Studio Focus: Analog Cabin
If analogue synths are up your alley, do yourself a favour and visit Analog Cabin’s website. The immersive 3D-camera studio tour has gotta be the most fun I’ve had on a homepage. It’s a drool fest that must be clocking up some lengthy page views for owner Felix Warmuth.
20 November 2016
Photography: Tim Jones
Analog Cabin is a synth-loaded studio and production space in Ultimo, NSW. It’s located inside the Fishburners complex; a fast-growing not-for-profit charity for scalable tech startups. The cabin has serviced a bunch of its neighbour’s corporate needs, from voiceovers to podcasts, but the Cabin’s bread and butter is all manner of electronic music.
Felix caught the pro audio bug a while ago. Scoring a job at pro audio retailer Sound Devices in 2000 helped him cut his teeth, and gain an appreciation of quality kit. Fortuitously, at that time the pro audio world staged a mass exodus from the analogue realm, and Felix was heading in the opposite direction.
Several years and a number of home studios later, he and his friend Adrian Burns decided to get a recording space of their own where their passion for producing techno and other electronic music would be unrestrained. Plus, all those synths he’d collected needed a home. Though Felix, Adrian and producer Mike Witcombe are all accomplished producers in their own right, producing other artists and DJs was always part of the plan. Hardly a week goes by when the Cabin isn’t graced by a number of international or local acts getting their dose of old-school synthesis.
Plans are already underway to establish Analog Cabin as a record label. Mike helps out with graphic design, and ‘on-the-ground’ engineering is handled by Rob Erskine to facilitate sessions for signed artists.
Despite the name, tracking is mostly digital — although a quarter-inch tape machine sits in the corner ready for mixdown when desired. So why the name Analog Cabin? Because, Felix says, they like “getting things out of the box and being creative with the audio flow.” Ableton is the DAW of choice, with its creative workflow being perfectly suited to the song-brewing environment intended for the studio. The mountain of synths feed into the Soundcraft 6000 console, where inputs are mixed into a Metric Halo 2882. Extra ADAT conversion provides more inputs.
For Felix, picking a favourite synth is nearly as hard as fitting an adult into the puny vocal booth. He reckons if he had to choose, the Alesis Andromeda ranks pretty highly as do the modular synths and classic 808 and 909 drum sequencers. A “fetish” (his choice of word, not mine) for Ace Tone gear has led him on extensive hunts for very particular models.
The Analog Cabin rarely sits in silence. One recently completed project was a video with artist Lucy Cliché for Red Bull Music Academy’s 1800-ANALOG event. Other artists that have been in lately include Mia Lucci, Crooked Colours, Seekae, and Trus’Me.
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