Our facility occupies approximately 1,400 square feet of industrial warehouse space on the near west side of Chicago. Designed by acoustician Bob Alach of Alactronics (Wellesley, MA), it features a 700 square foot control room with stereo and 5.1 surround monitoring capabilities, a sonically transparent video projection system which eliminates the acoustical problems of computer monitors from the listening position, a custom desk designed and built specifically to eliminate acoustical interference, and careful attention to minimizing other acoustical problems resulting in an extremely accurate and high resolution listening environment. All noisy or large equipment is located in an adjacent room and a comfortable lounge/office area with wireless internet is provided.
Chicago Mastering Service features equipment and DAW platforms to meet virtually any format requirement or sonic challenge including:
Neumann VMS70 Lacquer Disk Mastering Lathe with SX74 cutter head, SAL74 cutting amps, MyShank diamond stylus, and Zuma variable pitch & depth computer
Ampex ATR-102 1/2″ and 1/4″ analog tape recorder
Sony PCM-R500 DAT recorder
Nakamichi CR-7 cassette tape recorder (modified)
WaveLab Pro 11
Audio plug-ins and software from Tokyo Dawn, DMG Audio, PSP, Sonic Studio, Metric Halo, Izotope, Abbey Road, Sonnox, Prosoniq, Weiss, Fabfilter, Oeksound, Schwabe Digital, and others
Apple M1 Max Mac Studio
Custom-built mastering transfer console AKO-XC2 (Shea Ako)
Music Hall and Technics turntables
Knif Audio phono preamps
SLS / Bag End / Crane Song monitor system
Outboard equipment from:
Crane Song
Dangerous Music
Dolby Laboratories
Empirical Labs
Forssell Technologies Inc
Lavry Engineering
Lynx Studio Technology
Manley Laboratories
Metric Halo
Millennia Media
Neumann
Pendulum Audio
RME
Thermionic Culture Ltd
Z-Sys