Irie Idea Studio

When COVID shut everything down in 2020, I lost all my gigs, my tours, and my bar shifts in the same week. I’d been paying $500 a month for a shared studio space, and suddenly, there was no money coming in.

So I started buying gear with the stimulus checks. I got foam. I treated the first reflections. I didn’t really know what I was building.

It turned out to be exactly the right room.

[PHOTO GALLERY — full width, 3 to 5 photos of the studio: the room, the desk, the gear, the vibe. NEED FROM CURTIS. He already has these; he fed them to ChatGPT for that bio.]

A small, quiet space where I can mix at midnight in my socks and walk into the kitchen for a sandwich when I need fresh ears. Natural light. Plants. Everything is already set up, so I can work for hours without thinking about the room, just the music.

This is a mixing and overdub studio. It’s built for getting records right, not for tracking a full band live. When a project needs a bigger room for tracking, I book studio time elsewhere and bring everything back here to mix.

The setup

I use Pro Tools. My interfaces are analog. And then I also have a f*ck ton of outboard analog gear. And that’s how I get the sounds that I’m really looking for. It’s a hybrid of digital and analog.

[Add 2 pics]

What’s in the room

Pro Tools. Analog interfaces. A lot of outboard analog gear. Everything runs through the hardware before it hits the software. That’s how I get the sounds I’m looking for.

[GEAR LIST BELOW]

OUTBOARD GEAR:

A-Designs Audio Hammer 2 Dual Channel Tube EQ
Audio Merge KTBK-1B
AudioScape Engineering Co. AS78 1178 Dual Limiter / Compressor
AudioScape V3A 500 Series Leveling Amplifier x2
AudioScape Engineering Co. MAP CL-20 x2
DBX 160X Compressor / Limiter
DBX 160XT Compressor / Limiter (Revive Audio Modified)
DBX 166XS Dual Channel Compressor / Limiter
Furman RV-1 Spring Reverb + EQ
Grace Design m101 Single Channel Preamp
Lexicon PCM 41 Digital Delay Processor
Lexicon PCM 60 Digital Reverberator
Lexicon PCM 70 Digital Effects Processor
Little Labs Voice of God 500 Series Bass Resonance Processor
Manley Labs ELOP+ Dual-Channel Electro-Optical Tube Compressor
Phoenix Audio DRSQ4 MKII – Dual Mono A Class Mic Pre / EQ
Rupert Neve Designs Portico 542 500 Series Tape Emulator x2
Rupert Neve Designs 543 500 Series Compressor / Limiter
Smart Research C1 Dual Channel Compressor
Summit Audio TD-100 Tube Instrument Preamp and Direct Box
Summit Audio TLA-50 Tube Leveling Amplifier
Warm Audio TB12 Tone Beast Mic Pre (Revive Audio Modified)

MIXING BOARD:

Allen & Heath MixWizard WZ 16:2 (Made in England)

DAWs:

Pro Tools, Logic

INTERFACE:

Metric Halo 2882 w/ 3D Upgrade x2

*Microphone List available upon request

Where the records go

Everything I mix gets backed up on four separate physical drives plus cloud storage. Nothing gets lost. When the project is done, you get all of it. Approved mixes as WAV files. Every stem. Every raw session file. Delivered through Dropbox, Google Drive, or WeTransfer. Whatever works for you.

You own everything.

((ADD Studio photos))