LBA Studios

02/09/2025

L.A. based drummer, Ryan “Peabody” Blandford laid down drum tracks on the house kit at LBA last night. His energy was intense. Those New Beat hi hats I recently snagged worked out super good. 14 mics on the house kit. It was very likely the best drum recording I ever pulled off. 3 ribbon mics as overheads (pair of M160’s and an R121 in the middle), R88 stereo room mic, toms had 421’s on top and 414’s on bottoms, snare had a M201TG on top and an SM7B on bottom, EV 868 ND on kick.

02/06/2025

Buffalo Derek was back again and he’s the first to try out the Zildjian New Beat hi hats I just bought. They provide a nice sounding sizzle with a little less volume than my Mastersound hats. We just finished recording his 15th and final song for this album. One more session of his next week to record sprinkles of various instruments here and there. This guy comes in and plays all the instruments himself for 3-4 songs each week. A real one man band. I put up 414’s on the toms and the mighty AEA R88 as an overhead. 9 mics total. It was a very clean sound we got.

01/26/2025

I just bought a nice old pair of Zildjian 14” New Beat Hi Hats to have another hat option for the studio. Apparently, this model and size of Hi Hats is the most recorded in history.

01/23/2025

It’s not all Rock n’ Roll up in here. I’m curious what tomorrow’s Artist will present. Tomorrow is going to be a very different genre.

01/09/2025

10/24/2024

if you haven’t checked out LBA please give a like. Hand-made pro audio gear in NY with a primary focus on tone and cool new ideas.

Designer and manufacturer of audio transformers and related musical equipment.

09/18/2024

09/11/2024

Recording Studio Tour at Lightning Boy Audio

08/15/2024

I had the great honor and privilege of recording the Indigo Girls today at LBA. We tracked vocals for a song they're working on with the great producer, John Reynolds in Ireland. It was an absolute blast. Amy sang into my new Neumann M149, while Emily sang into my U87, which is hiding behind the reflection filter. I wish I would have had more time available to set up the shots in order to get some great photos, especially given that I shot these with a brand new Canon R6 Mark II that I have almost no experience with yet. The photos are what they are, but the session was a blast for everyone. Today was just awesome. 😁 The Indigo Girls are playing in Chataqua tomorrow if you're in the area and want to check em out.

08/07/2024

I just made a major investment for the studio with the purchase of a Neumann M149 vacuum tube condenser mic. It'll be here Friday. Big purchases like that give me anxiety, even when it's a super awesome thing. I always buy a new thing for the studio every session. Sometimes it's just a little thing like a new set of drum heads, but next week I have a very significant recording session, justifying the big investment. I was saving for an even more expensive microphone, but this sudden session changed the plan. The M149 is probably better than any mic in my locker of 30 mics when it comes to things like vocals or mono acoustic sources, probably beating out my U87 and Pearlman TM1 most of the time. No mic will ever be the perfect mic for every scenario, which is why I have 30 awesome microphones. Stop by www.lbastudios.com to see whats up.

LBA Studios is a professional music studio for recording, mixing, and mastering. The recording studio is located just South of Buffalo, NY USA in the rural village of North Collins.

07/03/2024

Dark Storm stereo mic preamp recording piano

RAW multi-track 96kHz, 32Bit FP WAVE audio download available in the link at the bottom. This is a demonstration of Lightning Boy Audio Dark Storm microphone...

06/28/2024

We moved the piano out into the hall for a couple sessions. Talk about heavy! Here’s a sample of what it sounds like. Was it worth it?

An example recording of solo piano from LBA Studios in North Collins, NY. Performed by Kevin Urso. This recording has no dynamics processing or artificial reverb. It's a baby grand in the Hall at L

06/21/2024

Finally. Nerding out, but it’s been 2 years since I was last able to synchronize the modern studio computer (DAW) with a 1990’s PC running the consoles Super True automation program in the best way possible. There are 3 ways. One method sucks terrible, and both of the bad methods require me to sacrifice an audio channel. The only way to have all channels for audio is to have an external MIDI time code (MTC) to SMPTE converter. The last two (1990’s) sync boxes were either dead, dumb, or deaf. I finally found a modern one on Amazon… and it works! Now I can automate my analog and digital external FX on the console and it follows my sessions in Pro Tools and Reaper with all 40 channels of high resolution audio. Yay! A little victory, but it was a big hill to climb. It started with a damaged chip on the CPU card on the console. Wow, did that take forever to track down. I stupidly threw away my old MTC to SMPTE box because I thought it died. It was more difficult to find a replacement than it was to fix the root problem. I’m so relieved this is water under the bridge now. Back to cool mixing.

03/28/2024

The talented Singer/Songwriter, Michelle Lulas, just laid the foundation for an album here at LBA. More to come.

03/19/2024

https://youtu.be/5Dw3aKbw5Wo?si=tyit3lKQup8l2qY2

Instead of being a Dolby Artist, I tried to experience ATMOS as a consumer. 💗 Support this channel and join an amazing community: http://www.patreon.com/ben...

02/25/2024