I was very sorry yesterday to hear that yet another New York recording studio — Manhattan Sound Recording — will be closing its doors at the end of the month.
As some of you may know, before shifting my focus to software development a few years back, I made my living as a recording engineer (a partial list of my engineering credits is here). MSR — originally Right Track, then Legacy — was always one of my two favorite “big rooms” in the city, if not the world (the other being my alma mater Power Station, which still survives under the name Avatar). I made dozens of records there. The quality of the acoustic spaces, the equipment, the technical maintenance, and the staff were always absolutely top-notch. (You can see some photos of the place here.)
My friend Dave Amlen, whose first venture was another excellent Midtown facility called Sound on Sound, merged his business with Right Track about ten years ago — at which point it was renamed Legacy — then took complete control a few years later. But the studio’s location — on West 48th Street near Times Square — has proved to be a fatal liability: there has been large-scale construction all around for years now, and the noise has made recording impossible.
Thank you, Dave, for giving us, for so many years, such outstanding facilities in which to make music. Only a studio owner who truly loves and understands the arcane craft of record-making could have given us what you did. I’m glad to hear you are planning to open another space in the next year or so, and I look forward to settling in and pushing up the faders.
Read more about MSR and its owner here.
2 Comments
Hmm. Wonder what sort of use David Gilmour’s Astoria is seeing nowadays?
Mal, thanks for the update. I have never worked there but I am sad to see it go. However, there is a bit of a silver lining here. From what I read, the reason he is closing is not due to lack of business as I initially thought. It’s mainly due to the construction noise. Businesses in that area are booming – both figuratively and literally. I suppose the opposite problem would be worse, so I am looking forward to see what kind of studio he will build next.