Audio Engineering Society

Chicago Section

Meeting Review, October 27, 2010

10/27/10 Meeting Highlights
by Ken Platz

Gravity Studios Tour;

Presented by: Doug McBride

The October 2010 meeting of the Chicago AES Section was held at Gravity Studios, located in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Approximately 30 members, non-members, and students received an overview from Doug McBride of his background, how he began Gravity Studios, and the trends that he has observed in the studio world.

Gravity Studio is a typical rock n' roll studio, opening in the heyday of Wicker Park in the early 90's and grew to be considered one of the top rock studios in the Midwest. With that came an amazing compliment of equipment centered around a vintage Neve 8058 console. Just back in 2008, the desk was finally replaced by the new Rupert Neve Designs 5088. Less than two years later, the 5088 is gone and replaced with a more streamlined workflow, forgoing the traditional console for in-the-box ProTools work with a summing box, leading in a growing trend. The client list is long and impressive, recently featuring names like Bon Jovi and Buddy Guy.

Doug spoke of the growing trend in these tricky times of clients needing to interface their project work with a commercial studio or mastering house. A large portion of his current studio work is committed to mastering. After providing us an overview in the studio�s �live-room�, Doug gave us a tour of his engineer/producer/recording room and his mastering room.

Many questions were posed from how he chose his studio monitors to keeping current with today�s technology � such as streaming audio. Offered via their website, Gravity Studio (www.gravitystudios.com) currently streams internet audio tracks from past and present clients.

The Chicago AES Section would like to extend a special thanks to Doug McBride for hosting this meeting.