It's no secret that our boss (Michael Laskow) is a huge fan of some of the A-list recording studios that ruled the roost back in the mid-1970s and into the 1980s when he was pushing faders. The only studio that he speaks about with as much reverence as his beloved Criteria Studios in Miami, is the Power Station in New York. Studio A in particular. "When you clap your hands in that room, it sounds like records are supposed to sound. Tony Bongiovi designed the perfect room. Every engineer of my era who worked in that room loved it," Michael waxes rhapsodically.
Today, Studio A is still pretty much as it was back in the day, and BerkleeNYC deserves a tip of the hat for keeping that sacred space in great shape, with the original console and much of the original outboard gear still in the room.
While most recording is done in home studios today, anybody who got to engineer a session in what is arguably the best-sounding live room on the planet would instantly hear the difference. "The gear was great and the mic closet was enviable, but the live room itself was just plain magical sounding. While other top studios were building dead-sounding rooms to achieve better isolation, Tony Bongiovi built a live room that had the perfect blend of snap, warmth, reflection, absorption, diffraction, and isolation when wanted. And it smelled like rock 'n roll. Any engineer of that era who was worth his or her salt knows exactly what I mean," says Laskow.
Thanks to Warren Huarte of Produce Like a Pro for doing this tour of Studio A and the rest of the facility as well. And a special shout out to Ian Kagey from the Power Station for knowing the history and the tech, both. To learn more about the history of this legendary studio and see some of the iconic records made there, click here!