The GSi Studio can be defined as a modern "professional home studio"
It was originally born as a home environment mainly for quiet computer works. Painted with warm and relaxing colors, bright, airy and comfortable,
with many light spots, mini-bar and air conditioning, it's a nice place to stay for a long working day with music.
Equipped with great modern and vintage gear, offers the necessary versatility for covering a fairly large number of different recording situations, but it
is mainly focused to jazz and pop recordings with small bands.
The new heart of the studio is a D&R Cinemix, a really fascinating analog console with a clean and transparent
sound and a powerful digital routing system, it has 32 mic inputs and a total of 36 channels which double to 72 inputs on mix. This console has been conceived for surround 5.1
mixing as it has a 6 channel master output and every mono input can be used with traditional L&R panning or LCRS sound positioning, or can be assigned to one of the two XY joysticks.
The digital recording is based on a RME FireFace 800
computer interface expanded with a Creamware A16 Ultra A/D D/A converter for a total of
24 simultaneous tracks for recording, and 24 outputs for analog (OTB) mixing. The computer is a powerful Windows based machine running
Cubase versions 5 and 6,
the control room monitoring system is based on a pair of
Adam A7x studio near field monitors,
while the recording room monitoring system is based on the new astonishing Behringer Powerplay 16.
But the strength point is the presence of a gorgeous and great sounding Hammond organ model A100 from 1963 equipped with a Leslie 147 and a Leslie 145.
And that's not all yet! Other fine instruments are a vintage Rhodes piano Seventythree Mark I from 1978, perfectly tuned and balanced, plus a
Sequential Circuits Pro~One, a Yamaha DX7, and other vintage and modern keyboards and effects.
Resident gear list(as of December 2012)
Recording:
Mixing desk: D&R Cinemix, 32 mono + 4 stereo modules, 72 total inputs on mix, 10 aux sends, 24 buss, VCA automation with ALPS motorfaders, surround 5.1 mixing, dynamics on first 24 channels
Near-field monitors: pair of ADAM A7x, pair of YAMAHA HS-50M, one 10" 250W Subwoofer (down to 32 Hz)
Digital recording: RME Fireface 800, Creamware A16 Ultra (24 in, 24 out)
Computer: Windows computer with Cubase 5.5, Cubase 6.5, Wavelab 7
Digital computer based FFT Spectrum Analyzer
Custom built Studio MMC and SMPTE Display with Recording light and DAW control surface with motor-fader and motor-pots
Preamplifiers:
Drawmer 1960
Neve 1073 LB
API 512c
SoundSkulptor MP-573
Old School Audio MP-1
Compressors and EQs:
Universal Audio 1176LN, FET Class A limiting amplifier
Empirical Labs Distressor EL-8x
Drawmer 1960, dual valve mic. preamp and compressor
Drawmer DL241, VCA based stereo compressor, gate, and limiter
Have you ever wished to have real instruments recorded in your musical project but you couldn't afford neither
the instruments themselves nor the recording sessions in a professional studio? How cool would it be if you can have all this by simply ordering the recordings
online and have them done professionally for you at an affordable price?
GSi is now able to offer custom studio recordings for the following instruments:
Acoustic Drums
Guitars
Vintage keyboards
more to come... (mostly guitars and analogue vintage synthesizers)
And effects:
Leslie 145
Roland Space Echo RE-201
Roland Chorus Echo RE-501
WEM Copicats, other BBD-based echo units and Spring Reverberators
How this works
You pre-order the recording and pay a 50% in advance; we set up an FTP account for you so you can upload your project files,
preferably a backing track in mp3 format starting at locator 0, or the dry track of the sound you wish to be processed by the analogue effects,
then we discuss what to play or what to do, better if you can provide a score or a MIDI track. Then we make the recordings, possibly more than just
one version, so you can download free examples and choose which one you like better. Once you've made your choice, you complete the payment and the whole
file (or files, in case of a multi-track recording) will be delivered to you via a digital download in uncompressed wave format (max quality is 48 KHz of sampling rate at
a 24 bit resolution).
If you think you're interested, get in touch with us with your questions or suggestions.
These are recent sessions of drum recording (between December 2011 and February 2012):
Here you can download the complete audio tracks from this video in wave format:
We know that thanks to virtual instruments and large sample libraries we can nowadays obtain great results with a high level of authenticity and an high sound quality
with very low efforts, no need for a whole recording studio and near zero setting up times. Ok, but what about the human factor? Is a drum sequencer as much groovy
as a real human drum player? Is a guitar sample library as much complete as what a real guitar player can accomplish with his instrument? The answer is no.
The acoustic instruments and the presence of a good musician always make the difference in a musical project.
And what about analogue synths and effects? Are simulations really as good as actual instruments? Ok, they can get close, even very close, but not 100% identical.
Especially for electro-acoustic effects such as the Leslie speaker. And we at GSi have learned the lesson!
