels subtly massage audio and warms it up in a way digital can never do. No two channels are ever exactly the same on an analog mixer and that brings non-linearities to the audio which helps it sound big, natural and warm.
We have all been there. We all have spent hours and hours recording something with painstaking detail only to find that all the tracks together in a computer don't sound like musicians in a room. Computers make the wrong choice when it sums audio together. The computer made a logical decision and saves the wrong frequencies. Mixers sum audio better. They don't crunch numbers, they send audio through copper wire. All of a sudden your hard work will come to life and sound like you thought it would when you recorded it. It's not you! It's the myth of new technology and how it should be better at everything. Ask yourself why movies are still recorded to film and you understand why audio is still mixed on analog consoles.
Once the song is all stemmed out to the mixer in mono and stereo channels then we begin to mix the levels, add effects and prepare the stereo track. At this point we can patch in analog hardware to the mixing channels or apply the best in digital plugins at the computer stage. The mix is printed to hiqh quality converters and at that point is ready to be mastered. We do have mastering studios we work with that we can recommend.
Guitars
Fender Deluxe Telecaster, Tex Mex strat, Gibson Les Paul studio, Eastman acoustic, Cort active bass and Gretsch Artist Award jazz guitar, Fender type Jazz bass.
Keys
Steinway upright, Fender Rhodes, Moog Sub Phatty, Nord Stage, DSI Mopho, Nord Lead 3, Korg Poly 800
Amps
Handwired Sano combo from the 50s, Egnator Tweaker, Epiphone Valve Junior, various cabs and various vintage discrete solid state mixers and power amps for keys and synths. Vintage Hohner bass amp.
Drums
Gretsch Catalina kit, Tama 20" kit, lots of hats, rides and percussion. Three great snares; ludwig weather master, Yamaha Rydeen and a Tama porkpie snare that really cracks
Microphones
Rode NTK, three Oktava pencil condensors, Cascade Fathead ribbon with transformer, AKG C4000, AKG 214, EV dynamic, 5x sm-58 and 4x sm-57s. Stereo matched audio technica and stereo matched oktava. Oktava 319 with joly mod.
Rack
Vermona filter, Vintage Audio M12, modded ART dual MP, dbx 286, three Ibanez GE3101, modded Symetrix 525, DBX 166, two Presonus Eureka, modded ART PRO VLA, two FMR RNC's. Elysia master buss comp. Guitar pedal to line level interface for mixing in pedals as effects when mixing.
500 Series
JDK V14, four S&M 80b copies, two API filters and four amazing Five Fish Audio Peq-500 inductor eqs
Converters
24 ins and 24 outs of Universal Audio conversion. That means 24 simultaneous tracks of recording and 24 separate lines to send to the API console for mixing. 8 UAD cores plus 4 in the computer.
Oddball stuff
Vintage ensoniq 12 bit pad sampler, Pioneer spring reverb, lots of funk and soul vinyl for sampling and breaks, Technics turntable, VOM reel to reel tube amp for crazy distorted sounds.