The Pop Machine
Nestled on a private, leafy estate on Indianapolis' north side, The Pop Machine has hosted thousands of recording sessions for music icons and indie artists since opening in January 2000.
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The studio's discography includes "Visual Love" from the 2013 GRAMMY-nominated Best R&B Album "Better" by Chrisette Michele (Motown Records), "ErrryThang" by Ace Hood featuring Yo Gotti from the Billboard #1 R&B/Hip-Hop; Billboard #1 Rap Album; Billboard 200 Top-10 album "Blood, Sweat & Tears" (Island Def Jam/We The Best Music Group), and the latest and upcoming releases from Son Lux, Wishy, Sublime With Rome, The Jim Irsay Band, The Why Store, The Late Show, and Zero Boys.
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The Pop Machine was designed and built by co-founder Terry L. Monday and his Monday Designworks firm and features stunning acoustical spaces, a Solid State Logic AWS 924 Delta SuperAnalogue console, Avid Pro Tools and Logic Pro X digital audio workstations, analog tape machines, and racks of the finest analog and vacuum tube outboard equipment and effects processors with access to the owners' private instrument collection, supported by producers, engineers, programmers, and musicians of the highest caliber.
The studios
Live Room
20 x 15 x 13.5
The studio features hardwood floors, high ceilings, and custom diffusors with configurable acoustic gobos. The live room is flanked by an adjacent isolation booth and remote amp loft located upstairs. Musicians monitor via an Oz Audio Q-Mix cue system and Sony MDR-7506 headphones.
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Rooms are wired with oxygen-free Mogami, Monster, and Marshall Soundrunner cable with Neutrik gold-plated interconnects.
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The Pop Machine's legendary microphone collection includes modern and vintage vacuum tube, ribbon, condenser, and dynamic models from AKG, Blue, Coles/STC, Neumann, Royer Labs, Shure, Solomon Mics, Soyuz, and Telefunken with Class-A, vacuum tube, active, and passive direct injection boxes from Avalon Design, Acme Audio, Radial, Tech21 NYC, and Uncle Albert's Amplifier.
Control ROOM
19 x 17 x 12
The centerpiece of the control room is a Solid State Logic AWS 924 Delta SuperAnalogue workstation, which combines a state-of-the-art analog console and dual DAW controller. On the analog layer, the AWS 924 is a complete 24-channel, 8-bus console with 24 analog inputs. Each of the AWS 924's channels features a top-of-the-line SSL SuperAnalogue microphone preamplifier, a line-level input, and 4-band E- and G-Series EQs with floating dynamics and the legendary stereo bus compressor, all based on classic SSL technology.
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Augmenting the SSL console are channels of the world's finest outboard microphone preamplifiers and equalizers including vintage Neve 1066, 1073, and 1081 modules, API 500 series, stereo-matched Calrec PQ modules, Chandler TG, Tube-Tech, Avalon Design, and Universal Audio units.
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Highest resolution digital audio is captured through a Lavry AD-24-200 Savitr Gold analog-to-digital converter and Avid HD IO to Pro Tools HDX and Logic Pro X workstations (with a vast plug-in library) synchronized to the Lavry Gold's masterclock. A beautifully restored Ampex ATR-102 1/2" 2-track and an Otari MX-80 2" 24-track tape machines (formerly owned by Henry Lee Summer) are available for analog purists.
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The 'wonderwall' is the studio's carefully curated racks of effect processors and analog outboard gear from API, Avalon Design, Calrec, DBX, Eventide, Focusrite, Lexicon, Neve, Smart Research, Spectra Sonics, Teletronix, Tube-Tech, SPL, and Universal Audio.
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The control room features accurate monitoring with original-issue UREI 813A soffit main monitors powered by a Hafler TransNova and Bryston 4B-powered ProAc SM100, Yamaha NS-10M Studio, and JBL 4208 near-field monitors and a JBL LSR4312SP subwoofer.