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Big Lake Recording Company is a multi-room studio in Burlington, Vermont, focused on making professional recordings accessible to the area’s thriving independent music scene. When the time came to choose a console for the studio, studio partners Ian Steinberg and Dan Rome knew they wanted a tracking-focused desk capable of delivering highly polished, cohesive sounds right off the front end, along with digital recall for seamless changeover between recording and mixing sessions.
After weighing the pros and cons of the “big three” console brands, they settled on a 16-channel Neve Genesys G32 with the optional VCA dynamics card that adds built-in compression and expansion on every channel. The digitally controlled analog desk provided the ultimate combination of classic Neve tone and workflow flexibility for Steinberg, Rome, and new engineer River to quickly turn out professional tracks for local artists, label clients, and even ADR sessions.
Here’s the story of how Big Lake Recording Company got started, why they decided to partner with Vintage King, and how they found the perfect console to be the centerpiece of the studio.
What’s the origin story of Big Lake Recording Company, and how did you two become partners in the first place?
Dan Rome: We were at this other studio, and it was just time to move on. The two of us had pretty much the same goals—we both just wanted to do really high-quality, clean, professional recording in a safe, clean environment. There was definitely a meeting of the minds that happened, and then we had that “Let's go into business” moment.
This was the first place we looked at, which is crazy. I saw it on Craigslist, and I was like, “That seems a little too good to be true.” The rent was somewhat reasonable, and the property managers were nice, so we hit the ground running. The only hangup was getting the construction done fast enough to not run out of our initial funds.
Ian Steinberg: We got in here in May of ‘24 and started construction basically right away. We redid the floors in a few rooms and hired a contractor to put in the windows and build a wall with a 16-input XLR panel on it, then we started building panels and various acoustic traps. We got things operational in November of 2024 and did a soft launch in April of 2025, so we've basically been functional for about a year now.
How has that first year been?
IS: We've already had a month or two in the black, which is crazy for the first year in the business.
DR: When we opened this place, I was nervous. We had been doing well at the last place, but this is just a bigger endeavor.
IS: The bills are higher, and we have to meet a higher demand financially, but on the other hand, we have complete control over it. We have a beautiful space to operate out of and great gear—the Genesys in particular.
DR: Because of the quality of the gear, the quality of our output is sounding better with each project. We're getting more dialed in, and I feel more and more confident that the studio is going to just keep attracting more bands. We don't even do that much marketing or outreach; it's almost exclusively word of mouth right now.
So far, everything that's come through here has been really great. I'll record these bands that I've never heard of or just seen on posters around town, but when I get them in here, and we put 'em through the Neve and get everyone set up with their hearbacks, it's like, “Holy shit, these are really good songs.”
Speaking of local artists, what’s the music scene like in Burlington?
DR: I grew up here, and it's always had a really strong music scene. Currently, there's a huge surge of young talent coming out of the city.
IS: Especially in the indie rock scene, artists like Greg Freeman, Lily Seabird, Robber Robber, and Dari Bay are creating incredible music.
DR: There are good venues here, and it's a real stop that people make on their tours. Higher Ground is a very powerful venue and promoter, and there are some really amazing artists that come through. Ian works at a small venue called Foam Brewers that’s also a brewery.
IS: It's like a 150-capacity room, and they host mostly free shows. It's subsidized by the beer, basically. Dan's actually in a band called The Discussions, which is run by my friend Greg, who is a coworker at Foam Brewers as well. He's the talent buyer, and I’m the production manager there.
DR: I think the recording scene in Burlington is particularly interesting right now, too. Us and another studio called The Tank are kind of the two bigger studios in town, and then there's all of these incredible producers making amazing-sounding records. Urian Hackney was just featured in Tape Op; he's Iggy Pop's drummer, and he's got a studio in town.
Everyone's just working hard and making art and contributing to this artistic small town weirdo culture. There's real artistry and a sense of living for yourself and your community versus trying to live an Instagram life. I think Burlington has been living up to the Bohemian vibe, and there are a lot of real rugged hippies, weirdos, and freaks here that help propel it.
What do you think draws indie artists to your studio?
IS: We're artist-focused as well as quality-focused, so no matter who the artist is, we're going to capture their performance really well and mix it really well, and that's what matters. We try and sell them on an entirely in-house process where either Dan or I will track and mix an album, and then the other will master it, so we can offer cohesiveness and quality while maintaining a reasonable price point for our area.
DR: I think efficiency is also a really big thing. A common workflow for us is to have the band come in the night before and set up, do a rehearsal, meet everyone, chill out, and drink a couple beers, and then we’ll hit it at like 10:00 AM and record all day.
IS: And then maybe do overdubs the next day for vocals or guitar solos and stuff like that.
DR: That has worked really well, and it means that artists can afford to come here versus doing it themselves. I think it shows people the level of efficiency that we have. Their band demo might take six months to make, but we can get their whole thing tracked in one day, and it's going to sound way better.
How did you end up choosing the Neve Genesys as your console?
IS: I had been thinking about buying a console for a while. I find that I do my best work in tracking, and I get the most excitement and fulfillment out of a tracking session as opposed to a mixing session, so I wanted to get a tracking-focused console that I could also use as an inline console for mixing.
At the old space, we had 12 channels of preamps on a Yamaha board that was ‘JapaNeve’-modded, plus a Neve OPX and some various other pres. I was having difficulty making a cohesive sound with all the different preamps, so I knew I wanted a 16-channel board at least.
It was basically between Neve, SSL, and API. I'd worked on an SSL Duality in college, which is an excellent mixing board, and the DAW integration is flawless, but the issue for me is I've never liked SSL’s preamps, especially the Duality’s. They just never ‘sang’ for me. So it was then between API and Neve.
I've always loved Neve products whenever I've used them. I've always loved API products too; they sound incredible, but very different from the Neve preamps. My professor had a Neve VR at his studio, Pyramid Sound, and I interned at Water Music as well as Chung King way back in the day. The Rupert Neve Designs 8088 at Water Music was just stunning. I'd always been impressed by the sustainability of those old consoles from the ‘60s and ‘70s that were still operating when I was interning in 2015.
DR: We were looking at RND versus Neve, but it seemed like, for the purposes of tracking, Neve was better. We looked at the 5088 console, but it didn't have as many preamps and it seemed more mixing-focused.
IS: What really sold me in the end was the flexibility of the Genesys with the digitally controlled recall. Most of my workflow in the modern day is with a computer, and you need that to work efficiently. Also, having built-in EQ and compressors on every channel was a great add-on feature.
So, you went with the base 16-channel G32 and added the VCA dynamics card?
IS: Yeah, we have the dynamics and EQ for every channel—the three-band EQ and the VCA compressors, not the 80 Series ones. We also have the custom Argosy desk for this specific board. We’re thinking about upgrading to the DAW plugin controllability, which would make everything extremely seamless and make automation really smooth. Other than that, it's pretty basic.
What else is in your signal chain?
DR: Ian picked up the SSL BUS+ from Vintage King, which is a mind-blowingly expansive box. We also have another business partner in this adventure, our really good friend Mark Balderston, who rents the adjoining suite as the HQ for his live production and music management business, Slings & Arrows. He picked up the SSL Fusion for the studio as a little present for us.
IS: There’s also the OPX and a set of Focals in here that I got from Vintage King. We have a set of three Peluso mics that I got through them, and I'm actually talking to Cody [Angel] right now about buying some Royers.
Where did Vintage King enter the picture?
IS: We went down to Nashville for a recording summit at Welcome to 1979, and we were like, “Oh, there's a Vintage King store here. We might as well go check it out.” We walked in and met Cody Angel, and we were in there listening to monitors and having a good time. That kind of established an open line with Vintage King, and Cody's been super helpful.
DR: I definitely felt like that visit to Nashville was fateful. It was like, “All right, we got our studio purchasing guy!”
IS: It's funny, though; when I was talking to Cody about buying the Royers, I was like, “Hey, we're looking at Royers and Coles. I know it's Black Friday soon; are there any deals at Vintage King?” And he was like, “Well, hold on. Let's just talk about the music first. What are you going to be using them on? Are these going to be for overheads? Are they going to be on guitar cabs?” He could have easily just pushed us to buy the highest-priced mic, but he really wanted to understand what we’d be using them for.
DR: He's a good engineer, too, and he sends us the stuff he’s working on. He's so trustworthy in many regards.
Now that you’ve been living with this setup so far, how are you liking it?
DR: After we got the Neve set up, I had my first session with my band as a test case, and we were literally just recording cymbals with two overhead mics. Our drummer starts rolling the cymbals with mallets, and I started crying from how good the preamp sounded. I was just like, “Oh my God, it's perfect.” It's just so quick, and it always sounds good. It's almost too easy.
IS: It was shocking how it really just became a matter of placing a mic and putting it through the board, and it instantly sounds good. Obviously, it depends on the artist's performance and all the other factors like mic placement, et cetera, but the ease with which we can get to the point where we’re happy with the initial sound coming into Pro Tools has sped up by 80% from our old studio.
DR: Having a modern hybrid console like this is great because Ian and I use the console totally differently. I've learned a lot from watching him, and we also have a new person who just joined the studio—River, who's a super talented and motivated young engineer—so I'm excited to see what she does with the console. Everyone's learning it in their own way, even the way we do headphone mixes.
IS: Having an analog board with digitally controlled everything makes changeover super easy. If Dan's doing a tracking session and I have to come in and do a mix session, the recall is a minute if I'm switching between mixing sessions for completely different bands.
DR: I never even considered doing an analog mix at the last studio. It wasn't worth it for me because the recall time was too long and the sound just didn't make sense to me. But here, I've slowly been expanding my mixing out to the board, and it's so fun. I can break my brain out of Pro Tools, so I'm just in fader-land, and my mixes happen so much faster.
This whole signal path of summing on the Genesys into this SSL chain with Aurora converters feels very blessed. I feel lucky, and I try to impress that on the bands that are coming here. I'm like, “This is a really nice console that we get to work with. We should all say a little ‘thank you’ to the gods that we get to be here right now doing this.” It's awesome.
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