Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer and owner of Nashville-based mastering powerhouse The Hit Lab, Nathan Dantzler (Niall Horan,Teddy Swims, Kelsea Ballerini), shares why it was vital for him to trust his gut when designing The Hit Lab.
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I had a vision completely confident in it, and I would show people the drawings and everything, and most people I showed it to would go, huh, you could see that they didn’t see the vision.
Then I remember laying in bed at night and I told my wife, I was like, Am I crazy? Do I only think this is good? And she’s like, no, you gotta trust your gut. I was like, all right. So I just went for it.
We are in the furthest south. You can get in Nashville City limits. It’s just a few minutes down the road to get downtown in the city, but, Where we are, it looks like we’re literally in the middle of nowhere. It’s just rolling hills and there’s wild Turkey and deer and surrounded by nature. When we bought this property, there’s the house, and then now we’re over here in the studio.
Went through countless iterations in CAD of designs and layouts, and one of the primary goals is so that you can experience music in numerous different ways, so you can get in front of the PMCs and hear it in.
Amazing fidelity, and it sounds amazing, but you can also stand back over by the kitchen and hear a song, um, like passive listening, and you can kind of get a different perspective that maybe isn’t so much about frequency or transient response or those kind of more nerdy details.
And instead, it’s more of a feeling. And then I can come to the table and the technical things will sort themselves out. It feels nice and validating when we have people come into space and then they feel what you’re intended to feel in and that it creates that environment. That’s easy and light.
There’s not any of the distractions. It’s just a comfortable space to be in
