The primary recording space is a large open warehouse space (approximately 100 by 40 feet) with 30 foot ceilings, a large stage and enough room for a regulation height basketball hoop and a five foot high quarter pipe skateboard ramp. One side of the room has windows that look out on an old railroad line. Trains do pass occasionally, and while it's never caused a problem when the record light is on, this would not be a good room to record a string quartet when a train goes by. We think that the feel of the natural light more than makes up for the minor inconvenience of the trains.
There is a drum platform on the stage that has 1000 pounds of concrete poured into it for effective low end isolation. Between the windows and the acoustical ceiling panels, the room is not as live as you would expect and if you only tight mic, it sounds like a much smaller room. As you begin to move mics away from an instrument, you get a nice open sound with almost no funky room reflections. And if you want to, you can throw up a few room mics 20 or 30 feet away for that John Bonham drum sound. One of the really nice things about the room is that you can put a four piece band in the room all together using primarily distance for isolation, but with each musician still having a clear line of sight to the other players as well as access to their amp for feedback and tone. The separation, while not 100% is surprisingly good.
There are also several options for complete isolation. There is a small floated isolation booth adjacent to the control room that has somewhat variable acoustics, all leaning towards a deader sound. It is big enough for several vocalists, or a guitar amp. Greg Brown (Cake, Deathray) has even used it for drums. We also have another very dead iso booth that is smaller (4 by 4) and is on wheels out in the main room that will also work for an amp or vocalist although it's a bit claustrophobic.
Adjacent to the main recording room is a working kitchen with a beautiful old Wedgewood gas stove, two bathrooms, and a storage room with a small 3 foot mini ramp in it. There's also another 4 foot mini ramp down the hall. (Can you tell that we like to skateboard?) Many of the engineers who work here take advantage of all of these spaces. The kitchen is a favorite for guitar overdubs, the women's bathroom is Eric Broyhill's (!!!, Outhud, Knapsack) favorite vocal room, and the small mini ramp room with mostly concrete walls is Chris Woodhouse's (FM Knives, The Nits, A-Frames) favorite drum room. The Mother Hips recorded their debut album here without using any artificial reverb and instead used each room's acoustics to their advantage.